I Will Sing for You - 7. A Day in the Desert

Wednesday

I’m awakened by the unpleasant sound of my alarm as well as the very pleasant movement of Chris’ naked body beneath mine. “Ummm…” I purr, feeling his soft, delicate insides hug my cock like a glove as I press intimate kisses to his shoulders and his neck. “I could wake up to this every morning. I’m surprised that we managed to stay coupled throughout the night.”

“Me too,” he replies beneath me. “But you sure made a nice, comfortable blanket last night, Callan.”

“I wasn’t too heavy?”

“No, not at all.”

“I’m glad,” I whisper between kisses. “I feel so comfortable with you, Chris.”

“Um, do you think you could let me up to go to the bathroom?”

“Of course,” I reply, pushing up off of his back. My flaccid cock leaving his butt with a muted wet pop, I tumble down upon the mattress on my side and silently watch as Chris rolls to the side of the bed, then gets up to his feet and pads his way to the bathroom, my eyes following the sexy sway of his naked butt until he pushes the bathroom door closed behind him.

And to think that I actually fucked that incredible butt last night.

I hear the toilet flush a few minutes later. Then the door opens, and Chris’ eyes meet mine. “Is it okay if I shower, Callan? My stomach and crotch are kind of sticky from lying in my cum all night. Not to mention your cum that is leaking out of me now that you’re not inside me anymore.”

“Of course. You don’t even have to ask, Chris. Extra towels are in the closet. I’ll shower after you.”

“I won’t be long,” he says, leaving the door ajar. Wondering if he meant it as an invitation to join him, I consider it, then decide to allow him his privacy. If he wanted me to shower with him, he would have said something. Instead, I push up out of bed, strip off the cum-sodden sheet and mattress protector, bring them up to my nose and deeply inhale the scent of Chris’ semen. Then I carry them to the washer, stuff them in and start the wash cycle. When I re-enter the bedroom I no longer hear the sound of the shower, so I pad into the bathroom to see Chris bent over, giving me a peek at where my cock spent the night last night as he dries his legs.

“So I assume that you didn’t have any complications this morning because of what we did last night, being your first time and all?” I ask as I direct my stream into the toilet.

“No,” he smiles, eyes focused on my cock which is noticeably smaller than it was last night. “Of course, seeing traces of your cum in the toilet was new to me. Actually, I expected to see more of it judging by how much you came last night.”

I suggestively smile. “Who knows. Maybe some of it ended up being absorbed into your body, making me an actual part of you. I’d like to think so, anyway.”

“Nice thought,” he muses, returning my smile.

I simply nod and start the shower as he hangs his towel on the rack beside mine. “I stripped the sheet and mattress pad off the bed,” I tell him as I step into the shower. “They’re washing now.”

“Okay. I’ll see you when you’re finished,” he says, then leaves the bathroom.

Ten minutes later, I enter the bedroom to find Chris dressed and sitting on the edge of the bed. “I see that you’re dressed for a day in the desert,” I smile as I remove a clean pair of briefs from my dresser drawer.”

“Yeah,” he replies, eyes again focused on my cock as I stand naked before him.

“You know, Chris, it makes me happy to see that I have something you like.”

He licks his lips, focusing on my eyes. “It’s just, I can’t help remembering how good it made me feel last night when it was totally erect and inside me.”

“Yeah,” I smile. “You did cum quite a lot last night. It also makes me really happy to know that you enjoyed making love as much as I did. In fact, I imagine that you built up quite an appetite, with all the energy you expended last night. I know I did. Would you like to eat here or go out for breakfast?”

“Here,” he replies. “I can help.”

“How about a veggie omelet with pepper jack cheese, roasted salsa verde, and Canadian bacon on the side, with orange juice and coffee?” I ask as I slip into the briefs.

He smiles, his eyes growing bigger. “Yum. Except, I wish we could spend the day here instead.”

“But then I couldn’t show you what I do for work, which I’m really excited to do,” I say as I slip on a clean pair of socks followed by a pair of crisp, brand new Levi 501s.”

