The Arizona Outback

The Arizona Outback Lonely... Awesome... Magnificent

As we picked our way past the skyscraping red rocks that mark the corridor, the turquoise-blue sky suddenly faded, and a late-afternoon late-season snowstorm swirled high overhead against a ceiling of dark grey slate. Only a few flakes drifted down, almost indolently, to the high desert floor of Sycamore Canyon. At such times, in such places, one tends to overlook his wristwatch. Nonetheless, the storm could not have lingered an hour before the April twilight descended. Darkness came quickly. Incredibly, then a full moon exploded into the sky, floodlighting the landscape with an almost daylight brightness.

We could see in the moonlight that the storm had dusted the Mogollon Rim behind us, and capped the stony spires and buttes that surrounded us with light layers of white. Except for thin veils of clouds that curled like campfire smoke among the pinnacles, the heavens had cleared. Only the imperatives of a barking coyote diluted the stillness.

That was a score or more years ago, but it was the kind of surrealistic scene one never forgets. I remember, too, that we watched mutely for a long time from beneath an overhang where we had unfurled our sleeping bags. Finally, I turned to my companion: "Do you feel that no one has been here before us?" Without hesitation, he replied, "Of course."

To me this is the essence of wilderness: the sense of absolute aloneness in a pristine place. Wilderness, of course, is not so much a geographic description as a perception. One man's remote outdoors may be another man's suburbia. Yet, it would be difficult to find in the first 48 states many locations less trammeled than the nine If one adds our state's share of the Blue Range Primitive Area (the rest is in New Mexico), which is a wilderness area except for the most bureaucratic of definitions, these lands blanket 725,871 acres, or more than 1134 square miles. In breadth, they vary from the 6975-acre Mount Baldy Wilderness in east-central Arizona, the loftiest of the nine, to a part of the Mazatzal Mountains that sprawl across more than 205,000 acres in virtually the very heart of the state. They rise in elevation from around 2000 feet in the arid foothills of the Chiricahua and Superstition mountains to the piney flanks of 11,000-foot Mount Baldy. Measured against all the 11.2 million acres of national forests in the state, the totality is not impressive, but 1134 square miles still is almost as big as Rhode Island. These areas were selected, often amid considerable controversy, less for isolation than for their unique natural qualities, however. And each differs from the others.

Sycamore Canyon, where we pondered higher meanings beneath a sandstone ledge, slopes down through 2400 vertical feet of nature-sculpted rainbow rock, a Grand Canyon in miniature, without the tourist throngs.

Springs fill the last few miles of Sycamore Creek, near where it surges into the Verde River. There, biologists hope to replant a nearly extinct species of native fish, the Gila topminnow, but most of the chasm is dry much of the time.

Save for Sycamore Canyon, Arizona's designated wild lands are mostly mountainous. All ascend into great green forested islands that almost seem suspended above the surrounding desert. These are the highland homes of elk and bear, the spacious skies of eagles and peregrine falcons.

U.S. FOREST SERVICE WILDERNESSES IN ARIZONA

Arizona's beautiful Forest Service Wildernesses, shown here, are unique areas where mountains are rarely out of sight and rugged landscape extends to hazy horizons. (Not included are the 443,700 acres of Park Service wilderness areas in Arizona.) The Basin and Range Province, the geologists call this. The ranges are lined up like lonely sentinels across the low basins that sweep between them. Rarely are mountains out of sight. And, usually, the clarity of the Southwestern air is such that it is possible to gaze from the summit of one wilderness to the heights of others scores or even hundreds of miles distant.

From atop the Chiricahuas, in the southeastern corner of the state and close by the Mexican border, the Santa Catalinas and the Galiuros thrust up far to the northwest. The Superstitions east of Phoenix usually can be seen from the Santa Catalinas, and from the Superstitions the Sierra Ancha and Mount Baldy to the east and the Mazatzals to the north while west of the Mazatzals, Pine Mountain looms over the Verde Valley. Most of these mountain masses tend to be dry. They are Thicketed with brush, slashed by steep slopes and deep canyons, and crowned with pine and fir. Separated both from the desert floor and other mountain chains, they also are host to unique plants and animals. For all their similarities, though, each Wilderness is branded with a distinctiveness. The Chiricahuas, in common with the other mountains of the borderlands, are Mexican accented a habitat for flora and fauna found no farther northward. Among these are a daisy, a twin-spotted rattlesnake, the striped plateau lizard, and two species of orchids. But the showiest are coatimundis and coppery-tailed trogans.

Relatives of raccoons, coatimundis have anteater-like noses and long ringed tails that often stand straight up. Trogans are robin-sized tropical birds with hooked yellow bills and square-cut tails. Because the trogans are so uncommon and shy, bird fanciers from all over the world come to the Chiricahuas with the hope of glimpsing one. While these pilgrimages are not infrequently in vain, the sight is said by those who savor such things to justify the attempt. The emerald-green, crimson-bellied trogan is believed to be the close kin of the Quetzal, the sacred bird of the Mayan emperor gods. History buffs make the Chiricahuas a mecca, too. It was here the Apache leaders Geronimo and Cochise were able for so long to elude soldiers.

