IN MEMORY OF DAN DICKEY

Daniel Dickey in 1980

YouTube: Last Long Road (song for Dan)

The first time I met Dan was at  a swimming hole in Sedona called the Point in the summer of 1967. His family had moved from Fort Worth, Texas and bought a creek side property to open a tourist resort called Brookhaven.  It was just a hundred yards upstream from the Point.  We quickly became friends that summer swimming in Oak Creek and hiking the mountains around Sedona.  Dan taught me about hunting and I showed him how to do trick dives off the rope swing at the Point. When it was too cold to swim we spent hours at his house playing Spades and Cribbage.

Dan had a Texas drawl that I found interesting.  He loved football and the Dallas Cowboys.  He lifted weights in the basement of his house and stayed fit to play football for The Eagles at Flagstaff High School.  At school we didn't see much of each other, we didn't have any classes together and he stayed after school for football practice so we hung out with different crowds.

We both graduated from high school in the spring of 1970.  Dan found a job learning carpentry and I started working as a landscaper until 1971.  Then, to avoid the army draft we both went to Northern Arizona University as roommates.  We had little interest in school and partied too much and left after just one semester.  Dan stayed in the area and I wandered off to Detroit, Michigan where I worked in an automobile factory. Dan once showed up unexpectedly in Detroit to visit.  He drove all the way from Arizona in an old Ford pick-up truck with a wooden camper he had built on the back, complete with an asphalt shingled roof.

When I returned to Phoenix in 1975 Dan was still in the Sedona area.  The following year he and I lived in Jerome house-sitting for a friend that had gone traveling.  The house only had cold running water and an ancient wood cook stove.  If you needed to wash up there was a garden hose outside nailed to a wooden  post inside a bamboo stall.  We worked just enough to buy food and spent most of our days swimming in the Verde River and hiking around the Verde Valley.  In the fall I left to go backpacking in the Sierra's.

When I returned from California I moved to Phoenix.  At the time Dan was living in an old cabin on Oak Creek near the mouth of West Fork.  The front door was a hollowed out tree trunk cut in half length-wise and hug on hinges.  One interior wall was a giant basalt boulder.  It was a unique place and should have been saved as a historical structure, but it was torn down and replaced by a modern condo years later.

The log cabin on Oak Creek near the mouth of West Fork Canyon - 1977

Overlooking West Fork Canyon - 1977

By this time Dan was driving a red 1 ton flatbed truck with wooden side rails around the bed.  He told me a story how he had picked up an attractive woman hitchhiking on I-40 one time.  It turned out she was a dancer/stripper traveling from Las Vegas to Phoenix.  After some conversation in the cab she had climbed into the truck bed and danced her routine while Dan drove down the freeway back to Flagstaff.

In 1978 Dan moved to Mesa and worked as a carpenter setting concrete forms at the Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant.  We would get together sporadically and go hiking and backpacking in Arizona and Colorado over the next several years.
   

The last time I saw him was the winter of 1984 when we cross-country skied into Locket Meadow at the San Francisco Mountians.  After that Dan moved to California and went to work for a contractor building apartments.  I spoke to him on the phone for the last time in 1990 then we lost track of each other.

In January of 2014 I was looking through some old slide photos and came across many of Dan taken during our adventures together.  I decided to look him up on the computer and I found an address for his parents living in Cottonwood.  I wrote a letter which was answered a month later by Dan's sister Cheryl.  She told me their parents Bruce and Juanita had both passed away years ago, and Dan had died on January 13th, 2012 in Cottonwood.

Dan was a kind and peaceful soul with an easy smile and a big laugh.  He was always willing to try what was difficult and he had no fear of heights.  He told me several times during his life that he was born a century to late.  He was serious about that and  I believed him.  He loved to read books about mountain men and cowboys and enjoyed movie westerns the most.

Rest in Peace 

Daniel Dickey

born 1951

died 1/13/2012

These photos are a record of some of the adventures we had, the miles we hiked and the mountains we climbed.  He was my friend and I have missed him.

The Inner Basin Ridge at the San Francisco Peaks - 1977


 On top of Humphreys Peak of the San Francisco Peaks - 1977

 
  Wing Mountain northwest of Flagstaff - 1977


 The Superstition Mountains - 1978 


 Reading a book in the Superstition Mountains - 1978


Emerald Lake, Weminuche Wilderness, Colorado - 1980


Free climbing - 1980





The San Juan Mountains -1980


 Camp at Rock Lake, altitude 11,900 feet - 1980


Box Canyon, Ouray, Colorado - 1980 


We cross-country skied into Locket Meadow, San Francisco Peaks - 1984
 There were many other hikes and adventures for which no photos exist.


I am a musician so in 2002 I wrote and recorded a song about Dan.

He loved the harmonica so I incorporated a harmonica into the song.   

It is available on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and YouTube music servers.

YouTube: Last Long Road

 

LAST LONG ROAD

© 2002

by Mark  Thomas

Sometimes you have a bad day

 when you don’t see no way

you can make it alone.

Days long, hard and rough.  

Just getting by is real tough

when there is no place that feels like home.

Can’t find a job and your spirits low.  

The woman you lost seems so long ago

far to restless to ever settle down.

Trucks broke down and your busted flat.  

Got no clue where the hell you’re at

on that highway out of town.

I can see from the lines in your face

 that everything and dream you chase is

always just a few more miles.

Stick out your thumb.  Get yourself a ride.  

Come and see me anytime.

Kick off your boots and stay a while.

I don’t have an answer which way to go.  

Won’t even pretend to know.

Might just ask for help from up above.

Hit your knees boy and start to pray.

   “Lord!  Help me through another day.”

Carry me down this last long road.

8-30-2016

Last week I had a dream about Dan:  My wife and I were standing in the front yard of our house.  An old primer gray pickup truck stopped on the street and Dan and a woman got out.  As they walked up to me Dan introduced the woman as his wife.  He and I said hello and we embraced then the dream ended.  I believe the dream was about my wish for him.

2-17-2018

Another dream of Dan:  He drove up to me in a blue super sports car and stopped.  He got out for a moment then got back in and tried to start the car but it wouldn't crank over.  I went over to look at it and found linkage attached to the door that if the door wasn't closed completely the car wouldn't start as a safety precaution.  I closed the door and Dan started the car and drove off.  A few minutes later he drove up again but this time he was driving some sort of yellow dune buggy.  He stopped but just sat there in the car looking very sad.  We didn't speak at all.