“I’m sorry, Callan. I’m being selfish. I really do want to spend the day in the mountains with you and learn about what you do. It’s just after last night…”

“It really is enjoyable work, Chris. You’ll see. Besides, you’ll get to see how well the Jeep handles rugged terrain. Might even let you do some of the driving.” His expression immediately brightens, which is the effect that I intended.

“Besides,” I grin, “you’ll lose that incredible, sexy body if you spend every day in bed.”

“No way,” he retorts, returning my grin. “Not if I get the kind of exercise that I got last night.”

“Good point,” I smile, slipping on a t-shirt, then removing a long-sleeve shirt from the closet and slipping it on as well.

*     *     *

“Good breakfast,” Chris says as he cleans up after breakfast while I pack a daypack with water, lunches that I’d already prepared for us and other necessities for the day. When I finish, I corral him into my arms and press a kiss to his lips, then look him in the eyes. “I really enjoyed making love to you last night, Chris. You were a lot more responsive than I expected and, frankly, hot as hell in bed. Now I’m looking forward to spending the day in the desert with you and showing you many of the things that I do for my research.”

He’s blushing. “Thanks, Callan. And I’m looking forward to a day in the desert with you too.”

*     *     *

Twenty minutes later I’m threading the Jeep into eastbound traffic on E. Speedway Blvd. Ten miles later we head north and then east on Tanque Verde Road and cross Pantano Wash. Three miles later, we’re heading northeast on E. Catalina Highway, ascending the gently sloping bajada at the base of the Santa Catalina Mountains. Five miles later we intersect the Mt. Lemmon Highway and begin our ascent up into the mountains proper. About ninety minutes into the drive we leave the highway and begin our way into the backcountry.

Along the way I explain the general geology. “The Santa Catalina Mountains are a geologic phenomenon known as a metamorphic core complex with rocks of granitic composition of varying ages, the oldest being the 1.4 billion-year-old Oracle Granite, and schists (metamorphosed sedimentary rocks) as old as 1.65 billion years overlain by 1,100 meters of marine limestones and dolomites (sedimentary rocks) that have been intruded by several pulses of magmatic rocks of varying granitic compositions ranging in age from 71 million years to 26 million years. These rocks which were buried miles beneath the surface began to be pushed up by tectonic forces near the end of what is called the Laramide Orogeny (a crustal alteration and mountain-building event) about 35 million years ago. At that time rocks of southern Arizona and other parts of western North America were pulled apart (extended) and thinned by southwest-northeast stretching until they eventually broke apart along low-angle fractures called detachment faults. The Catalina fault of the Santa Catalina Mountains, which formed at depths of 10 to 13 kilometers beneath the surface, is one of them. We crossed it right before we started climbing the mountains but didn’t see it because it’s buried under bajada detritus. Anyway, continued extension moved rocks below the fault 25 to 30 km toward the east-northeast and closer to the surface as rocks above the fault slid downward to the southwest. The intense friction, heat and pressure caused by this movement of these deeply-seated rocks deformed them. The granites deep below the fault became so hot that they partially melted and flowed like putty, forming a new rock called gneiss (metamorphosed granite). As the rocks below the Catalina detachment fault moved slowly toward the surface in response to the removal of the weight of the overlying rocks that were sliding down to the southwest along the detachment fault, they began to form a dome. This rising dome of gneiss below the detachment fault and the highly shattered bedrock above the detachment fault that were later exposed at Earth’s surface is a metamorphic core complex. The Santa Catalina Mountains is one of more than two dozen metamorphic core complexes that extend from northern Mexico into southern Canada, including the nearby Rincon and Tortolita Mountains.

“Then another period of stretching and extension began about 15 million years ago and lasted about 10 million years, breaking the crustal rocks of western North America into rotating blocks, separated by new, high-angle faults. These were accompanied by another wave of intrusion by granitic rocks. In southern Arizona, this resulted in pushing up the Santa Catalina Mountains, as well as the Galiuro, Rincon, Tortolita, and Tucson Mountains and dropping of the neighboring rocks by as much as four kilometers, creating deep basins like the Tucson Basin, the Oro Valley basin and the San Pedro Valley. Since then, much of the mountains have been weathered away by erosion. More widely throughout the western U.S. this period of extension resulted in the basin and range topography that we see today extending from northern Mexico up into eastern Oregon.

