Animals
Sunday, August 2nd, 2020: Animals, Black Range, Hikes, Nature, Sawyers, Southwest New Mexico.
It was forecast to reach the low 90s in town, so I figured I’d head for the high country. I could do the Black Range Crest Trail to 9,700′ Sawyers Peak, a hike I’d only done twice before because it was less than 7 miles round trip. I could make it longer by fighting my way through another mile and a half of deadfall, or I could try a branch trail that might or might not be passable since the 2013 wildfire. Although it’d be hot at first, I figured there was also a good chance of clouds and rain in the afternoon.
When I got to the trailhead up in 8,200′ Emory Pass, there were already two other vehicles, plus a pile of stuff concerning a lost dog: a khaki jacket, a pile of dog food, and a note with a phone number.
As I hiked up the trail, I pondered the dog note. All dogs are supposed to be on leash on these trails, but nobody complies with the rule, hence the lost dog. And if their dog was lost, why did they leave? Why wasn’t the owner still here, waiting or looking for their dog? Why did they expect others to find the dog for them? If I’d lost something that important, I’d be camping out on the mountain.
A quarter mile up the trail I met a young guy with a camouflage backpack and an Aussie cattle dog. He said he’d been out here before dawn, scouting for elk, since he had a hunt coming up in November. He said he’d seen four bulls together, up around the peak. I wished him luck with the hunt.
A mile farther, I passed an older couple, also with an off-leash dog, who said they’d climbed the peak. A little farther and I reached the branch trail junction. I was starting down through the high-elevation forest, aiming for vague patches of tread, picking my way over fallen trees, when suddenly a dog barked up ahead. The lost dog!
I talked to the dog in a friendly way, and soon it came into view. It was a dark brown, short-haired little hound, and it looked on its last legs. Holding my hand out, I got it to come to me. It seemed in a state of shock or severe depression. It had a collar but no tag. It looked like it could hardly stand, let alone walk. As I walked past to check out the trail, the dog laid down in a depression it had made in the dirt under a ponderosa pine. I hiked another 50 yards and discovered there was literally no trail left to follow. I told the dog I’d be back later, and continued back to the crest trail.
With no branch trail I was doomed to battle deadfall past the peak. But I’d done it once before, and this time might be easier because I knew where I was going.
Traversing the side of the peak I encountered the four bull elk. They were in the standing snags above the trail, and their racks were huge. This was the first time I’d encountered a group of mature bulls in the wild, and it was pretty impressive.
I decided to skip the peak on the way in, and decide on my return whether to climb it or not – it’s only a few hundred feet above the trail. I continued south on the abandoned part of the crest trail as dark clouds moved over the range from the northwest. Finally, as I approached the grassy knoll that was my destination, I saw three young buck deer up ahead. It was a day for male ungulates!
The bucks took off and I climbed the knoll. Lightning and thunder had started farther north, and there wasn’t much cover up there. I crawled under a low juniper and ate a lunch of mixed nuts while I watched the storm come to me.
Rain started as I got up to start back. It was light at first, but by the time I got to the saddle below the knoll I had to unpack my poncho. By the time I was working my way up through the steep jungle of deadfall toward the peak, I was in a full hailstorm with lightning striking nearby and deafening cascades of thunder. Just my kind of weather!
When I reached the saddle below the peak, I decided to climb it. I hadn’t stopped thinking about that poor dog, but I wasn’t going to cut my hike short just for some fool’s pet. Besides, the dog could at least find some water now that it was raining.
There was no trail to the peak, and it was a difficult hike up broken, rocky ground with lots of deadfall. On the way back down, I strained my knee, which had been giving me trouble for the past couple of months, so I had to stop and put on a stronger brace. My pants and boots were soaked.
Continuing down the trail, I thought about the dog. I checked my pack and found a nylon strap I could use as a leash. And luckily, I’d brought two sources of meat protein – a venison bar and some salmon jerky. I’d give the salmon to the dog. And I could lay my poncho down in the dog’s dirt depression and fill it with water. I’d taken a photo of the stuff at the trailhead, and when I checked my camera, I discovered I could zoom in on the note and read the phone number. I was planning to give the owner a hard time. No leash, no tag, what were they thinking?
