2026 Trips
Completing the Circumnavigation
Monday, March 2nd, 2026: 2026 Trips, Regions, Road Trips, Sky Islands.
All the treatments that were supposed to be helping my shoulder pain were just making it worse. I had to be in the city Tuesday morning for an MRI, but driving is another thing that hurts the shoulder, and I didn’t want to get up early, rush the three-hour drive, and then drive right back for an entire day of pain and discomfort.
Meanwhile, I needed to get out in nature on Sunday, as a replacement for my usual hike. So after studying the map and driving times, I decided to break the city drive up into stages. The first stage would be exploring the southern end of the sky island that I’ve hiked so many times from the north.
The northeast part, where I’ve hiked all the trails many times, is world-famous for its big interior basin surrounded by spectacular cliffs, caves, and waterfalls. The northwest part has thousands of anthropomorphic stone pinnacles protected in a national monument. I’d already hiked into the southeastern and western parts of the range, slightly less spectacular but still beautiful. What I hadn’t seen, because it’s the farthest from home, is the interior basin at the southwest end of the range, where the map shows half a dozen trails leading to canyons, ridges, caverns, and rock formations with intriguing names.
We’re in the middle of a late-winter heat wave. The high in the 4,000-foot basins was forecast to exceed 90. I set off in late morning under mostly clear skies with scattered high, thin clouds. Even from 25 miles away, I was surprised to see snow remaining on north slopes above 8,000 feet. I stopped in the mouth of the northeast canyon for lunch, took a pain pill, then headed south toward Mexico.
It was only then that I suddenly felt a weight metaphorically lift from my sore shoulder. On the open road with virtually no traffic, exploring new territory, facing a couple of days with no obligations, my mind and heart returned to the days of my youth, when carefree road trips with friends and lovers regularly set us free from the stresses of city life: finding work, submitting to authorities, struggling to pay rent and bills, getting abused and ripped off by those worse off than us.
The remote region along the border features vast high-desert basins with cattle ranches dating back 150 years, where Geronimo surrendered in 1886 and smugglers and illegal immigrants now stream north in the dark of night. I’d driven this highway once, more than twenty years ago, but now I studied the south end of the sky island with eyes newly informed by my intimate knowledge of the rest of the range. From the highway, it looked only slightly less rugged than the cliffs of the northeast.
I was looking for a dirt ranch road that leads to the interior basin. The road I found was as wide as a boulevard, smooth-graded, and absolutely straight for miles.
Then it made a dogleg past a big ranch compound, dipped across a dry creekbed – where it clearly washes out in any decent rain – and entered what I believed was my planned destination, the interior basin. Except that the beautiful, rocky hills surrounding it were not the high mountains shown on my map.
Later, I realized that the big valley I reached first drains a completely separate watershed, and the road I took north from the highway mainly accesses that first valley, which is spectacular in its own right, and features intriguing trails I hadn’t even considered. Thus, I ended up discovering two spectacular interior basins for the price of one.
Here, the road got narrower and rougher and meandered back and forth, up and down at an elevation of about 5,500 feet past those beautiful rocky peaks that loomed 2,000 feet higher. And eventually, at the north end of this first basin, the road crested in a saddle.
Imagine my excitement when I reached that pass and first glimpsed the forested crest of the range on the other side! I could even identify the 9,400-foot peak with the old fire lookout that I’d climbed in December, from a canyon on the west side. But the road snaked down a shallow north slope where forest mostly blocked my view.
I’d never adequately studied the topo map, and was surprised to find that this second interior basin actually drains west. Where the road passed above gullies, they all held rushing creeks, which surprised me after such a dry winter. I should’ve realized that in the current heat wave, this represented the spring runoff from rapidly melting snow on the crest.
Nearing the bottom of the basin, I passed a big fenced meadow which I knew would feature the ruins of a 19-century Army post. Neither of these big interior basins is occupied now – they appear totally wild from the road. But although the surrounding slopes are designated wilderness, the basins themselves are grazed by small, widely separated herds of cattle.
At the mouth of the interior basin, my road joined the main road that accesses the basin from the west. On that road, I crossed the big creek and headed up its canyon to see how far I would get. All six of the trailheads I was looking for are accessed from this road, but I knew that catastrophic flooding after the 2011 wildfire had destroyed the upper end of the road, and I hadn’t been able to find out exactly where the road is closed.
