That Hiking Time of the Year

Tucson and the surrounding Sonoran Desert is reliably a hiker's paradise from November through March.  The sun softens a bit, even becoming a welcome friend at times.  The temperatures are near perfect most days, usually in the 60's or 70's.  The air is clear, wonderful for a little cleansing of the lungs on the ascents.

We struck out for our first real hike of 2010 to Pima Canyon, an opening on the south side of the Catalina Mountains below Pusch Ridge.  The trailhead has a good sized paved parking lot; a lot which is almost always full until early afternoon.  We lucked out with some early hikers' departure and snagged a spot.

The trail crosses private property for the first half mile or so, and causes you to wonder how Pima County Parks & Rec accomplished that.  Above you are a few mulit-million dollar estates snugged up against the base of the Catalinas, the high end of the exclusive foothills so to speak.  Their infinity pools' overflows and engineered waterfalls provide an unexpected sound track to this portion of the hike.  Soon you leave the burbs behind, rounding the mouth of the canyon and heading what would be upstream if there were water from a natural source to take over the audio portion of the trek.  Instead you hear birdsong -- the squeaky toy impersonation of the Gila woodpeckers, swooping across the broad expanse of the canyon, or the grinding old-car-that-won't-quite-start call of the cactus wren.  You also hear the chatter of hikers and cries of their excited kids from time to time as this is a heavily traveled, step-aside trail.  We spent a lot of time moving off the trail for others, or trying to hustle when they'd move aside for us.

It's a bouldery sort of place, on the trail too.  We were shooting for the dam, an apparently elusive feature in the canyon, but whose broad horizontal slabs of rock invited picnicking and a natural turn-around about three miles from the trail head.  According to hiking guides, the trail would make a 850 foot ascent by the time we reached this spot, not bad considering it took three miles to do that.  You only really noticed much of an uphill when you hit the frequent jumbo steps the boulders in the trail required.

Up the canyon, in the bottom where we saw the occasional water standing in a tenaja (a rock basin) or small pool (likely from a seep), there were mesquite bosques and looming cottonwood trees.  Saguaro stood sentinel on the canyon walls and care was required along the trail, often edged with prickly pear and cholla cactus.

We never saw the dam, which is apparently not much to see as far as dams go, and blew by the rock slabs.  It's that kind of canyon.  Despite feeling a bit whipped, you want to see what's around the next corner.  We stopped in the shade of some boulders and shrubs, had a snack, and headed back down.  On the way we registered those rock slabs, complete with the requisite picnickers.

The thing with an out and back hike is that when you turn around, you have a completely different view.  Framed by the sides of the canyon west Tucson lay at our feet, the Santa Ritas to the south and our own Tucson Mountains -- we live in the "other" foothills -- to the west.

It was a great first hike of the year.  Now that the sun is up, our only question is, where today?

Post-holiday Post

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There is much to celebrate during the holiday season in the desert.

The temperatures recede, the A/C gets turned off and stays off, and outdoor activities are not governed by avoidance of the heat and sun. Desert sounds of bird calls, coyote serenades, and the breeze whistling through the palo verdes drift in through open windows, day and night. The occasional, too occasional, blessings of winter rains carry the mysterious smell of creosote. While many desert plants shift into idle for a brief rest, chuparosas come into crazy bloom, nourishing our year-round hummingbirds and the mustard headed hyper-active verdin. Javelina come down from the hills and deer visit our yard.  The desert becomes hospitable.

Thanksgiving can be the traditional feast of an herb baked bird with the usual sides, or the turkey can be glazed with chili and served with corn pudding, roasted squash laced with cipotle, and calabacitas, with a pumpkin flan for dessert. Regardless of the menu, it is a convivial holiday that focuses on feasting, family, and friends, and gratitude for life's blessings, especially the fact that perfect temperatures make for excellent hikes that mediate the the effects of indulgent eating.

