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National Geographic : 1974 Feb
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long drop to the swift, muddy waters below. Heading north, we forded the clear, tum bling waters of Sycamore Creek near its mouth, then started up a rocky trail that climbed the flank of H K Mesa. Big saguaros raised their fluted columns and supplicatory arms on all sides. The whiplike multiple stems of the ocotillo, soon to sport flamelike flower clusters at their tips, swayed gently in the warm breeze. The green-barked, green-branched palo verdes had several weeks to go before ex ploding in a mass of yellow blooms, but the thorny mesquites were just beginning to be feathered with delicate acacialike leaves; jumping cholla bristled with evil spines; prickly pear and hedgehog cactuses were starting to bud; in another month their gor geous waxy flowers would unfold to the sun. I HAVE A DEEP LOVE of these hardy desert plants; even in midsummer, when they appear sere and gray and spinily de fensive, there is a fascination in their special adaptations to the ultimate tests of heat and drought, a certain nobility in their tenacious hold on life. But on this gentle spring day, it was not so much these typical desert species that caught and held the eye; it was rather the unwonted greenness of the slopes and hilltops, and the exuberant outburst of wild flowers of every shape and hue. Viewed on a torrid July day, the rocky slopes and sandy flats seem incapable of sprouting anything so lovely and delicate as the desert mariposa or sand verbena. And yet you know that in the sunbaked earth lie wait ing the seeds of its rebirth. And every spring the miracle recurs, with greater or lesser eclat, depending on the amount of winter rainfall. The past winter and early spring had been among the wettest on record. And the display of wild flowers was as spectacular as any that old-timers could recall. The trail wound be tween domes of yellow brittlebush, broad mats of raspberry-red owl clover, masses of blue lupine, wide splashes of golden poppies, apricot-hued desert mallows, and a host of humbler flowers. We talked little as we rode, marveling, through this wild garden. Now and then a mourning dove cooed from a paloverde. Mostly, the only sounds were the breathing and snorting of the horses as they labored uphill, the creak of the saddles, the scraping of hoof over rock, and the occasional clatter of a stone dislodged from the trail. Near the top of the rise I spotted two mule deer, which took off with springy bounds and disappeared over the skyline. Deer, black bear, javelina, and mountain lion are hunted in the Mazatzal-the lion inexcusably, in my opinion. It takes no skill or courage to gun down a cat your dogs have treed. And lions are so few that even in Ari zona's wilds the species' long-term survival is far from secure. Thetop ofHKMesawasalong,level ex panse of thick emerald-green grasses, sprin kled with wild flowers and with well-spaced small trees that gave it a parklike appearance. My palomino had been impatient at having to trail the packhorses, and I now gave him free rein. He broke into an easy canter, sla loming between the trees and shrubs; we surprised a jackrabbit, hunkered down in the shade of a bush, and he took off at high speed in a bouncing, zigzag flight. Our route dropped off H K Mesa, down a slope where the poppies, lupine, mallow, and owl clover were absolutely startling in their intermingled profusion, up a steep, badly eroded switchback trail, over a ridge of red sandstone, and down an equally precipitous descent to the confluence of two creeks and the remains of an old cattle or sheep camp. T DAYBREAK a thick rime of frost cov ered my sleeping bag, and the grass sparkled with ice crystals in the sun's first rays. After breakfast Larry and I rode toward Cypress Butte and Cedar Basin, a long, hard zigzag climb up a rough trail that led us, after a short walk, to an abandoned mine shaft blasted out of the rock. While admiring the enterprise and dogged ness of the men who had dug this hole in so inaccessible a spot, I deplored the provision in the Wilderness Act that allows continued prospecting and mining in certain wilderness "Beep-beep - zap!" Unlike his cartoon counterpart, the real roadrunner is more hunter than hunted. He sprints across the desert floor in pursuit of a meal, making quick hash of mice, lizards, young quail, and even rattlesnakes. Treating man as a curiosity, he has been known to race stagecoaches and cars for the sport of it. National Geographic, February 1974
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