Sycamore Canyon, a Special Oasis

BY: Cliff Ransom

GOING DEEP INTO A BORDER OASIS

photographs by Randy Prentice

text by Cliff Ransom

SEARCH AS HARD AS YOU CAN AND YOU STILL WON'T FIND AN UGLY OASIS.

Where grass and water rise from desert hardpan, the earth sighs with cool, green relief. Calm permeates everything, from the slowflowing water to the slow-swaying trees to your slow-moving feet as you hike down the trail.

Across Arizona there are 20 or so idyllic oases that carry the name Sycamore Canyon. Though each one is beautiful and each unique, the Sycamore Canyon just west of Nogales is in a class of its own. Right on the U.S.-Mexico border, about 75 miles southwest of Tucson, Sycamore ranks as one of the most biologically diverse spots in the United States, a place where plants and animals mingle in numbers more like the rich forests of the southern Appalachians than those of southern Arizona.

And the scenery's not bad either. Soaring rock walls hem in isolated pools. Sunlight filters through thick, leafy trees. In Sycamore Canyon, it's easy to believe that you're the last person on Earth. At least, that's what I had in mind when my friend Shana and I planned to spend three days of glorious isolation hiking 12 miles to the border with Mexico and back.

About half a day in from the Ruby Road trailhead, things were going fine. The hiking in the canyon was easy, the scenery was spectacular and the isolation we'd sought was more than I imagined. Then I heard a voice.

He must have been watching us for a while but didn't pipe up until we got close. "You cannot pass," sounded a voice, echoing off the stone like some command out of Grimm's Fairy Tales. My head snapped up, and I shifted under my backpack. A man with slightly graying shoulder-length hair perched on a rock with his back to a tremendous cliff. The rock arched over his head like it was about to collapse.

"The canyon, it comes like this," he said, and held his hands closely together to indicate a tight squeeze. "And the water, like this," pointing high upon his neck, signifying deep water. He spoke with a French accent, which was strange some 5 miles from Mexico, but no matter. "The only way through, I think, is to swim."

Normally, water is Sycamore's greatest asset, and springtime, when the bloom is in full swing and the creek runs strong, makes the best time to visit. In March 2004, however, spring had sprung more than usual.

All around us, scores of small waterfalls gurgled and hiccuped while big, hulking sycamore, ash, willow and oak trees erupted with fresh-sprouted greenery. Frogs leaped into eddies, and the ground sang with a very undesertlike squish.

But while a dip on any other 80-degree day would be welcome, a swim bearing 40 pounds of camping gear was not something I'd planned. For months, Shana, an aspiring herbalist, and I, a recovering biologist, had studied old scientific papers and collected flora and fauna lists to prepare for our trip. Now, according to an out-ofplace Frenchman, the deal was off. Shana looked at me, unnerved. "Well, what do we do now?" she asked. Good question. I had no idea."Oh, it'll be fine," I said quickly so the Frenchman wouldn't understand. Then I looked up. From around the bend, a group of hikers approached, the look of the defeated smeared across their faces. "We are the only ones in this canyon," the Frenchman said, motion-ing to his compatriots. "If you pass that section, the narrow one, you are alone." Then he followed grimly, "But this, I think, it is impossible."

TURNS OUT, THE FRENCHMAN WAS FULL OF IT. We found

Acknowledging that our three-day hike may have been reduced to a morning's stroll, Shana and I bid the Frenchman adieu, determined to negotiate the slot pools about a quarter-mile down. Maybe the water was too high, and maybe there was no way around, but if by chance there was, we stood to be utterly alone in one of Arizona's most spectacular canyons.slot pools, and they were filled neck-deep with slow-moving water. But with some delicate scrambling over polished rock, Shana and I were left standing on a beach next to a clear pool created by the flow of a steadfast creek. Schools of tiny fish, rare Sonoran chub, glittered underneath the surface. In the distance, a tree creaked and a barely audible breeze whispered overhead.

For all his foolish authority, the Frenchman had been right about one thing: We were very, very alone. Without hesitation, I tore off my clothes and made fast for the water. As I splashed and gasped, Shana opted to climb a nearby rock. Watching my antics was a lot more entertaining than getting wet.

After about half an hour, we saddled our packs and continued toward the border, picking our way between walls barely 50 feet apart. There are no maintained trails in Sycamore, just a network of braided, and at times indecipherable, footpaths. The going is slow, but that's fine. Any faster and I might have missed the clumps of dried oak leaves dancing across still water, or the barely distinguishable prints of a rabbit stamped at the water's edge.

About 3 miles into the canyon, Shana and I slowed our pace even more. A few weeks earlier, an archaeologist for Coronado National Forest, Bill Gillespie, had described to me a set of about 20 pictographs, probably Hohokam or Trincheras, painted near the entrance to Peñasco Canyon. He was pretty vague about their location, so we looked under overhangs and peered into small caves, imagining our own art as we went-clouds and clowns and hunters and arrows.

Since the desert has been the desert, Sycamore Canyon, with its cool, clean flow has been a hotbed of human activity. The rockart painters came and went intermittently from approximately A.D. 500-1300, leaving behind grinding holes, metate shards andwe saddled our packs and continued toward the border, picking our way between walls barely 50 feet apart. There are no maintained trails in Sycamore, just a network of braided, and at times indecipherable, footpaths. The going is slow, but that's fine.

Some very well-hidden pictographs (we never did find any).