On this beautiful Sunday afternoon, with temperatures here much more pleasant than in the low valleys and towns outside the mountains, I’d passed only two vehicles in the past hour. I could see one party in the campground above the creek crossing, and I passed another party at the crossing of a tributary creek coming down from the north. So much water here on the south side of the range – far more than I’d seen in the north!
I passed a big sign saying “Beware of Bears!”, an abandoned ranger station, then a debris flow where flooding had filled a former lake with white rocks. And finally, as the canyon narrowed below rimrock high above, I saw concrete barriers blocking the road ahead.
A small city SUV was parked in front of the barriers, and as I passed it to turn around, I saw a guy sitting behind the vehicle, reading a book. I turned around, parked at a discreet distance, and walked over with the map I’d printed out, showing the roads and trailheads.
He said he’d hiked the canyon trail from here a couple of times, describing it to me, and I said this was my first visit here, mentioning I’d climbed the peak above from the west side a couple months ago. He appeared be in his 30s, and I noticed he was reading Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamozov. I realized the temperature was perfect – it felt like the high 60s here in the shade of the creekside oaks and sycamores, which in contrast to 90 in the nearest towns felt like heaven.
But this guy was literally sitting in the road, wedged between the tailgate of his vehicle and the ugly concrete barriers. I wondered why he hadn’t parked somewhere off the road – there were a couple of informal campsites in the oaks above where I’d turned around. I asked how long he was staying and he said he would camp in this canyon for a few days.
Then some kind of rock-crawling side-by-side ute carrying a couple of middle-aged women growled up, followed by a pickup with teenagers riding in the bed, and this choice of peaceful sites for reading European literary classics seemed even less wise.
I’d passed a couple of side roads that my map shows as access to other trailheads, but the online trail guide says these roads are washed out and may be impassable. It was all so beautiful and intriguing, it was hard to leave, but I wasn’t prepared for camping in bear habitat and wanted to reach town before dark, so I returned west on the main road down the canyon.
The creek was running all the way out of the range. And for the first time, I got a close look at a small but impressively rugged freestanding range to the southwest. This range is mostly surrounded by private land and has no roads or trails, which makes it all the more intriguing.
Finally I reached the long, mostly straight paved highway up the big agricultural basin between sky islands, leading to the sleepy, half-dead town on the interstate and the end of my day of exploration.
Bears or not, if I’m ever able to hike again, I’m going to have to find a way to explore the south end of that sky island – now that I know it’s beautiful on all sides, and much less traveled away from the famous north end.
Ground Zero for the American Myth
Monday, April 20th, 2026: 2026 Trips, Apache Pass, Chiricahuas, Hikes, Indigenous Cultures, Regions, Road Trips, Sky Islands, Society, Southeast Arizona.
I was on my way to Tucson and had another opportunity to explore enroute. This time it would be an area with rock outcrops that had caught my eye during 20 years of driving the interstate highway west. I’d studied it on the map and searched online – at the foot of the rock outcrops is a BLM picnic area used by the RV and motorcycle-touring crowds, and past it is a canyon used by peakbaggers to reach the distinctive pyramidal summit above. The RVers and bikers claim that the picnic area is overrun by cattle, so my expectations were low.
My weather app was full of hysterical high wind warnings for the area, predicting dust storms that might shut down the interstate. Temperatures were forecast to be warm, but the sky was gray with nearly continuous cloud cover as I drove west, fighting the steering wheel to keep my high-profile vehicle from swerving off the road or bashing into big rigs.
Unsurprisingly, the rock outcrops turned out to be white granite, very similar to the area where I first fell in love with the Mojave Desert. And most of the clearings around the picnic area were anchored by huge RVs or fifth-wheel trailers, so I kept driving past into the canyon. I never saw a human soul – they were all huddling indoors, out of the wind.
Past the picnic area, the graded gravel road became a very rough 4wd track, and I immediately braked next to two bulls fighting in the roadside brush. Beasts right out of Greek mythology, muscles bulging, back legs braced, heads locked together, kicking up a cloud of dust.
