DESTINATION Pueblo Grande Museum and Archaeological Park

Hohokam people might have lived. The new exhibit re-creates an adobe compound and a pithouse cluster. We step down the height of a curb into the one-room dwelling, with slats of saguaro cacti, ocotillo and other desert plants paneling the wall.

Indians guide the museum in re-creating ancient traditions, including roasting agave at the annual Ancient Technologies Day in March. The museum's biggest event is the Indian Market. Held off-site in December, more than 500 Indian artisans exhibit crafts from pottery to jewelry. The museum also sponsors petroglyph hikes, lectures and archaeology sessions for both kids and adults. In its educational play area, our son enjoyed building a Hohokam village from blocks and making pottery rubbings.

The grounds, once threatened by development, now encompass more than 100 acres protected by the City of Phoenix Parks and Recreation Department. Visitors can arrange a special tour to see some of its treasures, including the Park of Four Waters. We walk to the site with Chris Johnson, a museum aide, past modern canals that follow Hohokamwaterways, through locked gates and over railroad tracks until we reach the spot. An airplane seems to barrel right at us.

"This is the exciting part," says Johnson. "We're right in line with the Sky Harbor International Airport runway."

There are more than 20 canals in this area. Two of the ditches run parallel to each other, one gently rounded and the other cut in a V shape. Hohokam canals measured as much as 30 feet wide and 20 feet deep. The shape of the canal beds controlled the speed of water: If it flowed too fast, the canal banks eroded; too slowly, and sediment clogged them.

Despite their canal mastery, the Hohokam's population outstripped their ability to live off the desert during floods and droughts. They scattered a few decades before Columbus arrived in the New World, and today's Akimel O'odham Indians and the Tohono O'odham regard them as their ancestors.

Something on the ground catches my eye. I pick up a triangle-shaped piece of pottery, as thick as two stacked quarters. The red design flows fresh and fluid across its surface. I gently replace it for those who come after us. AH

{hike of the month} Hikers on Thompson Trail Share the Area Bounty With Fly Fishermen

PICTURE A LONG alpine valley at nearly 9,000 feet of elevation with a blue-ribbon trout stream running its entire length and forested slopes of spruce, fir and yellow-leafed aspen trees ascending to surrounding peaks. Imagine a level trail that meanders with the stream, mostly in sun, sometimes in shadow, never more than a few yards from the stream bank. Add a sunny Arizona fall morning with frost underfoot and a fine mist exhaled from the shallow, fast-moving waters. That's a description of Forest Service Trail 629 (Thompson Trail) in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests, one fine mid-October day when some friends and I hiked it. The trail traces a portion of the West Fork of the Black River near Big Lake in Arizona's White Mountains and was created with the assistance of many volunteers under the guidance of the Forest Service and the Arizona Game and Fish Department.

The round-trip length of the hike is either 4.8 or 6.5 miles, depending on whether you hike Trail 628A, the shorter loop that begins where the Thompson Trail meets the West Fork Trail, 628 in the trail system. Because it traverses sensitive riparian habitat, the Thompson Trail 629 is for hikers only. Trail 628, a section of which travels along an old railroad grade above and parallel to the Thompson Trail, is open to both hikers and mountain bikers. On this day there are no other hikers, only a fly fisherman working a deep pool behind one of many rock dams erected for stream improvement. We keep our distance, not wanting to spook his prey or break his concentration, but pause long enough to watch him fluidly wield rod and fly line. It's catch-and-release only on this portion of the river, and no live bait is allowed. Posted signs along the stream warn anglers to release caught trout immediately. Save for the fly fisherman, our only company is wildlife. Numerous game trails approach the river from heavily forested uplands, and animal droppings and tracks are everywhere in the soft earth. At one point a cow elk appears, spots us and disappears. A quartet of Clark's nutcrackers follows our progress downstream. These crow-sized pale gray birds, sometimes called "camp robbers" for their habit of raiding campsites for food scraps, approach boldly, and we wonder if other hikers have hand-fed them. Watercress flourishes in lush beds beneath the stream bank and, although tempted, we don't harvest it-too great a risk of giardiasis, a waterborne intestinal disease that can make you wish you were dead. On a rock near the watercress, an American dipper does a series of pushups before diving beneath the surface for some underwater tidbit. As we near the intersection of the Thompson Trail and Trail 628, the sun has warmed the river trailside, and butterflies flit among the few remaining fall flowers. A couple in our party decides to hike 628 back to the trailhead. We'll return the same way we came, along the stream. Take your time, we tell them. None of us is in any hurry to leave this patch of Eden. Al