Christmas is a wonderful blend of American traditions and the prevalent Hispanic cultural influence here in Tucson. No where is more brightly decorated that the barrios, tamales become one of the main food groups, and subtlety goes out the window. Our tree is the top twelve feet of an agave flower stalk, wrapped with colored lights and hung with ornaments collected over decades, a collection we still add to  yearly. Tohono Chul, a wonderful botanic garden in the Catalina foothills, holds Holiday Nights in the park where thousands of white fairy lights illuminate the sprawling mesquites and the paths are lined with luminarias guiding you to music venues and art exhibits. This is the second year I've purchased an artist made and donated ornament, part of a fundraiser for the park. It's a tradition I hope to continue.

The best part of Christmas this year was a visit from my daughter and her husband. We'd seen them twice during the year in their Bay area home, but it was lovely to share the week bracketing Christmas with them in ours. I'd just celebrated the anniversary of my propitious arrival in Tucson eight years ago when my daughter arrived days before Christmas, just like 2001. Their visit was filled with hikes and excursions and good time spent together.

My daughter's one "must do" request was to head south to Tumacacori National Historic Park on Christmas Eve to see the 2000 plus luminarias lighting the old mission. This is a trek we make the evening of December 24th more often than not; it is quite centering in the chaos of Christmas. Visitors' voices hush at the spectacle of soft light on the old walls, allowing the wandering carolers to be heard in the candlelit mission and on surrounding pathways. The mission is located on the sweeping floor of the  Santa Cruz River valley, the Santa Rita mountains curbing the view to the east and were this night silhouetted by a near full moon not yet risen. Visitors gather in the mesquite bosque under trees laden with white lights for homemade cookies and hot chocolate before returning to their own versions of the holiday.

Christmas stockings and a pannetone bread pudding made by my daughter occupied us for a good long while Christmas morning, but the day was too gorgeous to stay inside. A hike was in order and we headed over Gates Pass to Saguaro National Park's King Canyon. This is a familiar hiking spot for us -- in fact we've led hikes up it in our capacity as volunteer rangers for the park -- but it never fails to reveal something new. Cactus, including towering saguaros, cling to the fractured rock walls of the canyon, and each turn up the twisting arroyo provides a new view. There are a few places that require a bit of clambering, but it's an easy challenge and you are well rewarded by petroglyphs over a thousand years old at the upper reaches. We continued on to an old CCC built picnic area with a million dollar view for a brief rest, and then proceeded around to the old Gould Mine, one of the many copper mine shafts (covered) that dot the Tucson Mountains. It was an easy walk along a soft shoulder with a beautiful view of south to Baboquivari and Kitt Peak on our way to the parking lot.

We split up one day, the guys heading to guy things (Titan Missile Museum, the Asarco Copper Mine tour, and Avatar in 3-D) while my daughter and I took a self-guided walking tour of Tucson. We revisited some old favorite places, like Elysian Grove in Barrio Viejo, then a B&B where we stayed on our first visit to Tucson in May of 2001.

The tour included Armory Park and passed the Temple of Music and Art where my daughter became engaged at midnight on New Years Eve in 2003 in the midst of a contra dance celebration. We followed the tour's aqua line through downtown, enjoying the history of some of the buildings and appreciating a few old signs. We wandered the renovated train station, still a functioning Amtrak stop, but also home to trendy restaurants and eateries with great seating indoors or out. We had lunch across the street at The Cup Cafe in the historic Hotel Congress, another tradition of ours. We tried to visit Picante, a favorite shop that specializes in Mexican and other mostly South American imports, but alas, they were shut (we did catch them open a couple of days later). It was a terrific mother-daughter day with lots of old favorites and a few new experiences.

We mostly ate at home -- my daughter and I share an interest in cooking and are good in the kitchen together -- but we had a memorable lunch at Taqueria Pico de Gallo in South Tucson. Their namesake specialty is a large cup of fresh fruit spears -- watermelon, mango, pineapple, coconut, and more -- drizzled with lime juice and sprinkled with salt and chili powder. It sounds odd but is amazingly delicious. Everything they make there is good, but if you go make sure to order at least one taco and choose the soft corn tortillas instead of the flour ones. They are the best I've ever eaten; plump, hand-formed, and fresh off the griddle. This is a Tucson must-do if you like Mexican food, and at the easy end of the cost spectrum with ordering and picking up at the counter and meals on styrofoam plates, but the food is exceptional. If you're looking for a high-end experience, my favorite Mexican food in the world (more central Mexican than border) is Cafe Poca Cosa. If you eat nowhere else, eat there. We missed it this visit, but will catch it the next time my kids are in town.