Only one seemed to have horns, but they both looked deadly serious, completely ignoring me as I frantically shifted out of gear, yanked the emergency brake, and fumbled with my camera. Meanwhile they were constantly moving, shuffling around through the brush and dust, pulling apart, bashing together repeatedly. I thought I got at least one good shot, but I was wrong, and they had moved out of sight, so I continued into the valley, unnerved. I’ve seen a lot of bulls and have been chased and even charged, but I think this is the first time I’ve seen them fighting – not a pleasant sight.
The rocky track led to an impressive ranch compound, but just before the gate was my turnoff – what the map shows as a dead-end valley road, from which a foot trail continues up toward the peak. This road turned out to be much worse, running into and up a creekbed consisting of flood debris that required most of my high ground clearance.
I drove about a mile and a quarter, encountering cattle the whole distance and literally using my bumper to shove groups of them out of my way several times, before I reached the end at a corral and water tank. It was a beautiful valley but teeming with cattle – I could see them grazing across the slopes above, and a cow nonchalantly emerged from the brush for a drink at the tank next to me as I was shooting pics.
I was ready for lunch, but had no desire to linger in this trashy clearing, so I drove back to the granite outcrops. The similarity to the Mojave was inspiring and I really wanted to hike, but my foot condition refuses to heal and there was no way I was going to go clambering over boulders.
Plan B was to drive to the historical preserve nearby and walk a short valley trail. The trailhead lies on a locally famous, badly washboarded gravel road over a legendary pass that I’d driven a couple times during recent years. The valley is beautiful, but the easy-sounding trail had never interested me until I ended up in my current diminished state.
There were a couple of city vehicles already parked at the trailhead. Wildflowers were starting to take off at this elevation, and the Park Service had provided regular kiosks featuring historic sites, so I went slowly. All I knew in advance was that the pass above was used by pioneer settlers, stagecoaches, and the “pony express”, and further into the valley lay the ruins of a 19th century fort. Not my usual cup of tea.
With every step, I was conscious of my injured foot, focusing on using my toes to keep pressure off the metatarsal, so it was never an easy hike, and it was often hard to appreciate what was around me. The trail meandered up and down and around shallow arroyos and low rises, and at one point I spotted a couple of young women ahead. I saw them again later, leaving a fenced enclosure that turned out to be a cemetery.
A sign explained that military graves had been moved away at some point, leaving only civilian remains, which include three Apache toddlers – one, the son of Geronimo. The implication being that this cemetery is of lesser historical interest with the removal of the soldiers’ bodies.
In this beautiful valley, under this spooky dark sky, having recently seen my mother die in front of me, and now fenced in among graves of peaceful people who had apparently died in acts of violence as mortal enemies – some of them too young, and all of them too traumatized to really understand what was happening to them – I felt like some castoff pilgrim sidetracked into a land of death, ruin, and ghosts. Which is exactly where I was.
From there, the trail led to the site of the famous “battle” – in which a few Apaches tried to ambush the much better-armed soldiers and wisely ran off before suffering casualties. Past there, in a hollow, the Park Service had feebly reconstructed a native wickiup. Then the trail entered riparian forest and came to the spring which explained and bound everything together across deep time – a water source for natives, travelers, and warriors spanning thousands of years. I found myself just standing there, overwhelmed, unmoored in dreamtime, barely conscious for an indeterminate interlude.
Past the spring, the trail led upward toward the Visitor Center – a classic example of British colonial architecture whose antecedents litter Africa, India, and the South Pacific. I’m not complaining – with its elevated site, low profile and wraparound veranda, I immediately wanted to move in and live there.
It was both well-maintained and modest, and in the dirt yard below the veranda stood a water fountain where I tasted cold metallic well water immediately carrying me back to childhood and the hand pumps and cast-iron piping of family farms.
Inside, the black-and-white photos of long-dead soldiers, settlers, and Apaches were mostly too painful to look at. There were a few mannequins behind glass, the most evocative for me a beautiful young woman who could’ve represented a prostitute or an officer’s wife. I bought a book of Apache oral history from the Park Service lady and we exchanged a few platitudes, then the two young women arrived. I wanted to ask them how they’d found this place – it’s far, far off the beaten path and poorly publicized, the sort of destination that normally attracts only the most determined retirees. But I felt barely capable of rational speech.