When I reached the branch trail, I took off my poncho so the dog would recognize me. I started calling it, and when I reached its little bed under the big pine, I saw it coming up the slope toward me.
I laid my poncho down and poured a little water into it, but the dog wasn’t interested in that. So I poured out the salmon jerky, which it ate, but not with much enthusiasm. Then I fastened my nylon strap to its collar and started leading it up toward the saddle. The dog soon balked and stood firm, and I couldn’t drag it forward. So I took the leash off.
I noticed it was a female. “Come on, girl!” I urged. I walked a little ahead, and the dog slowly followed, stopping frequently to sniff the ground. We continued this way, slowly, to the saddle, and then down the trail, me turning back frequently to encourage the dog. Soon we reached a couple of fallen logs that had to be climbed over. I crossed easily, but the dog seemed completely at a loss. She glanced from side to side, then turned around and walked away from me, her head hanging down.
I went back and called her again, and she came up. “Come on,” I said, patting the logs. She put her front legs up, and as I backed away, she finally climbed weakly over. It was as if she’d never seen a log before. Her entire attitude seemed one of shock and depression. I forged ahead, but after I’d gone a dozen yards I turned and saw she’d stopped again. She sniffed the trail, then turned and headed back toward her comfort zone. She was apparently just going to lay down and die back there under that pine.
Lion food, I thought. I’d been thinking about this for a while. People pride themselves on adopting “rescue” animals from shelters, animals that would otherwise be euthanized. The new owners are supposedly “rescuing” these animals from death.
I have a better idea. Pets make great food for wild predators. These clueless pet owners could actually help native ecosystems by donating their domesticated animals to the wild. Pets are ecologically negative – they only serve to damage nature; as food for predators, they would actually be helping nature. I did feel sorry for that dog, but it had already given up. Its spirit could live on in a mountain lion, a real animal with an actual, positive role in this ecosystem.
I reached a place where a couple bars showed on my phone, so I called the owner, but it went to voice mail. I told them where to find their dog and said if they really wanted her, they’d have to come and get her.
Monday, September 13th, 2021: Animals, Hikes, Nature, Pinos Altos Range, Plants, Southwest New Mexico.
The Hike
Needing another easy hike close to home, I decided on the 8-1/2-mile-one-way ridge trail a half hour’s drive north. I’d been hiking this trail for more than a decade, following it all the way to the isolated stock pond at the far end of the ridge several times in the past 3 years. Much of the forest burned last year, but the trail had been cleared after the fire and I expected no problems, especially since it’s one of our most popular trails. Today I figured I’d try hiking it all the way to the opposite trailhead at the bottom of the other end of the ridge, for some additional elevation gain on the way back. A fairly easy 17 mile out-and-back hike with about 4,000′ of accumulated elevation.
This trail mostly traverses the very steep north slope, which holds a lot of moisture even in dry years, so between spring and fall I expect pretty wildflowers in shady, moist pockets along the way.
The day started quite cool, but the afternoon high was forecast to reach 90. The climb to the ridge top was uneventful until about a mile in, when I met two younger women on their way down. One was my former massage therapist, someone I’d known ever since moving here. She said the trail ahead was overgrown with shoulder-high wildflowers – she’d tried to take a picture of her friend, and all that was visible was her head, floating on the flowers.
The climb was exposed enough to be hot, and as I began to sweat, the flies began to swarm, requiring my old trusty head net.
Not long after that, I reached the start of the long traverse, and found myself wishing, for the first time in years, that I’d dropped acid before this hike. After 15 years of hiking in our Southwest monsoon, on dozens of hikes in dozens of mountain ranges, I’d never seen anything like this ridge. The wildflowers were mind-boggling, and the pollinators were swarming. The only place I’ve seen more sphinx moths is in my beloved Mojave Desert, where they swarm by the thousands on blooming desert willows.
Most hikers, less driven than me, only follow this trail for the first 2 or 3 miles. Although the flowers were thick and indeed shoulder-high, the path through the flowers was fairly evident for the first two miles. But then it got harder.
Tread – ground that’s been walked on regularly – became scarcer and scarcer. I knew this trail like the palm of my hand, but since it was mostly hidden under the dense wildflowers, post-fire erosion and old postholes from equestrians made it hazardous. I fell again and again, and it became obvious that no one else had gone farther than two miles since the start of the monsoon in late June.