It was a terrific Christmas, rich with experiences and full of motion, [mostly] healthy eating, and precious time together. And the desert will keep on giving us the best weather in the nation, days in the 70s with chilly nights, for months to come.

The Last Day -- The Sky Cries and the Sea Complains

It is our last full day on Hawaii and it seems to be protesting our departure. Or trying to get rid of us. One or the other.

Yesterday as we made our most ambitious exploration of the coral encrusted lava pools that have been our front yard for over a week, complete with fins to make short work of any currents we might encounter near the outer reef, a gentle rain fell on our backs from time to time from a bright enough sky. I was watching a goat fish tease a meal out of a rare sandy bottom with his chin whiskers until I spotted the biggest puffer fish to date, about the size of a football. I tore after it over a shallow belly bumping shelf into the the best coral “bowl” on the reef, only to have him disappear under a shelf draped with lettuce leaf coral. Popping my head up to reorient myself and spot my husband’s snorkel, I saw a wall of black sweeping in from the open ocean. Concerned that there might be lightning to go with that storm, we put the fins to good use and shot back in to the inner pools at record speed and danced across the lava boulders, reaching our house just as the first lashings of hard rain hit. Grateful we’d had an exceptional few hours in the water we retreated to lunch and our books, and a good afternoon of watching the rain from the covered lanai.

In the evening it had cleared to the south and we decided to explore the coastal road, Highway 137, cutting over to the end of the road on Highway 130, terminated by a lava flow many years ago, and hike out to see the lava and steam where in entered the ocean. The road itself turned into the adventure of the evening. Paved, but narrow and twisting and unpainted, the black asphalt merged imperceptibly with the black lava soil, at places canopied by trees so dense you needed headlights. When we arrived at the entrance to the lava viewing area we were turned back by the park attendants -- the wind had shifted and the sulfurous steam clouds smothered the area, making it unsafe to be there. By bedtime there was quite a storm brewing, with rain lashing the windows and the ocean breaking hard on the reef.



This morning the storm was still with us. The gray and heaving sea was dotted with whitecaps. Waves rearing up over the reef were the color of aqua milk glass, skimming the tops off their sugar white foam, leaving it in the wind behind them as they rolled on. Coupled with an increasing tide, the sea pushed into the coral pools to the point that it seemed we were only on a rocky shore, not a chamber laced miracle.

It cleared a bit this afternoon and we were able to snorkel the coral pools one last time, visiting the fish to see how they were reacting to all this excitement. Between the cloudy skies and the turbulence, the visibility wasn’t quite up to par, but we could still see clearly for 20 feet or so. Plenty clear enough to see the large sea turtle we flushed out of the hanging coral shelf he was sheltering out of. He peered out, realized we weren’t going anywhere as long as he was lingering in the same small pool we were in, not five feet from him, and the last we saw of him was his tail end, booking over a shallow buckle of smooth coral, back towards the open sea. We realized it our time in the water wasn’t going to get better than that, and we let the current take us back to shore.

Tomorrow we’ll head back to our beautiful dry desert, just in time -- I feel odd growths on either side of my neck that could be developing gills. A 90% reduction in humidity and some time in the sun should sort me out. But I will not be surprised when I dream of floating, suspended over a watery world populated by fish well-named parrot, trumpet, and butterfly. Hawaii has not seen the last of us.

Coral Pools, Frog Choruses, and Returning to the Womb

Where do you go for a special occasion, such as a fifth wedding anniversary, when you live in the desert and spend weeks each year (soon to be months) in the Colorado Rockies? That’s right.

Aloha from the Big Island of Hawaii. We are in “outlaw” territory, Puna, far from tourist shops, hotels, restaurants, and anything passing for a crowd, perched on the eastern tip of the most southernly and biggest island in the Hawaiian chain. I’m sitting on the third floor lanai of the house we’ve rented at the edge of an island looking out over the Pacific that is uninterrupted until it hits Mexico. The freshest air in the world is caressing my face. The house is named Kaheka Ko’a (Coral Pools) for it’s location a few feet away from the Wai’opae Marine Preserve of dozens of pools formed from lava spilled from flanks of the most active volcano in the world, Mauna Loa.