Another party had arrived outside, a Latino family, and fortunately for me I found an alternate route back to the trailhead, by climbing the ridge behind the visitor center. It was one of the most beautiful trails imaginable – the blue sky was opening, and a few cumulus clouds were emerging out of the undifferentiated gray behind the peaks and ridges that formed our southern skyline.
I’d researched the bushwhack to those southern peaks, and this gave me a chance to study the approach from across the valley.
But more surprise waited on the descent from the west end of the ridge. There, the trail actually crosses a fault – you literally step across a discontinuity in bedrock from limestone to granite. The Park Service plaque explains how the different substrates support different habitats, and you stare at the radically different plants on each side of the crack, and if you’re me, you’re astounded.
I own part of a fault that is world-famous among geophysicists – it created the canyon through my desert land – so I’m familiar with discontinuities in bedrock and habitats. But the scale and elevation of this site enchanted me. Encountered on a trail, it was intimate – but high on a ridge, with a view down a long valley to a basin fading into haze dozens of miles away, you could see these rock structures echoed on all the surrounding hillsides.
As I continued off the ridge, the Park Service never stopped burdening me with colonial history. And every type of settler or traveler passing through here had brought their own complex baggage of culture and family, which seemed to swirl through my mind like a plague of ghosts.
To rejoin the main trail, I had to cross the big wash that drains the whole valley. I met a young man and we agreed it had become a beautiful day. I realized that without the apocalyptic wind forecast by the weather app, it would’ve been uncomfortably hot. Everything had turned out for the best – for us today, if not for the Apaches and the other folks in the cemetery.
It wasn’t until a half hour later, cresting another pass on the interstate highway, that I was finally able to relax, and realize I’d had a pretty amazing day. I’d started the day tense, battered emotionally and physically by that wind, struggling to protect my injured foot. The dark sky, giant RVs, fighting bulls and intimidating cattle, the melancholy cemetery, the stories of violence, suffering, and death, the crumbling ruins – the physical and cultural landscape had conspired to trouble and oppress me.
Later, as I began to sort out what I’d seen and learned, I realized that this place really is a sort of ground zero for the human myths and experiences of this country. As water source, battle site, military post, and essential transit point between east and west, this is a true pivot of history. We know that many of those 19th century soldiers, officers, and Indian agents were ambivalent toward their own mission and recognized the tragedy they were perpetrating. As a descendant of refugees driven out of Europe, I’m sure most of those travelers were first-or-second-generation European refugees who realized they were, in turn, helping to drive Native Americans out of their own homelands. The Park Service says nothing about that – the primary purpose of this site is to further glorify the military.
But to me, it’s a perfect opportunity to discover ourselves in the landscape.
Friday, May 29th, 2026: 2026 Trips, Regions, Road Trips, Sky Islands.
As my birthday approached, I wondered – idly – if anyone would remember and contact me. I used to keep track of dozens of birthdays, but since few friends ever reciprocated, I gradually gave up. Losing my mother last fall, I lost the last person for whom the day had as much significance as it does for me. And of course, our culture trains elders to either ignore or actively resent their birthdays.
But after years of stress and trauma, I’m taking every opportunity to celebrate my existence and treat myself well – even when I have to do it alone.
The birthday was planned to be the last full day of my mini-vacation – the next day I would check out of the hotel and drive back home. The birthday fell on a Wednesday, a day when I normally work out in the late afternoon. So I decided to leave in the morning, drive into the cool mountains above the city, and return in mid-afternoon.
I’d driven up into these mountains only once before, when I’d passed through the city in 2002 on a relocation scouting trip. 24 years later, the road and landscape were totally unfamiliar – apparently back then, it had been late in the day and I was desperate for a place to camp. And for me, that meant someplace informal where I could park near the road and carry my gear a short distance out of sight.
I recall driving a few miles through pine forest on a dirt road, then walking down a ridge to a rock outcrop where I watched the sun set and the city lights begin their sparkling far below. After dark, I set up my stove in a tiny grove of pines, made dinner, and crawled into my sleeping bag. Then I heard the voices of young people – high school or college students – chanting rhythmically, somewhere hundreds of yards away, as if they were playing some kind of primitive game. And later, I was shocked awake by a long line of young people tramping silently past the foot of my sleeping bag, in the dark, on their way to the rock formation. And returning just as silently, an hour later.