Soon after, the local O'odham Indians used Sycamore as a wellwatered passage through the surrounding Pajarito Mountains. They probably passed the route along to Father Eusebio Francisco Kino, the pioneering missionary of southern Arizona and Sonora, Mexico, on his way to found the San Jose de Tumacacori Mission in the late 1600s. Not one century later, the famed captain of the Presidio San Ignacio de Tubac, Juan Bautista de Anza, is thought to have visited the canyon repeatedly in his campaign to subdue the Apache Indians. Today, Sycamore sees a lot less action, but still has a steady flow of birders, botanists and hikers-some legal, and as with the occasional border jumper, some not.

Just before sundown, Shana and I found a juniper-covered berm that promised flatter sleeping quarters than the creek bed. The spot, set above a dogleg in the creek, had seen visitors before, or so we guessed from the well-used fire ring. We set up the tent in a quiet, businesslike manner, had some split-pea soup and tortillas, and then retired.

Any experienced camper is used to things that go bump in the night. But a repeated bump followed by a loud tear is a little jarring. Something had found the food bag hanging in a tree. I growled as only a man waked from a peaceful night's sleep can do, and popped my head out of the tent. I couldn't see a thing. A bright half-moon filled the sliver of sky above and blinded me like daylight. An owl hooted nearby and a quiet cool hung in the air. In the distance, a set of paws fled over dry leaves.

The next morning, a gaggle of vocal Mexican jays settled nearby, and hovering hummingbirds kept mistaking the tent for a flower. There was no sleeping in, so I went to check on our night visitor. The food was intact, thankfully, but underneath the hanging bag was a multitude of determined looking prints. It was a coati, and a crafty one; and it wasn't our only guest. All around camp there were signs. A troop of javelinas had passed through at some point, along with a white-tailed deer. There were many small tracks I couldn't identify and one rather large one I hoped was my own boot. It seemed the diversity I'd come looking for had found me first.

THE SECRET TO SYCAMORE CANYON'S EXTRAORDINARY range of plants and animals is its location. Set at the confluence of the Rocky Mountains, the Sierra Madre and the Sonoran Desert, the canyon contains three bioregions' worth of flora and fauna, all drawn to this perennial watercourse-a true southern Arizona rarity. Alligator juniper trees covered in subtropical ball moss shade stands of columbines. Elegant trogons from Mexico hold court with highly prized locals like the rose throated becard. In Sycamore, there are plants that are uncommon, endangered or quite possibly grow nowhere else on Earth.

To my untrained eye, the variety is a jumble. But to one man, Sycamore's greatest champion, it was worth saving. The man's name was Leslie Goodding, and he was one of the most prolific plant collectors in the West.

Though not a trained botanist, Goodding gathered some 50,000 plant samples in his day, most of which are now housed in the University of Arizona Herbarium. He has 10 different plants named after him, and he named about 30 more. Goodding's favorite place was Sycamore Canyon.

As a field scientist from the late 1800s to the mid-1940s, Goodding was witness to the sometimes-brutal transformation of the West in the name of ranching and mining. He was adamant not to let the same happen to Sycamore. Goodding wrote journal articles and gave lectures on what he called a "Hidden Botanical Garden."

"Any time he had a chance to talk to a Forest Service official, or anyone really, he would tell them about Sycamore," his daughter, Charlotte Reeder, a scientist with the University of Arizona Herbarium, told me. "He was very anxious to have something happen before the cattle came in."

Thank goodness he did. In 1970, three years after Goodding's death, a large part of the canyon was designated the Goodding Research Natural Area and granted protection similar to federal wilderness. A wire fence was strung up to keep out the cattle and a big GRNA sign was hung.

The sign is gone now ("With two o's and two d's, that's too good a target," Charlotte noted) and the canyon is doubly protected within the Pajarita Wilderness, but I still hand it to Goodding. "Preservation is preferable to restoration," he once wrote about Sycamore. Thanks to him, it's still possible to marvel in the same primeval wonder those pictograph painters felt so long ago.

Shana and I felt that wonder as we began our hike to the border later that morning. South of camp, the canyon wound in endless S-turns, and the hike, already rough, became rougher. All semblance of trails disappeared, and the water ducked below ground.

At about canyon mile 5, the tight passage flattened into a wide, sandy wash. Around us handfuls of rolling mountains replaced rocky headwalls and ahead stood the looming lump of Flat Top Mountain-the end of the line. Though the hike had been basically flat, we'd lost enough altitude to justify the appearance of saguaros on the hilltops and to explain the mesquite trees in place of live oaks. Mexico was just a few steps away.

The international border is one of those funny things that's harder to see the closer you get. From a distance, it seems as impenetrable as the Berlin Wall. Get a little closer, Phoenix maybe, and there's still a boundary, but you begin to sense the holes. At the base of Sycamore, about canyon mile 6, a four-string fence marks the international border. When Shana and I arrive, I drop to my knees and roll under it.

Mexico looks pretty much the same. There are more cattle tracks; someone has set up a fire ring on their side of the line. Besides that, there's no difference at all. I look at the fence. Right above the wash stands one of those huge three-trunked sycamores growing out of a common base about the size of a Volkswagen van. It's an old one, here well before the wire. Two of its trunks are decidedly in the United States, but the other, strung as a makeshift post, is overwhelmingly in Mexico. Same tree, two nations.

I ROLL BACK UNDER THE FENCE to my own country and look at Shana like I've been somewhere. A French accent rolls off my tongue as I assure her with as much pomp as I can muster, "It is, I think, impossible" that we'll make it back to camp before dark. We'd better get moving. Shana smiles and points across the line: I left my water bottle in Mexico. All Cliff Ransom is an associate editor at National Geographic Adventure magazine. Though based in New York, he has many relatives in Tucson and spends "as much time there as humanly possible" making forays into the borderlands to the south. Randy Prentice of Tucson says the next time he camps in Sycamore Canyon, he will bring a camera flash to document the ringtail cat that pillaged his gear all night long.