Eating Prickly Pear. Ow!

So this amazing thing happened to me on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, unbidden and unexpected, as are most amazing things. 

I've written my column, "True Nature," for the Nov/Dec. issue of Bird Watcher's Digest, which actually comes out in mid-October, all about it.

So I'll save it until after our subscribers have had a chance to read about it. 

If you'd like to subscribe to this family-owned and operated magazine (one of the very last in the country), which also happens to be the best birding magazine going, please click here, or see the right sidebar of this blog, where it says True Nature. As more and more of the daily content we consume comes out of our computers and phones, print magazines everywhere are seeing drops in subscribers. If you'd like to help, please subscribe!

The amazing Pulitzer-nominated natural history writer Scott Weidensaul just signed on as our lead columnist, filling the enormous shoes of Kenn Kaufman, who's got book deadlines galore. I really enjoy writing my column, even though the deadlines creep up on me every time. It's good to have to put your experiences into readable form. Hence this blog...

Just FYI: This is Post #2015, since I started blogging in December, 2005. And now back to our regularly scheduled illustrated musings.

I drove back south to Sedona, dopily high from my incredible day and a stunning sunset on the Grand Canyon rim. I looked at my flight time out of Phoenix and decided to eke one more short hike out of flight day.

I'd go to the Airport Vortex site and hike the loop trail that goes along the flank of a mesa, atop which sits the Sedona Airport.

Scrub jays said YEaAAah!! Good choice! 

I looked at the trail map--it said it was a 4 mile loop. No problem. I wasn't flying out until 2 pm. Yeah, I had a 2 hour drive, but I can hike fast. Ain't skeert of miles. I love to cover ground, especially when it's new.

I love this little purple verbena that grows everywhere, defying the desert. Bloom where you're planted, it seems to say.

I try, every day.

A whiptail paused to consider me

(feel free to chip in on which whiptail; my reptile guide has me thoroughly bamboozled)

then, in a disarmingly birdlike motion, scratched its face with a hind leg.

I've never seen so much prickly pear in my life. The slopes were pale green with it. 

I tried to imagine going off trail and discarded the idea.

The ripening cactus fruits, called "tunas," were tantalizing. My parents gave me Euell Gibbons' Stalking the Wild Asparagus when I was just a kid, and it sank in. I love trying new wild foods.

So do these bugs, apparently. They looked like they'd be sucking juice out of the cactus pears.

I twisted a tuna off a pad and immediately got dozens of tiny spines in my knuckles. It was as if they'd leapt off the fruit into my skin. Wow. That is really annoying. Will have to be more careful next time.

So after two tries in which I was thoroughly bespined, and having to sit down and pick each damn one out, some so tiny I had to use my teeth, I reverted to my primate roots and found a tool: my rental car key. I held the tuna down with a rock and used the key to dig some flesh out so I could taste it.

Sour and rather nice, with lots and lots of seeds. I suspected from its sour taste and color that this tuna was not dead ripe and decided to keep looking for some that were.

I didn't have to look long.

Ripeness! These, when keyed out, were tolerably sweet, and I could see how you could make a nice jelly from them. Lots of pecten. Not a jelly indulger, but I hear it's got a gorgeous wine-red color.

What a cool plant, but it's all about self-defense, protecting its juicy pads and fruit. 

Javelinas don't care. They eat 'em, spines and all. I wonder how that works. Just one tiny spine in a finger can preoccupy me until I work it out. I took a fishhook cactus spine from my greenhouse in the right index finger, and I wasn't able to get it out before we went on a snorkeling trip to Belize. I remember saying to Bill, "You know what you can do with an infected cactus spine in your right index finger?" 

"NOTHING."

Seriously, it impacted everything from typing to cooking to washing my hair. The salt water worked on the injury for several days and to my great joy it finally popped out when I surfaced, jubilant from having swum right over a giant spotted eagle ray, and decided to squeeze it (my finger, not the giant spotted eagle ray) one more time, just because I was feeling lucky.

Bloop! Pus, and the pressure it builds up, is a wonderful biomechanical operant. Aided by saltwater, it's magical.

Sometimes relief, just not feeling pain any more, is the best feeling of all.  

My hand, before the spine popped out...

What is a Vortex? And: Being Stupid in the Desert

On Friday morning, July 31, I had a whole day to myself. It felt like Christmas morning. I could do anything I wanted to. And everywhere I turned was beauty so searing I just stood and stared.

I went over to the festival hall, the Sedona Performing Arts Center at Red Rock High School, just to check in and make sure I was where I was supposed to be.

The first thing I saw was a family of Gambel's quail.

It would be hard to design a more appealing bird. Pleasingly plump, alert, beautifully marked, with a little bobbing topknot atop the sweetest masked face. They look like someone dressed them up in doll clothes. 

There are six quail chicks in this photo. Believe it. And each one had a mini topknot. I croaked.

I think there are seven chicks with the adult in this shot. They're crummy, I know, but they're what I got. And I only got them by imitating the chicks' soft whistle, which drew the family out for a look at me.

Phainopeplas were everywhere. This striking member of a tropical family, the silky-flycatchers, is our only one in temperate zones. Males are shiny blue-black with mostly white underwings. This is a female. That stuff coming off her head is her crest. Crazy. Phainopeplas eat the fruit of desert mistletoe, mostly, and they travel around in bunches like waxwings do.