Today, midweek in late spring, the sky was clear and the high in the city was forecast in the low 90s. Heading northeast toward the mountain, the four-lane thoroughfares of suburban sprawl funnel decreasing traffic onto a two-lane road with sporadic stop signs, which proceeds into the foothills past expensive view homes.
There was relatively light traffic, but other drivers were either in a big hurry or pretending to be racers. I got tired of being tailgated and pulled off at an otherwise abandoned scenic overlook above a lush desert canyon. And heard the gunshots.
Across the highway is a much steeper canyon, and back at the hotel I found an article about it. It’s a well-known spot where gun nuts simply pull off the scenic highway, set up their folding chairs and coolers full of beer, and start shooting in full view – and hearing – of the passing tourists. It’s technically legal – more than 200 yards from a formal recreation site – and despite constant complaints from residents and responsible gun owners, the Forest Service refuses to do anything about it.
From there, the road winds up through high desert habitat, and this is where the tourists start pulling over for photos.
At an elevation of about 5,000 feet you reach a zone of spectacular hoodoos and dark Arizona cypress. At about 7,000 feet you hit typical Southwestern mixed-conifer forest with Douglas-fir and several species of pine. This is where the crowds begin to disperse on forest roads and hiking trails, to picnic areas and campgrounds.
Even at midday on a Wednesday, trailheads along the highway were packed with dozens of vehicles, reminding me of how lucky I am to live in a remote small town.
At 8,000 feet you begin to see aspens, and the road drops into the tiny alpine tourist village. I hadn’t brought lunch, expecting either to eat at the lone restaurant there, or to pick up snacks for a picnic at the general store. The congestion was such that I gave up on the restaurant and grabbed snacks at the store. I was too distracted by the crowds and traffic to take photos.
In the 90s in the city below, it remained in the 60s up here.
I’d considered doing a short hike down a northern ridge, but gave up when I found the trailhead being dug up by a giant backhoe. So I became the lone picnicker at a beautiful spot at 8,000 feet, overlooking the northeast canyons draining to a basin 5,000 feet below.
I made it back to the hotel in plenty of time for a birthday workout, followed by grilled salmon in the hotel restaurant.
Friday, August 7th, 2026: 2026 Trips, Baldy, Hikes, Mogollon Rim, Regions, Road Trips, Southeast Arizona, Squirrel, Whites.
Volcanic Puzzle
In July, the monsoon teased us with a week of good rain, then abandoned us. My house became so hot and humid I was sweating in my office well before noon. Fan noise made it impossible to work on music.
I found a cheap room in the high mountains of Arizona. I’d booked four nights, so I had three full days. The nights were cool, the days were blissfully mild, and it rained every day.
On my first full day I went for a hike nearby, through mature mixed-conifer forest up the rolling volcanic plateau. Within a couple hundred yards of the trailhead I encountered an older couple returning 20-30 feet off the trail on opposite sides, collecting trash. I’ve often remarked at how much trash Arizona hikers leave, and their bags were nearly full. In a sour mood, they barely responded to my greetings.
I met one other hiker, a friendly woman much older than me. Walking through patches of sun and shade, I began seeing aspens among the tall pines and firs, then noticed a red plastic bag half-hidden behind a trailside boulder. It was a bag of dog shit. Who would bag their dog’s feces, then hide it behind a boulder instead of carrying it out? Probably the same “animal lover” who shares cute pet photos on Facebook and is validated by hundreds of “friends”.
Reaching the limit I considered safe for my chronically inflamed foot, I turned off onto what promised to be a loop trail returning by a different route. Little used, the trail deteriorated, was blocked by deadfall, disappeared for stretches. I saw a broad gap in the trees ahead and emerged on the rim of a canyon, facing an apocalyptic cascade of fractured lava rock, like a stormy sea turned to stone. I’d never seen anything like it and could barely even imagine how it had been formed. According to the myths of colonial science, the canyon itself had taken eons to erode out of the plateau, which itself had been formed earlier by eons of volcanic deposits. And then, some time later, another lava flow poured over the rim of the canyon, cooling and fracturing as it neared the canyon bottom – then stopped?