There’s oceanfront and then there’s oceanfront. I lived for 15 years in the Caribbean, all of it with a view of the sea, much of it on the edge of it, some of it over it, but this is an amazing spot. This unique little community sits on the edge of a lava flow that wiped out a whole town not 40 years ago. This tiny triangle with its collection of houses ranging from modern luxe renditions of Robinson Crusoe tree houses (like this one) to funky little beach shacks is sandwiched between two sizable lava flows, one from 1955 and one from 1960. It is impossible to ignore the geologic origin of this island. The lava formed pools on our ocean side are countless at low tide, but high tide marries them into just a handful. The view changes constantly, but is consistently stunning.

This dawn is like being front row center for a Rorschach version of the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade -- a train of enormous cumulus clouds (oh look, that one’s exactly like an elephant -- see the trunk?) is drifting by just off-shore heading down the island, some with veils of rain dragging on the ocean’s surface. The sun has not yet made an appearance, but the backdrop of striped coral and aqua sky marks the spot of her entrance, all reflecting in the maze of pools like a freeform mosaic. The coqui frogs' night-long symphony has given over to the chatter of birds. The gentle surf rolls over the outer reef a few hundred feet offshore.

On morning #3 (out of nine) we are beginning to feel “belongers” here. We know that the man with the long white hair will appear with the sunrise, spread his yoga mat on a flat spot just off our lanai, and do his own version of a sun salute consisting of the same ritualistic stretch routines and meditation. We know the red haired mongoose will scamper onto the lava rocks for a few moments before running back into the tangle of hibiscus trees and coconut palms that he calls home. We pretty much know that every day will get into the low 80's with humidity to match and that there will be sun and shade and a gentle shower that lasts five minutes and then the cycle with start again. Having lived on an island for so much of my life, half a lifetime ago, this is like hearing an old song you haven’t heard for a long long while. You know all the words but can’t quite remember the way you used to dance to it. I’m remembering. It is as close to returning to the womb as you can get after being born. We are up before the show of the dawn starts and struggling to stay awake after 7:30, a battle we give up around 8 pm. The hushed roar of the ocean, the music of the frogs, and the soft onshore breezes billowing the gauzy curtains in our third floor bedroom with its view of the moonlit sea might have something to do with it. We don’t remember sleeping so long or so deeply.

After my initial (and ritualistic) meltdown during my first foray into an island grocery store -- I can almost understand the $5 gallon of milk, but bananas at over a dollar a pound???!!! -- we visited the Hilo farmers' market on Saturday morning and all is once again right with the world. We followed that by a visit to KTA, the Food City of Hawaii, where I scored thick ahi tuna steaks for $8 a pound and some local grass fed beef. Last night I made mahi-mahi, sauteed with butter and the fragrant local lemons and fresh spring onions. With it we had local pumpkin stewed with coconut milk, fresh ginger, a little Asian chili sauce, and cilantro and a salad of all local produce -- lettuces, green and red, arugula, an avocado the size of a grapefruit, and red and yellow tomatoes, dressed with that amazing lemon and macadamian nut oil. The nearest restaurant is over 10 miles of dark deserted road away -- certainly do-able -- but nowhere on this island could beat our ambiance, and there’s no worry about that extra glass of wine so long as you can navigate the stairs to the bedroom.

When we want to snorkel -- every day, often more than once -- we put on suits, swimming shoes, and grab our masks and our fins (though we often don’t bother with those in these pools of calm water). Down the stairs to the ground floor lanai and out across the lava for a hundred feet or so where we drop into the first lava pool. It is like finding yourself in a huge tropical aquarium. Fish are everywhere, and the pools are flocked with corals of every color and description. Large draping corals like castaway petticoats cover the sides, huge globular corals rest on the bottom, finger-like corals reach from lava shelves. Soft peach, every color of beige and taupe, bright pinks, tea-stained orange, deep lavender, periwinkle blue, acid greens and yellows. Giant multi-colored parrot fish munch on the coral with their beak-like mouths. Trigger fish who look like swimming paint-by-number artwork. Eels with green apple fins. Spotted trunkfish maneuvering their rigid box-like bodies with fins that move like hummingbird wings. Huge horned unicorn fish. Un-puffed puffer fish. Butterfly fish with raccoon masks, “eyes” on their backs, herringbone designs, and the elegant yellow, black and white Moorish Idols with their long trailing thread of a dorsal fin. There’s more than you can possibly take in -- each pool is more beautiful than the last -- but we’re going to try by spending hours in the sea every day.