I found this strange, because in the past I’d usually found evidence of at least one intrepid hiker that walked the whole ridgeline. Then I remembered my former hiking buddy pointing out that I was the only local hiker she knew that hiked in “bad” weather – the hot days of summer, the storms of the monsoon, the snows of winter. Apparently everyone else avoids long hikes during monsoon season when they may be caught in a storm.
I chuckled, thinking about all the government and crowdsourced trail guides that list “best times to hike this trail” – usually spring or fall. I find it strange that people actually follow that kind of guidance, missing entire regimes of ecological wonder.
After the two mile point, the trail climbs very steeply to a long, narrow plateau, the high stretch of the ridge, where the forest mostly avoided destruction in last year’s fire. There, the tread is normally sparser, and I found an unbroken mass of wildflowers and no remaining tread. I had to rely on my visual memory, and pushing my way slowly through, with many false starts, I was somehow able to trace the route, finding the occasional cairn completely buried under the flowers. I was careful to trample the flowers as I went, otherwise I might’ve become completely lost on the way back.
But I was finally stumped, near the end of the narrow plateau where the trail becomes vague even without the overgrowth. I suddenly realized that in 2-1/2 hours I’d gone less than 4 miles, burning up 45 minutes just to cover the last half mile. Once again, this wonderful monsoon had ruined my plans. I turned around and laboriously retraced my steps, vowing to treat myself to a restaurant meal and a draft beer on my early return to town. One of the highlights of the descent from the plateau was a stumble over a hidden rock, immediately followed by a tall thorny locust grabbing my head net, so I had to scramble for footing to avoid falling and ripping the net.
The title of this Dispatch is adapted from the lyrics of one of my favorite original songs, “Fish in the River“, which nobody but me seems to like.
The Flowers
The Pollinators
Monday, July 10th, 2023: Animals, Black Range, Hikes, Hillsboro, Nature, Southwest New Mexico.
We’re having the kind of weather we have if the monsoon doesn’t start on time – highs in the mid-90s in town. In the past, it would drop into the 60s overnight, I’d run the swamp cooler to fill the house with that cool air, and the interior would never get above the mid-70s.
Now, it’s only dropping to the low 70s overnight. It’s too humid inside for the swamp cooler to work. The interior of my house gets up to 90 in the evening and never drops below 80. On today’s hike, I was really looking forward to getting above 8,000 feet.
But first, I had to chase these deer out of my backyard, where they threaten my apple and pear trees.
When I reached the pass at 8,200 feet, it was clear, sunny, still, and hot. The Rio Grande Valley to the east lay under heat haze. This is the old familiar trail that follows the crest to a 10,000 foot peak in 5-1/2 miles; I sweated during the long traverses and relished a light breeze when crossing saddles. Finally, after about three miles, I reached the relief of the shaded mixed-conifer forest.
I’d been missing birds on recent hikes. Sure, I’d always see jays, ravens, and vultures. But this has always been the best place to see birds, and today there were a lot of different kinds active on the crest, from flocks of bushtits in the understory to woodpeckers squabbling over tree trunks in the canopy.
After I crossed over the peak and started down through the alpine meadows of the back side, through the burn scar of last year’s mega-wildfire, I began encountering the pollinators. They seemed to be loving this hot, still weather, they were swarming tiny, dull-looking flowers we’d normally ignore, and in the windless quiet the buzzing of the bees could be heard from far away.
No one had been down the crest trail past the peak since my last hike here in October of last year. The trail, which had been cleared last year, was now almost completely obliterated, from post-fire erosion, blowdown, and overgrowth. I was only able to follow it because I know it so well.
As usual, I was hoping to continue the full nine miles to the junction saddle, but I was stopped at seven miles by blowdown in a spot where I knew the overgrowth would keep getting worse.
I was okay with turning back at this point; even truncated, this would be my most challenging hike since the first week of May, with 14 miles round-trip and over 3,200 feet of elevation gain. And I was mesmerized by the swarm of bees on a shrubby, dull-green annual that surrounded me on this hillside stopping point.