Processes taking millions of years, during which continents drifted, terrestrial habitats changed dramatically, countless species evolved and migrated across the land. The first mammals appeared. Eventually, humans arrived. Apaches, Spaniards, Anglos. Me.
The abandoned trail led away, back down the gently sloping plateau, eventually rejoining my original trail near its head. The rocky trail had re-triggered my foot pain, so I resumed daily contrast bathing in my motel room – a complicated, time-consuming therapy where you alternate hot and cold soaks while performing toe exercises.
Restored by Natives
A few years ago, I’d read about a celebrity Apache chef who’d made his name in some city, then returned to open a native foods cafe on the remote reservation, as part of a drugs-and-alcohol recovery program. I checked and found it was less than an hour away, so I drove down there the next day. Through the beautiful alpine forests, past the colorful rimrock cliffs of the river canyon. Nearly all the patrons were local, everything was affordable, many of the healthy ingredients came from native farms and ranches, staff were uniformly friendly and hospitable. I can’t get food this healthy and delicious at home, and before leaving, I told them I wished I could return every day.
On the way back, I reached the alpine plateau just in time to meet a cloudburst that nearly reduced visibility on the highway to zero. The meadows were so lush with new forage that normally sedate cattle were literally jumping for joy, kicking their heels and breaking into gallops for the sheer fun of it.
Restored by Nature
I had one day left, and the natural thing to do was a return to the plateau’s most spectacular trail, a half hour’s drive away at the base of the 11,400 foot summit.
Two trails follow the east and west forks of the little river to connect just below the summit. Both are popular, but for some reason most hikers crowd the less scenic west fork trailhead. There was just enough space for me at the more scenic east fork, where my little 30-year-old pickup joined seven other much newer vehicles, including an expensive electric SUV.
It was a perfect monsoon morning, with clouds promising rain for later. The trail starts at nearly 9,400 feet and crosses a series of meadows following the edge of the spruce-fir forest. Most hikers start early, and I began passing returning parties by the time I reached the climb through the forest to the sandstone formations.
A couple in their 80s, a couple in their 40s, a couple in their 50s, a couple in their 30s, a party of four college students. Climbing through the beautiful old-growth forest that had barely missed the huge wildfire fifteen years ago, I reached the massive, iconic sandstone towers and started up the dark switchbacks. At the top of the ridge I met the equestrians whose tracks and poop I’d passed below – two middle-aged women. And finally a solo hiker in his late 70s or early 80s.
Then I was at the overlook – a rolling sandstone formation with a view southeast over the heart of the plateau, across the vast meadows and lakes to the other high peak 24 miles east and the watershed of the Black River 20 miles south. Another place that anyone with eyes and a heart is loath to leave.
On the way down I recalled how friendly everyone had been that I’d passed on the trail that morning – with the kids being the most reticent, of course. Back home in the city, they’d probably never even look a stranger in the eye, but here, they were smiling, returning my greetings, wishing me well. The city beats us down and pit us against each other, while a place like this restores and brings us together.
Monday, August 17th, 2026: 2026 Trips, Regions, Road Trips, Sky Islands.
On one of the terrestrial radio stations I listen to throughout the week, there’s a program of movie and TV soundtrack music, hosted by a guy who sounds like an elementary school teacher. A regular feature of his program is called “Cool Secret Places”, in which he introduces thousands of listeners to the kinds of places a few of us have discovered, and hope no one else will, because their value lies in being uncrowded. I groan every time I hear it, with my only relief being that all these places are in my old stomping grounds, hundreds of miles from my current home.
This is one of the countless ways in which technology degrades our lives and habitats. Those of us who explore the world, gain cool secret places because we stumble upon them accidentally, not because we’ve heard about them on the radio – or on social media. The effort we make to discover them is part of what makes them cool and keeps them secret.
A couple of months ago I told a friend that my life has become like fighting the Hydra – the many-headed serpent from Ancient Greek mythology. Whenever the hero cut off a head, two grew back to replace it. My problems had become so overwhelming that I could no longer step back and get perspective, I could no longer identify priorities, and I kept making obvious mistakes and overlooking obvious solutions.