I decided to go for a hike. I didn't know where. I drove down to Red Rock Crossing Park, but they wanted $10 just to go in. I didn't have any money with me. I drove up on a ridgetop and saw a trailhead sign off Red Rock Loop that said, "Secret Slickrock Trail." Well, that sounded good to me. So off I went, in mid-morning, big camera rig by my side. No water with me. Duh. Well, it was my first hike, and I didn't think I'd be gone all that long. I started seeing things.

Here's why the quail babies need to be so cryptic. A Cooper's hawk waits for her morning Cornish hen.

She launches like a bullet

and I track her against the hard light

getting one lousy shot after another. I'm out of shape, lenswise. I've been shooting iPhone photos all year.

I'm enchanted by the little verbena that grows amidst prickly pear. It reminds me of the peach-colored one I have at home, except that it's what Thalassa Crusoe calls "paradise purple," the color that all flowers seem to revert to.

Paradise purple goes really well with green, blue, red, everything. If you are wondering what color to paint your garden bench, try Paradise purple. I guarantee it'll go with everything. My personal theory is that that's because shadows have lots of violet in them, and shadows are everywhere. My favorite watercolors are the ones where I remember to make the shadows violet.

Before I know it I'm a pretty good piece from the car. But it's soo beautiful. I keep walking.

A new vista opens up with every few yards I walk. How can I stop?

A rock wren (Salpinctes obsoletus) urges me onward with a call like a short in a wire. I love its Latin name. This is a monotypic genus, which means there's only one species in it. Such a cool little bird. The last rock wren I saw was spookin' around a pile of concrete slabs in the middle of the prairie in North Dakota. How it found those make believe rocks, I will never know. It was good to see this one on honest rocks, even if he was a bit molty.

It wasn't long before I realized I had been stupid to leave on a hike without water. I could only marvel at how hot it was getting, for 10 AM. And how dry I was feeling. I'm used to running for three hours or more at home in Ohio without drinking anything. This was much different. I stopped in every little bit of shade beneath the small junipers, then moved on. I came to what must have been the Secret Slick Rock, and walked out on it. Far below, I could see the park I had hoped to enter. I could see the entrance booth, and it looked like if I could find a way down the steep cliff face, I could circumvent that and get into the park. I figured there had to be water down there. 

I picked my way down the cliff, finally reaching a dead end with a drop of about 20'. D'oh. I backtracked and found a rock cairn. A trail! OK. Let's follow that and see where it goes. To my delight, it started to descend. Now we were talking. I hiked down into the canyon, getting thirstier with every step.  I reached the shade of deciduous trees and found some blackberries. They were big, juicy and fruity as marionberries. Yay. That helped. I do believe I will!

Sure enough, I found my way all the way down into the park, and glory be! there were a couple of hosetaps! I stuck my head under one and drank and drank. I knew I'd have to tank up to make it all the way back up to my car, maybe two miles distant. But first I wanted to explore a bit.

 A beautiful creek flows through the park, and there were views of Cathedral Rock from there. The bottom was extremely slippery, so I decided to leave all my electronics on the bank rather than risk a fall with them into the water. I took one last iPhone shot before I crawled like a hurt frog across the creek to the red rocks on the right side. I literally had to navigate on all fours or wind up on my butt, floating downstream.

After lounging on the rocks for awhile, I crossed back and made my way to the vortex site. There are a number of vortex sites around Sedona, and everybody knows about them, makes pilgrimages to them to do yoga and meditation and hang out. It seems that kinetic or magnetic or beneficial or female energy (take your pick, mix and match) from the earth comes up and out at these sites and does all kinds of wonderful things for you. It also is said to make the old junipers on vortex sites grow in a spiral. Hmm. I'd never heard of anything like that. I was bemused by the residents' stubborn use of the plural, "vortexes." And decided to continue to refer to them as "vortices," because I have more than a passing familiarity with Latin usage, and I couldn't do otherwise. I got corrected once, which made me snort a little. Find out more, but not much more, here.

I strike a pretty good balance, at least in my own mind, between the skeptical scientist and the hopeful mystic believer. Rather than accept them at face value, I want some kind of proof of these claims, and I'm more than happy to be my own guinea pig.

I walked out onto the deeply grooved and groovy rock and faced the Cathedral formation.

And I felt this nutty sensation, this sort of spiraling lift of zoop!! that started at the soles of my feet and shot through my body and out the top of my head. I stood there breathing hard, exhilarated, looking around like a newborn foal. Well, that was different!

When I came back through, having made my way to Buddha Beach, I was talking to some people  I'd fallen in with who had asked me about vortices (heh) and I failed to feel the zoop. That's OK. I felt it the first time, when I was alone, and it was pretty neat. 

I thought about the characterization of the vortex energy as "female." And I found myself in an open, receptive state to whatever might present itself. Not questing, not goal-driven. Just willing to wait and let things happen.

To me, that's a feminine outlook, more passive, Zen-infused, if you will, than questing or acquisitive. It's a state where I live most of the time.

Kind of like sitting back and appreciating whatever birds come by, rather than charging off trying to tick bridled titmouse off your list, because you've done your homework and you know they're supposed to be there, and by gum you're gonna be the one to get 'em.

More on that anon.