Goodbye, Arizona!

Scarlet globe mallow, a flower I know from the prairie grasslands.
Its color is a little lost here in the red painted desert.

A pair of rufous-crowned sparrows came up to see me. This is a bird I've actively sought and eventually found in the Bisbee and Portal areas. And here it was, unbidden.

Gotta say these desert birds' beauty is on the subtle side.

I have new and redoubled respect for people who photograph birds in the desert. The lighting conditions can be hard, hard, hard. Can't say I got much that I'm proud of in the bird realm.

A Gambel's quail slips through the scrub. Every one I saw had babies with it, but getting a photo of them is like photographing will o' the wisps. 

Desert cottontails have extra fluffy tails, which they stick out more than our eastern bunnies do.

And speaking of subtle beauty, here's a juniper titmouse, with nothing to adorn or recommend it but its personality, which is pleasant. And she makes all her own clothes.

Not dissing desert birds. Just having a little fun. You know I love a subtle bird as much as the next guy.

At this point I've long passed the 4 mile mark, and I've swung all the way around the back of the mesa. It's getting hot. I'm thinking about catching my plane down in Phoenix. I'm looking through a chain link fence at the runway for the tiny perfect Sedona airport, and trying to imagine landing here in a small jet. You would not want to overshoot the runway. The prickly pear is waiting for your tires. I have to think this airport with its stunning surrounds is a bucket list item for a lot of private pilots. 

You can tell there's a runway because there is a tiny orange wind sock to the left of the big rock formation. :)

I'm starting to fret about getting to Phoenix on time when I hear a dry croaking rattle.

Huh. That sounds like a cuckoo, I think. I prick my ears and look for motion. 

And it is. This sound, which most would overlook as nothing at all, leads me to America's biggest cuckoo, a ground cuckoo, in fact, our only one. A roadrunner!

I couldn't have picked a better bird to bid me goodbye to Arizona, and speed me on my way.

Thank you, desert. I needed that. You're welcome. Now pick up the pace. Meep meep!

I step out faster yet, and at the 4.7 mile mark (by my Fitbit's reckoning), I see people doin' the Vortex thing at the trail's beginning.

No time to om. I'm zipping back to Sky Ranch Lodge, throwing my camera in the carry-on, and heading south, down into the low desert. No thanks to the inaccurate map at the trailhead!

Where I take photos of my car thermometer as I drive, starting at 107 degrees, and culminating in this beauty as I enter Phoenix. A personal temperature best. It scares the bejabbers out of me. That's outside temperature.

I think about the definition of "habitable," and all the things we do to occupy uninhabitable places. We're good at that. We're like roaches. Roaches with technology. But we're nothing without our air conditioning, our fossil fuels. 

We are nothing to the roadrunner, who pants in the shade of the creosote bush.

He lives here, and he has everything he needs in his lithe body to survive the desert. 

Desert birds, plain and fancy: amazements, all.

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...

Up on Top of Cathedral Rock

Cathedral Rock is another vortex site in Sedona, Arizona. People say that the junipers grow in a spiral at vortex sites. They were spiraling like mad here.

I was attuned to the crazy spiralling vortex energy, but probably too excited by the prospect of climbing Cathedral Rock to fully feel it coming up through my feet the way it did at Red Rock Crossing.

These trees amaze me, the way they seem to be able to sprout living needles out of what looks like dry driftwood.

This one was situated so as to be a handhold for a steep bit of trail. 

I marveled at its smoothness, at the human hand grease that had waxed it to a fine patina.

The summit grew ever nearer. Well, "summit" is a negotiable thing. I am not the sort of person who would consider the heads of these hoodoos a "summit." For me, the summit was the first saddle in between them. High enough for Zick, you betcha. Not a crampon/piton gal.

The view got pretty dizzying in a very short time. 

It was a most rewarding climb.

Russell had told me about a mystery plant they'd seen that looked like an evergreen with tiny needles, but with white five-petaled flowers.

My first thought was that it looked like a potentilla, or a rose, with those five petals, that puff of yellow anthers.

Looking more closely, I found a seedhead that clinched its membership in the rose family. These plumy seeds are reminiscent of prairie smoke (Geum triflorum), also, surprisingly, a rose family member. 

I was unsurprised to find the "flowering evergreen" in a quick online search. Cliff Rose, Cowania mexicana.

I'd see it growing all over the South Rim of the Grand Canyon the next day!

Cowania mexicana seedhead

See the similarity? 

Prairie Smoke, Geum triflorum

Near Chase Lake, North Dakota. This photo makes me weep. 

Plant Taxonomy at Harvard taught by Carroll Williams is without a doubt the most useful course I ever took. I recall someone telling me that, while exhorting me to take the course, and I was a believer after about two classes. Plant taxonomy is not only fun to learn, it's surpassingly useful for the rest of your life.

We had been passed on the way up by a very fit older German gentleman in little shorts who said he climbs it most days. Well, that would explain his speed and thighs. He got up to the saddle  well ahead of us (see what I mean by its being high enough for me?) The view went on forever. Wow.

When Russell and I got there (Barbara was nursing a healing knee down below), this man was seated and in deep conversation with a woman with long gray hair whom he'd apparently met on the climb. He was saying something about a race of people from another planet who have been here before and will return in 2060. She said, "Oh, cool. Wow. Huh. I may not be around then."

Ya think? I started to chuckle silently, trying not to snort. I tried to imagine a conversation like that happening in Ohio, and failed.

I also tried to imagine myself climbing out on this ledge like these young people (see the red shirt?) with their selfie stick. Failed at that, too. We Ohioans are neither very imaginative nor tolerant of great heights. Speaking strictly for myself. 

But I sure enjoyed climbing Cathedral Rock with Barbara and Russell. I mean to do it again someday soon.

Thanks to my sweet friend Maria C. for the tips on where to go and what to do in Sedona!

Sedona, You Have to Stop.

The view from Sky Ranch Lodge. Ridiculous. 

Meanwhile, in the garden, an agave leaves a perfect print of the older leaf on the new unfolding leaf.

That gets me. And it's the whole reason I have an agave. Well, that and that my friend Lori sent me one, knowing I'd love it.

Seeing them in the wild is just the bomb. Even though I would never, ever want to fall into one. That could actually kill you. They are sharp as knives. Even my little baby here at home has nailed me a bunch of times. I still love her.

The light plays on them making endless kaleidescope shapes and patterns.

Take a picture of me with this massive agave, please. (On the grounds of Sky Ranch Lodge).

So Barbara Samuelson did. Now that's a decorative plant. I could use one of those in my yard in Ohio, but I'd probably have to take out a rider on our homeowner's insurance.

My friend Maria told me I had to climb Cathedral Rock. So I saved it for when Russell and Barbara could come along, knowing it would be awesome.

It was so cool to get closer and closer, and have this looming rock take shape right before us.

With an ocotillo and Opuntia tonsure. The sky couldn't have been any bluer this morning.

Looking down, some nameless pompom plantie. I wanted to take it home, but I knew it would hate Ohio.

Looking up, Russell against an impossibly blue sky. We speculated whether the sky just looked that blue by contrast with the red rock, or whether it was really that clear, that blue. 

We were going up into one of those saddles between the hoodoos, we were.

 I can't take all this beauty. 

Sedona, you have to stop.