{"id":27964,"date":"2025-08-25T11:35:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T17:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/?p=27964"},"modified":"2025-08-25T11:41:49","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T17:41:49","slug":"nature-walk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/?p=27964","title":{"rendered":"Nature Walk"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

I needed another short, level hike to continue my knee rehab. There are several of those within a half hour of home, but after last week’s three-day getaway, I had returned to problems that were just getting more acute and less surmountable.<\/p>\n

I discovered that my favorite backroads cafe had reopened, and after studying the trails, realized that a short “nature trail” in the canyon bottom would be perfect for my knee. When I’m in shape, I avoid these easy, dumbed-down hikes, but now…<\/p>\n

So I headed across the border to Arizona again, for an escape and a decent lunch as much as for a hike. Our frustrating monsoon was in remission, only a few small clouds lurked on the horizon, and the afternoon high there was forecast to reach 90.<\/p>\n

\"Haze <\/a>
Haze over the big basin <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Haze <\/a>
Haze beyond the pass <\/div> <\/div>
\"Even <\/a>
Even the canyons are a little hazy <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

It got hot there in the canyon bottom, with the paved road, and tourist cars, sporadically visible through the trees, just across the creek. But I immediately began noticing tiny marker labels at the foot of trailside trees, and became obsessed with finding them all \u2013 so that I had to periodically force myself to back off and scan the habitat around me, and up to spy the looming rock formations.<\/p>\n

On this hot day I was alone, until on the way back I encountered a knowledgeable young couple who confessed they’d become equally obsessed with the labels \u2013 and had noticed, as I had, that whereas labels identified yuccas, sotols, beargrasses, cholla cacti, and even grasses, none of the abundant agaves or prickly pears had been labeled.<\/p>\n

\"Knew <\/a>
Knew the peak name, but had never noticed the genus of one of my favorite lizards <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Nature <\/a>
Nature trail <\/div> <\/div>
\"IMG_0524\" <\/a> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Tiny <\/a>
Tiny window in the rock <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"IMG_0539\" <\/a> <\/div> <\/div>
\"IMG_0546\" <\/a> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"IMG_0570\" <\/a> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Few <\/a>
Few flowers, and all tiny <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Debris <\/a>
Debris flow from massive 2011 wildfire <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"IMG_0602\" <\/a> <\/div> <\/div>
\"IMG_0607\" <\/a> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Look <\/a>
Look back from end of trail <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

In the trailside plants and labels, several aspects attracted my scrutiny.<\/p>\n

First, I was both amused and delighted that in many cases, they’d chosen to label potentially hard-to-identify specimens like seedlings or plants that were damaged or mostly dead.<\/p>\n

Next, I have a tree guide, and for years I’ve been struggling to identify the trees here, from the canyon bottom at 5,000 feet to the crest at almost 10,000 feet in elevation. So I was glad to see some of the harder-to-identify trees labeled via widely varying specimens.<\/p>\n

And since I’ve barely scratched the surface of shrubs here, I was pleasantly surprised by labels on some of those.<\/p>\n

Finally, especially after seeing the Apache pine, I began to wish they’d included Apache names for these…<\/p>\n

\"In <\/a>
In my book this is called the border pinyon <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"And <\/a>
And I love that they labeled an unobtrusive seedling <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"IMG_0544\" <\/a> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Likewise, <\/a>
Likewise, they labeled this nearly invisible baby doug-fir <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"This <\/a>
This is one I tentatively identified years ago on the crest <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"A <\/a>
A creative trail worker labeled this beautiful specimen which had literally grown the rock <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"IMG_0608\" <\/a> <\/div>
\"Never <\/a>
Never would’ve guessed this one <\/div> <\/div>
\"In <\/a>
In the Mojave, we use this common name for a completely different genus <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"IMG_0628\" <\/a> <\/div> <\/div>
\"IMG_0637\" <\/a> <\/div>
\"Pinyon <\/a>
Pinyon ricegrass <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"IMG_0643\" <\/a> <\/div> <\/div>
\"I <\/a>
I love this one for its long needles (typically 10″) <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I needed another short, level hike to continue my knee rehab. There are several of those within a half hour of home, but after last week’s three-day getaway, I had returned to problems that were just getting more acute and less surmountable. I discovered that my favorite backroads cafe had reopened, and after studying the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28005,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[161,71,49,59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cave-creek","category-chiricahuas","category-hikes","category-southeast-arizona"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_0644.jpg?fit=1200%2C900&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27964"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28011,"href":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27964\/revisions\/28011"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}