“This period of extension and mountain-building also introduced massive quantities of copper, gold, silver, lead, zinc and other metals that have been mined for decades in Arizona. Huge open-pit copper mines like San Manuel and Morenci are examples of the extent and the values of this mineralization.”

“So how do you know all this since the rocks are so old? And how can you even figure out how old the rocks are?”

“Good question, Chris. For the rocks that formed underwater (sedimentary rocks) we do it by identifying the fossils in them since fossils die out and evolve through geologic time. Different geologic eras are defined by their fossil assemblages which existed at the time that their sediments were deposited. For igneous rocks, like granitic rocks and volcanic rocks, and highly metamorphosed sedimentary rocks we use isotopes of different chemical elements to date the rocks. Each isotope of a chemical element has what is called a half-life, which is the amount of time it takes half of a certain unstable isotope of a chemical element in a specimen to decay to a more stable isotope or element. Half-lives for different unstable isotopes have been determined from laboratory analyses. One of the most common methods of determining the ages of rocks is the uranium-lead method. Uranium-238, one of the most common radioactive isotopes comprising rocks, has a half-life of 4.5 billion years—the time it takes half of a specimen of uranium-238 to decay to lead-206, a common isotope of lead. I know that I haven’t fully described how it works, and there’s more to it, but it gives you an idea of how we date rocks. Once we know the relative ages of the rocks, we discern their differences by careful observation and analysis in the lab and then determine how they all fit together in a certain geologic environment, like the Santa Catalina Mountains, by detailed geologic mapping. After careful analysis in the lab of the different rock types in the Santa Catalina Mountains, I’m able to discern between them in the field and differentiate them for mapping purposes. I should add that differing methods of isotopic analysis are also used in dating sedimentary rocks to corroborate what the fossils tell us.

“So what I’m doing today is gathering specimens of different types of rocks and plotting on a map the locations of where I take them. Then I’ll carefully analyze their compositions in the lab so I can correctly identify them on the map. In addition, I’ll be mapping the contacts between different rock types and notable faulting that I observe as we drive and recording their noticeable features in my notes. In the end I’ll be doing a lot of generalizing, though, because the detail of geologic mapping is dependent on its purpose. If I was conducting reconnaissance geologic mapping of a mineral deposit, I’d be doing it at a much more detailed scale than the generalized, large-scaled geologic mapping that I’m doing here.

“Right now we’re in the fore range which is comprised mostly of granites and gneiss. The gneiss is either metamorphosed 1.4 billion-year-old Oracle Granite—formed as part an island arc, similar to today’s Japan, that was being rafted against the continent from the south at that time—or metamorphosed 50 million-year-old Wilderness Suites Granite, which is unusual in that it contains crystals of red garnet. Both were at depths of 10 to 15 kilometers 35 to 20 million years ago when extension (stretching), deformation and detachment faulting were occurring.”

I notice Chris idly gazing out over the landscape and I think that I’m now boring him with my chatter. “Sorry, Chris. I’ve probably overwhelmed you with lots of boring stuff that probably doesn’t interest you, but it actually helps me think and piece together in my mind the complexities of the geology up here.”

He looks askance at me. “You’re not boring me, Callan. And I’m not overwhelmed by what you’re explaining to me—well not entirely, anyway. Actually, I find it fascinating. I’ve been up here before, but now as I look at the mountains and the rocks around me, I see it all differently, hearing about how all this came about, especially knowing how old all these rocks are and how deep they were buried for millions of years before they were pushed up to the surface. I didn’t expect to learn so many fascinating things today. Actually, now I’m thinking about taking a geology course at Pima since I need a science elective. And you’ll be able to help me with the difficult tough stuff.”

“Wow!” I smile as I look at him, pleasantly surprised and happy to have had this effect on him. “I’d be more than happy to do that, Chris.”

Approaching a place that I want to sample, I say, “Okay, so up ahead here, we’re going to stop and take a sample at this rock outcrop.”

