Delirious Ramblings

Oak Soup

Oak Soup, Coconino National Forest, May 2012

 

There is something strangely liberating about finding water in the woods, something that appeals to the inner rugged individualist in us all, something far older than camelbaks and nalgene bottles. I've been actively seeking these places out for a while now, poking around the geology, looking into shady slot canyons, and places where rainwater might accumulate and persist in punchbowl tinajas for longer than a few days. I've found a few, I guess, and I guard the knowledge jealously. Most are on the topographic maps - the quality ones made in the old days anyway - and marked with blah blah spring or something something tank, but some are not, and those are by far the most precious of all.

 

Oak Soup, Coconino National Forest, May 2012

 

Despite being the high country, there isn't much of it around here, the water I mean. At least not the kind of surface water where anyone besides a tree can get to it. It's there of course, it always has been, but it's uncertain and tough to tease out, especially now that the dry season is advancing. But if you pay attention to the clues you'll sometimes be rewarded with an ephemeral seep and a few liters of black, water-strider and mosquito infested liquid pooled up in the back of a rockface or deep in some marshy hollow.

If you're lucky enough to find it it's best to simply put an X on your topo map, jot the location and date in your journal (you do have one of those, right?) or mark a waypoint in your gps for future reference. This is emergency water, bug-out water, the sort you drink only if you've run dry and have no other choice. And even then, you take only what you absolutely need. Why? Simple: the wildlife needs this water far more than you do. The deer and the birds don't have access to endlessly free-flowing taps, don't have a couple liters of water waiting under the seat of the truck back at the trailhead. For them that stinky black water is the difference between life and death. Better to leave it to them if you can.

I suppose I needn't tell you about the dangers of drinking front and back country water. Filter it with a quality water filter, boil it, or treat it with harsh, nasty tasting chemicals. Or maybe do all three depending on how paranoid you feel. I hear we've become soft, hardly fit to reside in these places, and a dose of the wee beasties that our ancestors would've shrugged off a couple centuries ago tend to have their way with us now.

 

Oak Soup, Coconino National Forest, May 2012

And the clues I spoke of?

Ah, yes. The clues.

It's simple, really: the birds will tell you the secret knowledge of water, the butterflies, the deer, the large green trees, the geology itself. Learn to listen to what they say, follow in their footsteps, and they'll lead you right to it.

The View from a Quiet Place

The View from a Quiet Place, Kachina Peaks Wilderness, May 2012

When I reached the top of the great mountain an ancient bristlecone pine waited there. We stood together in silence, the tree and I, feeling the warmth of the sun, the coolness of the air. Confused by the stillness I asked it what year it was. It could only stare back, unable to comprehend the question. The great circle of time had been revolving very slowly around that quiet place since the birth of the mountain, each day mostly the same as the previous, each year, decade, and century much like the one before. I wondered, did the trees there even know that the Ice had gone, perhaps never to return?

The Annular Eclipse of Ponderosa

Annular Eclipse of Ponderosa, Coconino National Forest, May 2012

Today was the annular solar eclipse. I didn't have a set of those fancy eclipse glasses, smoked glass filter, welder's mask, or even a piece of cardboard and paper to make a pinhole viewer. Instead I made do with what I had at hand: Mount Elden, a ponderosa pine tree, and some gambel oak. The ponderosa proved to be a little too opaque to view the eclipse properly. Oh well, I was an hour and a half early for the show and saw bupkis. The oaks thought it was a very fine afternoon, though.

I was descending the Mount Elden lookout trail when a guy with an empty plastic water bottle came up to me and asked if I could spare any drinking water. It was a hot afternoon and he was looking pretty dry so I gave him some of mine. Of course no good deed can be allowed to go unpunished:  I ran out myself a little while later and had to dry-hike another hour back to the trailhead and my truck. 

The Bradshaws Come to Town

Gladiator Fire Smoke over NAU Campus, Flagstaff AZ, May 2012

Moto

Moto-Trail Damage, Coconino National Forest, May 2012

Above is a photo of an illegal moto trail that snakes its way through the woods north of the San Francisco Peaks. It goes for miles and miles making big swoopy loops and meandering S-turns through the terrain. One time I walked a mile or so of it, curious to see where it went. I gave up in frustration when it became apparent that it had no destination, no plan, that there was no rationality behind it, not even the alien logic of ungulates. Its sole purpose -- if you could call it a purpose -- seemed to be simply to maximize trail mileage for no reason other than to keep knobby tires spinning as long as possible without retracing any ground.

Morning Bracken

Bracken Ferns, Coconino National Forest, May 2012

I was poking around the woods south of Flagstaff this morning and caught a community of early season Western Bracken ferns glowing in the sunlight. Bracken ferns are one of my favorite forest plants and I always enjoy being in their presense. Well... except for when you have to walk through a stand of them after a rain or when they are covered with dew, that is.

Bracken ferns are a little like aspen, with large underground rootstock networks and many interconnected fronds. And like aspen their root networks can persist for hundreds or thousands of years, making them true Methuselahs. Bracken ferns are also poisonous to livestock and other ungulates, which is why they can grow mostly unmolested year after year.