The biggest problems we’ve encountered are keeping track of our flip-flops and remembering to put sunscreen on that little strip of forehead just above your snorkeling mask. Today we will motivate ourselves to get in the car and head to Volcano National Park where we will hike across a lava field that is hardened but still venting steam through its cracked surface, through a lava tube, and into a rain forest. I feel like I’ve waiting all my life to see molten lava, and today is the day I get to see it spilling into the sea.

Tomorrow we’ll resumed our long snorkeling communion with the sea and its fishes.

Counting Quail

Next to doves, Gambel’s quail are the most ubiquitous birds in and around our yard, unmistakable with their inquisitive question mark topknots. Their behaviors and social structures cycle dramatically with the seasons. Over the winter they form sizeable coveys, but in late winter and early spring the males begin crowing from prominent heights for mates. Paired up, the couples can be seen walking the garden walls, looking for promising nesting spots. Just about any somewhat sheltered spot will do, from under a dense shrub to a plant pot under my big gardenia in the barrio garden. The later complicates the near daily watering requirements as summer heats up since flushing the mother-to-be off her clutch of a dozen or more eggs too many times can make her abandon the nest. We’ve been known to let a plant or two die in such circumstances.

By late spring we’ve usually seen our first long strings of baby quail in the yard, fuzzy pompoms with legs, only hours or minutes from hatching, obediently following mom and dad’s instructions about vacating the nest in an organized fashion. Over the summer we watch the families’ strings of chicks dwindle. You do not want to be the slowest quail sibling. Still, it is a great victory for the parents to raise a quail chick or two to the juvenile stage. The parents are, after all, only trying to replace themselves in their lifetimes, and the chicks are (sadly) an important food source for other desert critters, from coyotes to snakes to raptors.

The quail have been a bit confused in this time of seasonal transition. In the desert the change from summer to winter mimics a second spring rather than fall. Many plants come into a strong second bloom this time of the year. During those inevitable spells of near 100 degree weather during our cool-down period, the heat spikes trigger a touch of the hormones of spring, and some feeble confused crowing ensues, but it is half-hearted and short lived.

Not known particularly for their flying abilities, quail forage on the ground by day for seeds and insects, flying short distances only when necessary. Shortly after sunset they do manage to fly up into their roosts, trees like paloverde and mesquite and even taller cholla cactus with all their thorns. In our back yard the favorite sleeping spot is in our olive tree, seen on the right in this sunset picture. It is a sterile olive and was here when we moved in, pretty enough and drought resistant, and we enjoy the shade it casts and tolerate it though we’d prefer a native tree in that spot. We think its size, about 20 feet tall, and density appeals to the quail, and there is always an interesting flurry of activity there at dusk.

Shortly after the sun drops behind the Tucson Mountains, we hear the congreating coveys just outside out wall start clucking and whooping, mustering the gang to retire to security off the ground. They chatter and call -- whut Whut, Whut WHUT, whut Whut -- and move more-or-less towards the olive tree, gliding like nuns in habits on an Easter egg hunt.

Tonight we decided to sit quietly where we could see them actually fly into the tree, counting their numbers. One, three, five, nine. Twenty three -- oops, that one fell out after a scuffle -- twenty two. There he goes back, twenty three. The roosting process is accompanied by a great squabbling and beating of wings. It is impossible not to anthropomorphize these birds -- “move over,” “I was here first,” “but I ALWAYS sleep there!” In the space of about ten minutes we counted 32 quail bedding down in our olive tree for the night. Eventually the fussing quieted down to a mumbling murmur. And then it was silent.