Pulling up to the outcrop, I stop the Jeep and look at him. “Now a word about safety, Chris: scorpions and rattlesnakes are ubiquitous in these mountains,” I say as I unfasten my seat belt. “The two rattlesnake species that you’re most likely to encounter are the black rattlesnake and the diamondback rattlesnake; Mojave rattlesnakes are uncommon at these elevations, but they’ve been seen, so beware where you step and put your hands, and always be alert. Oh, and of the three, the Mohave rattlesnake is the one that you most want to avoid because their venom is the most deadly.” That said, I reach behind me for my field pack and then step out of the Jeep. When I find a place suitable for sampling I brush it off with my leather gloves, then hammer at it with my rock pick until the friable, weathered surface rind has crumbled away as Chris stands beside me and observes.

“I always want to sample clean, fresh rock to avoid as much contamination as possible,” I say as I chip at the freshly exposed surface. “This is a gneiss because it has a distinct foliation, which is a repetitive layering of the different mineral constituents separated during metamorphism. It also has a wavy texture which suggests a plastic-like flow during metamorphism. This rock was extremely hot at the time so that the constituent minerals flowed with a consistency of toothpaste. Here the quartz, potassium feldspar, mica, and other minor constituents of the original rock—probably Oracle Granite—were reorganized from a haphazard arrangement to a directional orientation influenced by the regional stress that existed at the time and separated into relatively homogeneous bands. While granite and gneiss are compositionally similar, they look different. I’ll show you their differences and similarities when we sample a granite.”

Once I remove the sample from the outcrop, I closely examine it with the 10x-loupe that hangs from a lanyard around my neck. Then I hand both to Chris for his inspection, saying, “Through the lens you can see the individual crystals and their favored orientation.”

He brings both the loupe and the sample up to his eye and says, “Oh, yeah. I see. They’re all kind of lined up.”

“In the protolith, the original granitic rock, they wouldn’t be like that. The different minerals would have crystallized haphazardly because there was no pressure field affecting the magma from which they were derived. Everything about this rock suggests a dominant regional pressure as well as a temperature high enough to partially melt the constituent crystals and a regional stress large enough to cause them to separate and align.”

He hands back the sample and the loupe, saying, “This is kind of exciting. I’m looking forward to seeing the difference between this rock and one where the crystals haven’t been changed.”

I smile. “Geologically, the change is called metamorphism. There are generally three classifications of rock, Chris: igneous, rocks that have crystallized from a magma deep within the earth; sedimentary, rocks which are formed by deposition at the earth’s surface, predominantly in oceans, under the influence of gravity and then deeply buried and lithified; and metamorphic, which is the physical and/or chemical alteration of deeply buried igneous or sedimentary rocks by intense heat and/or pressure.

“There you’ve had your first lesson in geology, Chris. There’ll be a test tonight after supper.”

“And what do I get if I pass?” he grins.

I smile. “Your choice of top or on the bottom in bed tonight.” Then I remove my iPad from my daypack, call up the quadrangle map and mark the GPS location of where we are and ID the sample location with a unique ten-digit date and time to the minute that the sample is taken. Afterwards, I take several photos of where I removed the sample from different angles using my rock pick for scale. Then I cross the road and take several photos showing the sample site in context with as much of the outcrop and surrounding rock that I can get into the photos, with Chris standing at the sample site to both mark it as well as to give a sense of scale. After that I note the weather conditions and the significant details of the sample and its location.

“So, how about you drive for a while,” I say as we prepare to leave. “I want to watch for contacts between different rock types and plot them on the map. Can you drive a stick shift?”

“Yeah. The Jeep might be a little different, but I’ll get the hang of it.”

“Good,” I smile as I swing myself into the passenger seat of the Jeep, keep out my iPad and stow the pack into the space behind us.