On Nonhuman Trails

Rees Peak, Kachina Peaks Wilderness, May 2012

I did a little more wilderness exploring up on Rees Peak on Sunday, about nine miles of tough off-trail hiking and climbing. This time I took a slightly different route and avoided most of the old Bear Jaw burn area (see my last post on Rees). Instead of trying to find my own path through the riot of aspen regeneration and wild rose I poked around the base of the mountain until I found an elk trail that led me up through the worst of it. The trail was obviously not built to human specifications and it got very hairy at the upper end, but the elk know that mountain from top to bottom and they've figured out all the best routes.

 

Rees Peak, Kachina Peaks Wilderness, May 2012

Despite the help from the indigenous quadrupeds I was turned around by residual snow drifts at about 10,900 feet. The top was still a third of a mile and some six hundred vertical feet away. I thought about pushing on through the snow but knew it would only get deeper as I climbed higher. I wasn't really expecting to make it to the top so early in the season so I wasn't too disappointed. Actually, I was surprised I made it as high as I did.

I'm fine with not making it to the top of Rees -- or any of these mountains for that matter. If I bag a summit during one of my ramblings that's great. If I don't that's okay too. At some point I realized that most of the really interesting and neat stuff to see on mountains isn't at the summit at all, but rather around the flanks, in the foothills, and in the experiences you collect in just being there. In some ways I think hiking a mountain just to get to the top should be looked upon as a form of disrespect, like rushing through an art exhibit to buy M&Ms at the gift shop.

 

Rees Peak, Kachina Peaks Wilderness, May 2012

Rees is not the highest or the steepest of the prominences making up the San Francisco Peaks, but it's rapidly becoming my favorite. The forest up there is deep and dark, filled with shadow and mystery and stillness. I have a couple more hikes on Rees before I move my explorations a little to the west to meet Aubineau Peak and ultimately north Humphreys. And then... well... let's just say that things get a little hazy after Humphreys.

Walking Code

Navajo Code Talker, Northern Arizona University Campus, May 2012

A simple shot of the R.C. Gorman Navajo Code Talker bronze sculpture on north NAU campus.

A Wilderness of Cats

Wait-a-Minute Bush, Sycamore Canyon Wilderness, April 2012

In the hot chaparral country below the Mogollon Rim grows an especially irascible member of the Pea family called Wait-a-Minute Bush (Mimosa biuncifera). It gets that name from its habit of grabbing on to your clothing or skin with its long claw-like spines, thus forcing you to stop and carefully extract yourself from its grip. I've always known it by its other common name, "Cat Claw", which I think is more descriptive of this plant's true nature, as its thorns resemble a house cat's claws and it will scratch the hell out of you if you mess with it.

 

Wait-a-Minute Bush, Sycamore Canyon Wilderness, April 2012

Wait-a-Minute tends to grow in nearly impassible thickets, many quite large; they stake out their territory and they guard it jealously. Anyone foolish enough to muscle his or her way through their domain will not be the same person when they exit the other side, the plants having exacted their toll in flesh and blood.

Once, many years ago, a relative and I went on an off-trail trek into Sycamore Canyon Wilderness, looking for gray limestone and fossilized fish, chasing rumors of lost buried treasure, and seeking adventure. We found neither fish nor gold. Instead we found sixty thousand acres of dry red dust, shimmering heat, and a hissing fury of pissed-off cat claw that tore at our clothing and lacerated every inch of exposed skin. I came away from that experience with a healthy respect for cat claw bushes and a love of Arizona's second largest redrock canyon that I carry with me to this day.

Lunch Among the Bristlecones

Bristlecone Pine Snag, Kachina Peaks Wilderness, December 2011

Back in mid-December of 2011 I climbed up to the west summit of Fremont Peak to visit with the Rocky Mountain Bristlecones. It was a beautiful day, I was just beginning to feel strong on the snowshoes again, and it felt great to be up there in the wilderness. I ate my sandwich among the ancient trees and listened to the raucous calls of Clarks Nutcrackers down in the Inner Basin. Later, as I turned to leave I snapped the above photograph. It turned out to be one of the better ones of my 2011-2012 snowshoeing season. The craggy old tree seems to be pointing to something off the left side of the frame, perhaps something that has been gone for a half dozen centuries, something only it remembers.

While I was up there I noticed that someone had worked over one of the dead bristlecones with a saw of some kind. It had a slice of wood cut from its trunk and a couple limbs showed clear evidence of cutting. There have been several dendrochronology studies done over the years using the bristlecones on the Peaks so it was probably an old research site. At least I hope it was a research site... It would be a damned shame for someone to damage one of those old methuselahs for something as short term as firewood or pure maliciousness.

In more recent news, I picked up a new camera the other day courtesy of the IRS: a Canon PowerShot G12. It's another point-n-shoot, although it does have a larger form factor than my current camera. I agonized over making the jump to a DSLR, but as much as I would like one I just couldn't justify the expense and added weight of those big cameras.  I don't have a camera case for the G12 yet so I haven't taken it on any walks in the woods (I won't make that particular mistake again.) In my limited testing the G12 seems to take much sharper pictures than the SX210 IS that's been driving me nuts lately, so I think the G12 was a good purchase. Once I learn more about the G12's personality I'll start hiking with it and I guess we'll see how it does.