Friends Again

We arrived back from a week in the Colorado Rockies to two more days well into the triple digits, a real blow after a chilly week which included three days of snow. But yesterday there was clearly something changing with the weather. The sky looked like a meteorologist's cloud sampler. During our morning walk the dawn lit up the pebble paver clouds a bright coral against a robin's egg blue sky. By late morning there was a smorgasbord sky.
Some clouds appeared to have be scraped onto a brilliant blue canvas with a palette knife. Odd smeared lenticular clouds pocked the sky, while others could have prompted 911 calls about UFO's. Low strings of cumulus swept the far horizons.



By 9 PM when we went to bed it was 80 degrees and falling fast. We opened the house, turned off the A/C, and slept soundly, soothed by the fresh breeze and night sounds. Out walking before sunup, the temperatures were in the low 60s and it was blissfully cool. After 9 AM and the house is still open, though that will change soon as we'll hit 90 today, a near normal temperature for this time of the year. October is our big cool down month, dropping a good 10 degrees over the month.

We're getting our second "spring" as the plants rebound from the hard work of surviving a desert summer. Our Mexican sage is in full bloom and the chuparosa is starting to show its hot orange tubular flowers that will sustain our hummingbirds all winter. The Gambel's quail, parental duties over, have returned to their gender segregated coveys; I had a large group of males wander through the backyard yesterday on their eternal quest for food. We saw a straggler turkey vulture atop a telephone pole on our walk out into the desert yesterday morning, an unusual sight around here as they are almost always on the wing. He reluctantly took off, heading south, as we walked under him, possibly disturbing a brief migratory rest.

Fall changes everything for desert dwellers. For we humans, the great summer "hibernation" in the A/C is mostly over. We can emerge and rejoin our outdoor lives for the next eight months and remember exactly why it is that we continue to live here.

There's a change in the air

Things change around this time in the desert, even though Fall is still over two weeks away. Our days are shortening as the sun's trajectory lowers. The high temperatures still flirt with the century mark, but that's way different from edging up on 110. As our seriously insufficient monsoon staggers to a close, the humidity will vaporize and cool will return to our nights, allowing for open windows and the symphony of sounds of the nocturnal desert will once again color our dreams.

The animals are behaving differently. It's been many days since quail parents have put their adolescents through their paces in our garden. The mated pairs are splitting up, reforming into coveys until spring drives them back into coupledom. The white winged doves have, for the most part, headed south though I did see one straggler barreling across the back yard yesterday, headed for the sheltering shade of a big mesquite. Tarantulas are out and about, looking for love. This male (you can tell by the black legs) was waiting for me on my front doormat when I headed to the mailbox. I assumed he was looking for some other blond (females are a dark blond color), but he hung around the courtyard for a few days and then we found him crumpled and dead. Older than many people's pets, male tarantulas breed at about eleven years old and die shortly thereafter. A day after he lay motionless, we found him pecked into bits -- a furry leg here, a carapace there -- the circle of life. A road runner on the hunt for lizards in our yard dropped into an odd crouch before walking up the leaning mesquite trunk and onto the wall, dropping to the other side. A collared lizard chilled in comfort on a cushion still in the shade in my barrio garden.








Plants are beginning to rally, ready for their second spring. While much of the rest of the country's vegetation is beginning to shut down for the Big Sleep, ours is getting its second wind!
Plants that hunkered down for mere survival over the summer are now finding the energy for a first or second bloom.

We took a hike up King Canyon this morning on the west side of the Tucson Mountains. Resurrection fern was green and limberbushes were leafed out. Ocotillos exploded from the ground like huge green pipe cleaners, leafed out from what rain we've had over the past few weeks. At 9 AM it was already quite warm and still humid from the remnant moisture from recent hurricane that hit Baja California, but there was plenty of shade in the canyon and we took it slow, enjoying being outside again in full daylight.
Not that the gorgeous walk up the canyon isn't its own reward, there are walls of petroglyphs along the way, images pecked in the desert varnish of the rocks over a thousand years ago by Native American Indians. The hike back to the trail head on an old mining road rimming the canyon, cooled by a nice breeze, was over all too soon.

Despite feeling that Mother Nature has been behaving a lot like Lucy with the football -- we've watched longingly as huge storms have drifted by us, leaving us dry but putting on a good light show -- we are becoming friends again with the desert and are impatient to be once again fully immersed in our love affair with this place.