Chris starts the Jeep, clutches and shifts into first gear, and then we’re off to a rough start that smooths out as he shifts into higher gears. We stop where the gneiss that I sampled abuts the 1.65 billion-year-old Pinal Schist, which I describe as part of a fore-arc comprised of rock scraped off the ocean plate as the plate was being subducted beneath an island arc 1.65 billion years ago that was similar to today’s Japan. That and detritus that was being eroded from the arc itself. I take a sample at the contact, and another farther into the schist body, describing its composition and metamorphic features to Chris as he examines the samples. Then we’re on our way again. It is then that I notice a unit depicted on the reconnaissance map prepared by the state geological survey that I’m using is marked with a question mark, thus unidentified. It was probably noticed in a binocular survey from a location across the ravine and not examined or sampled. Strange that I hadn’t noticed it before now.

“There’s a location that I want to sample about a half mile up the ravine a half mile ahead of us,” I tell him. “Hopefully we can get to it by Jeep or we’ll have to hike the half mile up the ravine to get to it.”

A few minutes later the ravine comes into view and it looks like it might be accessible by Jeep. “Okay, I’ll get out and turn the hubs,” I say as Chris brings the Jeep to a stop at the ravine. “When I’m done, shift into 4-wheel low. Have you ever done any off-road driving?”

“No.”

“Well, you’re going to get your first opportunity today,” I smile as I swing back into the Jeep and watch Chris shift the transfer box into four-wheel low. “Just take it slow. Since it’s not very steep and there aren’t a lot boulders blocking our way, it should be a relatively easy climb. If it gets too difficult for you, I’ll take the wheel.”

I’m impressed by how adept Chris is at negotiating his way around boulders and other debris as we head up the wash, and before long the area of interest comes into view. “Okay, we’ll stop here,” I tell him as we approach an outcrop of granite. When he stops, we both step out of the Jeep and I grab my pack, warning, “Since we’re in a ravine and off the beaten track, this is where you really have to be observant for rattlesnakes and scorpions. So please be careful, Chris.”

I find a suitable place to sample that is clear of brush and vegetation, places where rattlesnakes like to take cover during the heat of the day. Of course today is fairly cool, so they could be anywhere. I prepare the sample site the same as I did for the first sample, then begin chipping away at the rock. When I break away a suitable specimen, I examine it with my loupe, then hand both to Chris for his inspection, saying, “This is a granite, Chris. Although it is similar in composition to a gneiss—major quartz, orthoclase feldspar, muscovite mica and minor amphibole—notice that it doesn’t have any foliation, banding or alignment of the separate mineral constituents. They’re all arranged haphazardly with respect to one another.” He nods his understanding. “Also notice how the pink feldspars and the micas appear well-developed and more angular, and the quartz appears more amorphous (shapeless). That’s because quartz is one of the last mineral constituents to crystallize from the magma or melt, so it has to conform to the spaces left after the earlier minerals have crystallized. Generally, the larger the crystals and the better they are developed, the more time the melt had to cool. Because the crystals are moderate to small in size in this outcrop, they probably cooled relatively quickly. Offhand, I don’t know which granite this is, so I’ll have to make that determination in the lab by chemical analysis of the constituents and radiometric dating.”

After noting observations about the sample and its location I take the usual photos of the sample site and make some notes of the outcrop and its relationship to the surrounding gneiss. Then its back to the Jeep. As we approach, I am keenly aware of the familiar hissing sound of a rattlesnake. I stop Chris and cautiously look around.

“It’s under the Jeep,” he says, pointing to beneath the driver side door. And that’s when I notice that it’s a diamondback rattlesnake—a big one.

“Well, I don’t want to run it over and kill it, so I need to get it out of there,” I say as I back away to look for something long enough to avoid being struck as I prod it out from under the Jeep. When I find a branch of ironwood of suitable length, I cautiously approach the Jeep and carefully prod at the snake, which of course causes it to fiercely rattle and strike at the stick.

Then, to my horror, it lunges and comes at me. I motion for Chris to get behind the Jeep, and then quickly follow after him. Seeing my retreat, the snake quickly slithers away into a clump of brush not far from where I had taken my sample. With that, Chris and I dash to the passenger side of the Jeep. He whips open the door and dives into the driver seat. I follow, throwing my pack into the back as I swing into passenger seat and quickly pull the door closed behind me.

“Fuck me! That was close!” Chris exclaims as he starts the Jeep. “That was one pissed off rattlesnake! It was actually coming after you, Callan!”