One of those was an obvious treatment for my foot inflammation – rest. I couldn’t imagine my life without hiking, so I had kept telling myself rest meant shorter hikes. No, Max – rest means NO HIKES.
So, for the umpteenth time in the past two years, here I am doing road trips to nature, in place of hikes.
Today I would take a slightly different route to the abandoned campground in the sky, where I planned to have a snack and enjoy a few hours of solitude, before driving down to the cafe for a midafternoon main meal, then returning home in late afternoon/early evening.
Today’s slightly different route involved a stretch of backcountry road through a remote rural settlement I’d been curious about and gotten close to a couple of times, but never actually seen.
This may be considered one of those “cool secret places”, but with caveats. First, like many areas in my region where people have chosen to build and live, the access roads involve creek crossings that flood seasonally and wash out catastrophically once or more per decade, leaving you isolated for days at a time and dependent on the county’s heavy equipment crews.
Second, it’s in habitat that has evolved with wildfire and will burn at least once per generation. This settlement was evacuated during the last big wildfire, and only saved via labor-intensive “structure protection” by fire crews. So if you build and live there, you’re totally dependent on the tax dollars of the rest of us and the life-risking labor of dozens of young strangers. Which in my opinion is egregiously irresponsible.
Despite all that, when I finally saw this place, I understood the name they’ve given it, and I was encouraged to see that the homes along the road were typical working-class retreats – not the kind of architect-designed monstrosities you find in places with more reliable access.
The settlement lies in a long, narrow canyon, and the canyon road was a little gnarlier than I expected, which was fun. Eventually, it joins the road to the crest of the range, where I deflated my tires to handle the rocks. I passed two or three other vehicles on the way up, all city SUVs, which is about normal for midday on Sunday.
I reached the spectacular crest, climbed to the side road to the abandoned campground, crossed over to the west side, and began descending into the lush old growth forest of the little bowl, where it lies nestled below cliffs and talus slopes. I soon came to a broken-up tree trunk mostly blocking the road. It was only about five inches thick, and I stopped and easily cleared everything off. I assumed this was a sign that no one had driven here today, and I would be alone in the rolling, parklike forest below.
But lower down, I got my first glimpse of the clearing at the foot of the meadow, and saw a couple of vehicles parked. Driving between them, I saw another farther in. I began to drive a spur trail across the drainage point of the meadow and found it was flooded for 60 feet or so, so I stopped and got out. Just then, an older woman appeared from the uphill side. I could see yet another city SUV, parked at one of the abandoned campsites in the forest beyond. What the hell was going on?
I was hesitant to drive that far through saturated mud, so I backed up to the first clearing, passed the parked SUVs, and started down toward the old campground. This forest track descends over rock ledges that will stop most low-clearance vehicles. But around a bend, I encountered a small Japanese sedan that had somehow made it that far, and saw yet more people on foot ahead. Jesus Christ!
I continued down a stretch where the road definitely needs high clearance, glimpsing a crowd milling below around campsites that were destroyed by deadfall after the 2011 wildfire. At the bottom, two women about my age approached, and I stopped to ask them what was going on.
“It’s all birders!” they said. “The word got out that a tufted flycatcher was seen here for the first time, up from Mexico.”
“I’ve been here many times, and this is the first time I’ve seen anyone else,” I said, sighing and shaking my head. “I guess I’ll just try to find a place away from the crowd.”
None of the birders had brought a vehicle capable of reaching the lower campsites, so I easily found a spot to park just opposite the only surviving trailhead – which I had hiked only a few months ago. The two women caught up with me, and I had a long, friendly conversation with one while the other started down the trail toward the GPS location where the rare bird had been spotted. They were from a retirement community west of here, on the Mexican border next to an Army base. As we talked, small parties of birders kept walking past, to and from the low rise where the forest track ends, with a partial view west.
The friendly lady sympathized with my shock at seeing a crowd here. “I’m not a serious birder like my friend,” she said. “I’m interested in everything in nature. But at least these folks are here for a benign purpose.” I was not so sure – the compulsion to see a bird that’s already been recorded seems to have little conservation value.