So I started paying more attention to flowers and pollinators, and all the way back up to the peak, I kept stopping to watch them at work. I literally had to tear myself away from each little patch of flowers along the trail.
Some of these photos are like those puzzle pictures that challenge you to find all the hidden objects. Can you find all the pollinators?
I’d been praying for rain all day, and storm clouds had gradually been gathering, finally producing thunder, breezes, cooler temps, and a few drops here and there. It was perfectly timed to keep me cool on the last three miles of exposed crest.
I drove through some heavy rain on the way home, and my house cooled down a few degrees more overnight. Hopefully we’ll get more monsoon weather this week!
Monday, January 27th, 2025: Animals, Greasewoods, Hikes, Nature, Rocks, Southeast Arizona.
After my return from back east with increasingly crippling knee pain, my doctor had prescribed something that sounded familiar. Later, after looking it up, I realized it was an anti-inflammatory (NSAID) he’d ordered for my hip pain back in 2008, when I’d tried every NSAID on the market, and every one had caused stomach cramps so bad I had to reject them all, adding that entire class of medicines to my growing list of drug allergies.
But in desperation, I took a dose Saturday after breakfast, and then, immediately after taking it, discovered it’s taboo for patients allergic to the antibiotic sulfa. I’ve always been told I almost died of anaphylactic shock after being given sulfa at age 2.
To my considerable relief, I didn’t die. I didn’t develop stomach cramps, and three hours after taking the drug, my knee pain disappeared completely for the first time since early May 2024.
Okay, I thought. Let’s put it to the test. There’s a small mountain range over in Arizona that I’ve wanted to explore for five years. It lies directly across a lonely highway from the much bigger and much taller mountain range I’ve climbed dozens of times. It lies within the same national forest, but it’s neither federal wilderness nor wilderness study area, and as far as I could tell it’s all cattle range.
The map shows no hiking trails, but the mountains, rising from 4,600 to 6,900 feet in elevation, are traversed by a sparse network of dirt roads, only a few of which seemed to be maintained. Virtually no information about this little range is available online – hours from the nearest city, it seems to be ignored by hikers, mountain bikers, campers, and recreationists in general.
Recalling my history of conflicts with livestock, you might assume I would join the crowd and likewise ignore this unpopular rangeland. But the northern part of the range has one irresistible attraction: it looks very similar to my spiritual home, those sacred mountains in the Mojave Desert. It virtually screams “DROP ACID AND HIKE ME!”
So on Sunday morning, after taking a second dose of the new drug, I packed for an overnight trip across the state line, where for the first time since last August, I would try to hike more than a mile. My optimistic plan was to walk one of the abandoned roads from an interior basin up to a pass where I could survey the possibility of someday climbing to the crest. As usual in a situation like this, I really had no idea what to expect. I might run into an aggressive bull, or a locked gate with a No Trespassing sign, or a sandy road my truck couldn’t handle. My knee might betray me. In those eventualities, there were other less interesting options nearby.
It was another day without clouds, temperatures forecast to reach the 50s. Under full sun it would feel much warmer, if not for the steady west wind I found to be blowing all day. The ranch road in was very well-maintained, but my eyes were constantly drawn to the fantastic rock formations it twisted between, and I stopped every hundred yards or so for pictures. It was all even better than I’d expected – after cresting a low rise, you wind down into a hidden basin surrounded by low hills to the south and spectacular mountains, cliffs, and pinnacles in the west and north.
The ranch house lay just out of sight at the north end of the basin, but the road I wanted turned off south. The basin is dotted with huge spreading trees which I was surprised to identify as Emory oaks – we have much smaller ones around home – and in less than a quarter mile the road turned bad and I pulled off to park in a clearing near several of these majestic trees. At the edge of that lovely basin, in this landscape dominated by stone in endless organic forms, I was already in heaven and I hadn’t even started hiking.
The map shows a powerline following the road, and once there, I realized it’s actually the opposite – the road I planned to hike is the powerline utility road. It’s a minor powerline serving a ranch on the west side of the range, so since the powerline was laid, the road hasn’t been maintained, and coming from the east, I didn’t see any vehicle tracks until I approached the pass much later.