“Too close,” I agree. “I’ve never had a rattlesnake charge at me like that, and all I was doing was trying to keep it from getting killed. That’s gratitude, huh.”

“Yeah,” he chuckles as he shifts into reverse and then swings around to head back down to the road. “I just can’t believe how fast it was! I didn’t realize that a snake could move that quickly! Thankfully it didn’t follow you behind the Jeep or both of us would have been in trouble. It must have been a good three feet at least!”

“Probably closer to four feet, Chris. Now that you’ve had a confrontation with a rattlesnake I can probably dispense with the warnings, huh.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “It blended so well with its environment, if we hadn’t heard it as we were approaching the Jeep, I wouldn’t have known it was there and might have been struck.”

“No ‘might’ about it, Chris. Had we not been cautiously observant, that temperamental bastard would have struck you as you approached the Jeep and this trip would have been over. I don’t know how much you know about poisonous snakebites, but as the venom travels away from the wound its proteins begin to dissolve muscle tissue, which is its function since it’s designed to begin pre-dissolving the snake’s prey prior to ingestion, thus making it easier to swallow. I’ve seen a guy who lost a fair amount of muscle tissue in his forearm resulting from a diamondback bite. But in all fairness, blending with their environment is how they survive. It’s how they avoid predators and how they’re able to efficiently snag their prey. That and their speed.”

*     *     *

When we reach the road I get out and turn the hubs out of four-wheel drive. Then Chris shifts the transfer box back to two-wheel drive and drives for the remainder of the day, giving me the opportunity to take copious notes between sampling at locations that I have identified on the map, mapping geologic contacts and faults and taking lots of photos. Fortunately, we had only the one rattlesnake encounter. “So did you enjoy the day?” I ask when we’re back on the highway heading down the mountains toward Tucson late in the afternoon.”

He looks over at me and smiles. “Very much. Thanks for inviting me, Callan. I think I’m going to sign up for the Physical Geology class at Pima College next semester.”

“Wow! I’m so happy to hear that, Chris. I never expected today to have that effect on you. Who knows? Maybe you’ll like it so much that you’ll end up a geologist too.”

“Yeah, maybe,” he smiles and then turns quiet, looking introspective. It’s a comfortable silence before he interrupts it with, “You said something this morning after breakfast, Callan, and I’ve been thinking about it all day.” He pauses, placing his right hand upon my thigh. “You said that you’d like us to be lovers… which is something that I’d like too. But like I said last night, I’d also like us to be exclusive… boyfriends.”

I look down at his hand caressing my thigh, then cover it with mine as I raise my eyes to look at his handsome profile as he drives. “While I didn’t mention that when I talked about us becoming lovers, I guess I sort of implied it, Chris. Maybe in time you could even live with me and we’d share the bed and make love every night.”

“I was kind of thinking that too, Callan. But I’d like us to get to know each other better before we take that step. Make sure that we’re right for each other and fit together like pieces of a puzzle like we do in bed.”

“I understand, Chris. A relationship can’t be based on sex alone, especially when one partner has no sexual experience outside the relationship for comparison. But sex is a big part of it because it’s how two people fully express their feelings for one another, their desire for one another in a physical way, and pleasure one another. In bed is where they can be fully focused and fully engaged in one another to the exclusion of everyone and everything else. And I can honestly say that I experienced that with you last night in bed, Chris. Sex with you was so profound that it felt like a religious experience for me, even though I wouldn’t consider myself a religious person. It’s not to say that sex with Michael didn’t mean anything to me, because it most certainly did. Michael was everything to me during the time that he was a part of my life. But you come at a different time in my life. I’m more mature and have a better feel for what I want and need in my life. You sparked something deep inside me the moment that we connected the first time. You made me feel really… warm inside and good all over, Chris, which is something that I haven’t felt since Michael. I felt an instantaneous connection with you. And the more that we’ve been together, the stronger the connection has grown. And then last night when making love to you, it just all felt so right and I had the most incredible orgasm of my life inside you. I want to experience that again, Chris. I want to experience it as many times as I possibly can, and I know that I can only do that with you.”