She mentioned encountering a guy who maintains motion-sensor cameras in the mountains along the border, and has recorded two male jaguars that are now isolated due to Trump’s wall, and will never mate with females in Mexico. She said the Border Patrol hates the wall and considers it an insult to their work.
I ate my snacks, read my book, and between regular influxes of birders, took short walks around the edge of the old campground. Thunder boomed sporadically from a dark cloud mass over the crest, a mile or two south. A pair of undersize whitetail does foraged back and forth around me, at one point approaching within a couple dozen feet, their prominent ribs and disregard of humans making me wonder if they were diseased. There were definitely a lot of birds out. A woodpecker worked high in a tall, dying pine just west of me for so long I lost awareness of it.
A convoy of three side-by-sides passed, driven by old geezers. They’d obviously parked their giant RVs in a campground at the base of the mountains and were on a grand tour. They drove out to the viewpoint on the western rise, returning a half hour later.
A late-model Jeep Gladiator – the 4-door pickup – was parked at one of the old campsites on a slope opposite me, and after a while I realized they were speaking Spanish. Paying more attention, I discovered it was two young women, so they had to be on vacation from Mexico. With all the uproar about ICE, deportation, and the Wall, few Americans are aware that the Southwestern U.S. remains a popular vacation destination for Mexicans – after all, many of them have family and friends here. And in my experience, Latinos are avid campers, hunters, and fishermen – at least as outdoorsy as Anglos.
I spent over three hours in the beautiful old-growth forest of that lush basin below the cliffs, and those young women were industriously packing up their campsite for most of that time. I noticed one of them had a black ponytail swinging past her butt, reminding me of the great love of my life, whose dark hair reached her waist – my only girlfriend with hair that long. Mamaw, my dad’s mother, talked nostalgically of hair that reached her waist, worn mostly in elaborate braids, when she met Papaw in the 1920s. It’s definitely a turn-on, and an asset.
When the girls drove out, I saw they’d had to drive over the concrete foundation of one of the original Boy Scout cabins – since the campground is abandoned and interspersed with deadfall, there’s no longer direct vehicle access to many campsites.
The last birder I saw before I left was a little old guy who spent a half hour circling my vehicle, at a discreet distance off in the woods, looking up and occasionally giving me a furtive glance, creeping me out. He obviously saw me as an inconvenient obstacle, a vibe I’ve had from birders before.
That got me thinking about this whole flycatcher thing. It had started when someone with bird knowledge was hiking on that little-used trail, noticed and identified the rare bird, and captured its location on his phone. Like my thoughtless radio host, the hiker then shared the GPS coordinates with thousands on email lists and other forms of social media, and that addictive technology had brought dozens of people with selfish motives, from distant cities, to flood this remote, mostly secret and abandoned place.
It’s significant that on the way in, I had stopped to move those logs off the road for the convenience and safety of those who came after me – but none of the birders thought to do that – they’d just swerved into the ditch to get around them. And there were more arriving as I left. Who knows how many more people, with less honorable motives, will now learn about this special place?
That raises the question of how the Mexican girls in the Jeep found it – especially considering that I’ve never seen anyone camping here before. I can’t answer that, but I’d love to hear the story…
After more than three hours, I drove out, and on the way up the slope of the bowl, I glimpsed something strange through the forest, a hundred yards off the road. It sparked a vague memory from my superficial reading about this place, so I pulled over at a clearing halfway up, and began walking through the forest, over and around numerous deadfall logs.
What I came to was this bizarre structure – isolated in the forest, with no road or trail leading to it. Obviously designed with some purpose in mind – but what? Some long-obscure ceremony or ritual? Hard to imagine it ever being used, but if not, why did they haul all that lumber, those asphalt shingles, those bags of cement and sand, the water, and the tools? Roofing that doesn’t biodegrade, all abandoned as a monument to some dude who died elsewhere, far away. The whole bizarre little structure, intended in service of “God and Truth”, seems like the product of beings who were mentally deranged and/or deficient – and we have the Kiwanis Club to thank.
So I drove down the mountain and feasted in the cafe. I was surprised to eat alone – apparently the birders came from the west and returned down the opposite side of the range.
Most of my hikes involve long drives on mostly-empty roads past intriguing mountain ranges. And because of the low traffic, my eyes and mind can wander, speculating about future hikes.