My knee seemed fine, and I didn’t anticipate any sustained grades to threaten it, but on every single decline, I practiced a duckwalk I’d found in a YouTube video by a physical therapist that was recommended to relieve knee pain. I did that all day, on what was probably a hundred or more short descents.
Cattle had used the road, but only rarely, and the most recent cowpies were a couple weeks old. I spotted a herd lounging a half mile north near a corral and water tank. Another hike I’d considered follows a dirt road that branches south, offering a possible route to the summit of the range. But when I reached that branch, I could see that the southern part of the range doesn’t feature those spectacular rock formations, so I kept going on my powerline road, forcing myself to move at a leisurely pace and take shorter steps than my body seemed to want to.
Up and down across side drainages, the road gradually took me higher above the basin, yielding better and better views. I found the fairly recent track of a single hiker who must’ve been about my size. I came upon modest ranch infrastructure, and mused enviously that this must be one of the prettiest ranches in all Arizona.
Eventually I could see the powerline heading up to the pass, the hills closed in at each side, and I began to wonder if my knee would really hold out that far. The past six months had been hell in so many ways. Taking care of my mother had distracted me some from the pain and the inability to hike, but my soul had been grieving, and I’d often wondered if I would ever be able to hike again. At times, my future seemed utterly hopeless.
In this basin dominated by oaks, I came upon the occasional juniper and was surprised to encounter small manzanitas. Back home, manzanita only seems to grow above 8,000 feet, but here – and in another range to the south – at similar latitudes, I’ve found it between 5,000 and 6,000 feet. Why the difference?
After more than two miles, my knee still seemed fine – another surprise, since for months, every time I’d walked a mile, I’d ended up in severe pain. The road became steeper and more deeply eroded as it climbed to the pass, but I kept moving carefully upward, admiring the steep, rocky slope on my right, behind which the northern crest was hidden, about a thousand feet higher.
That wind was howling down from the pass, and no matter how tightly I cinched my hat, it still blew off from time to time. But now I was sure I was going to make it, and since one of my favorite experiences is to crest a pass for the first time and see over into the next watershed, discovering completely new territory, I was really stoked. I’d been eyeballing possible routes to the crest on the east side, ever since beginning my hike, and now I would learn whether a better route exists on the west side, taking off from this road.
Wow! That wind was just blasting through! The west side of the pass descends at a much gentler grade, with the less interesting southern mountains on your left, but on your right, there’s more spectacular rock, and what appears to be a straightforward route upward to the crest.
It was no place to linger in this wind, but I began to believe I might return someday.
Of course, the trail back threatened to be much harder on my knee, since it was mostly downhill. But I kept carefully duckwalking down every incline, and it seemed to work. The low angle light from the western sun made everything in the landscape stand out now – my reward for the climb to the pass. And gradually, I realized I was experiencing a miracle – just as my mother has recently been able to stand up and walk after being confined to a wheelchair since September, I was now hiking miles without pain for the first time since early May.
I don’t buy the old myth, perpetuated by Western pundits from Aristotle to the new age self-help gurus of the 80s, that human life should be a quest for individual happiness. Happiness – a steady state of comfort and carefree living – has always been a meaningless concept to me. My curiosity drives me to take the kind of chances that result in moments of joy – like this day of pain-free hiking through a beautiful landscape – between long stretches of hard work and suffering. Giving up the extremes in favor of the safe and predictable seems like a poor trade-off.
My lower legs were now aching – anti-inflammatories do nothing for lactic acid. Charting my route later, at home, I would find I’d hiked over seven miles with an elevation gain of 1,000 feet. I can’t really describe how ecstatic I was by the time I reached the truck. In all those seven miles the only litter I’d seen was a single smashed beverage can. Without that, it would’ve been too perfect.
Driving out between the rock formations, I passed a late-model utility vehicle parked below some boulders and pinnacles, and realized this area is even more spectacular than the most famous bouldering destination in California, yet the online silence suggests it’s either undiscovered or ignored. Let’s hope it stays that way.
I’d reserved a room in my new favorite motel south of the range. And after a burrito and a peaceful night reminiscing about my hike, I emerged before dawn to find thousands of sandhill cranes flying directly overhead, moving north from the small lakes that dot the valley to the south. The parade lasted for at least 90 minutes – another miracle to top off yesterday’s.