To the northwest, the Pusch Ridge Wilderness forms the skyline north of Tucson, the spine of the Santa Catalina Mountains that lord over the state's second largest city. Desert bighorn sheep roam the ridge named for a pioneering rancher.

How the Galiuros came to be called that, no one knows. Authorities think the name may be a corruption of a mispronounced word. At any rate, the Galiuro area is secluded even by the standards of a region where distances are great. Many miles of dusty roads must be traveled simply to reach the trailheads. The area pushes up to a height of 8000 feet, where oak, Arizona cypress, and alder abound. The majority of it, though, is sere and low lying, the domain of mountain lions and pig-like javelinas.

Somehow, the naming of the legendary Superstitions to the north was predestined. Long before Europeans arrived, the ragged mountains exuded a mythic mood. The Pima Indians were convinced a great flood caused the wide limestone layer that stretches for several miles along its stony face. So, the Spaniards referred to them as the Sierra de la Espuma, or Mountains of Foam.

From afar, the Superstitions seem an impenetrable redoubt that arises abruptly from nowhere. The raw desert beauty is spectacular, the sort of setting where moviegoers expect the White Hats to gallop in determined pursuit of the Bad Guys. Wildlife is profuse, and the plants wildly varied. The Maurandya acerifolia is a yellow-flowering shrub that grows only in Central Arizona. Summer temperatures in the "Supers," as some neighbors speak of them, can be savage. During the remainder of the year, the trails on the western side of the Wilderness literally stream with hikers from the nearby Phoenix metropolis. Paradoxically, a backpacker often can walk the more remote eastern end of the area for days without encountering another soul.

Pusch Ridge Wilderness forms the skyline north of Tucson in Southern Arizona and the spine of the spectacular Santa Catalina Mountains.

Akin in terrain but less storied than the Superstitions, the Sierra Anchas ("Wide Mountains") and Mazatzals are no less challenging. Large swaths of them are accessible only to the most resolute climbers. In the Mazatzals, the landmarks themselves conjure the ruggedness: a forbidding lava flow called Midnight Mesa and the demanding Hardscrabble Mesa.

Cool Pine Mountain, by contrast, is heavily canopied with ponderosas. And the Mount Baldy Wilderness, caressed by clouds, is the only area with a subalpine mix of spruce and aspen.

Mount Baldy itself, the state's second highest point, is on the Navajo Indian Reservation. For religious reasons, the tribe has closed it to outsiders. But the wilderness wonderland beneath it would surprise even most Arizonans. Deeply snowbanked in winter, the magic of moisture turns it, in summer, into a great floral, grassy garden iced by tumbling trout streams. This is where the Little Colorado River is born. Weaving its way north and west to meet the main Colorado, the tributary knifes farther and farther into the earth until it cuts enormous chasms. But in infancy, beneath Baldy, the Little Colorado toddles timidly through vast marshy meadows.

The magnificent Chiricahua Wilderness of Southeastern Arizona is a natural sanctuary for wildlife of many kinds, including the bobcat and the Gila woodpecker. Wildlife photos by Paul Berquist Scenic photo by Jerry Sieve

This, then, is the Arizona outback, seemingly unfettered, sometimes lonely, often awesome in beauty. Still, the notion that no one has ventured there before is illusory. Almost everywhere there are the scattered pottery fragments and shattered stone tools that testify to the omnipresence of the original Arizonans. No place seems to have been too hot, high, dry, or precipitous for the Indians. Most of the wild lands still shelter the crumbling remains of the homes of prehistoric people. Many ruins, now protected by law, rest in clandestine niches that test the most muscular of hikers. The early Europeans were ubiquitous. For instance, the Spaniards quickly disproved the Indian legend that the Superstitions were a vastness from which no man could return. Then came the Americans, trapping and traipsing, timbering and mining and cowboying areas that many present-day Americans would consider hopelessly forlorn. The cast of those characters was almost as colorful as the land itself. No spot appeared to be too wild for the pioneers, either. Long before the territory could boast a settlement worthy of the description, cattle thieves had made a haven of Rustler Park in the Chiricahuas. In these wilderness annals; however, no saga is more dramatic than that locked deep in the Galiuros in a crude grave and two weathered cabins. Buried here is Jeff Power, already an embittered old man when he homesteaded there shortly before World War I with two sons and a pretty daughter. The daughter died under circumstances her survivors refused to discuss, a fact that honed the suspicion and contempt their neighbors, the nearest of them many horseback hours away, held for the somewhat ragtag family. But the text continued on page 26

The Superstition Wilderness, about 50 miles east of downtown Phoenix, is best known as a legend-haunted land of ancient Indians turned to stone, and brutally murdered gold-seekers who had been hunting lost mines. But the incredible "Supers" are also a place of startling beauty where, in spring, the hedgehog cactus raises up its scarlet blossoms to the desert sun.

drama climaxed on a snowy February dawn in 1918 when the sheriff from Safford, two deputies, and a U.S. marshal rode in to arrest John Power, then 26, and his 34-year-old brother, Tom, as draft dodgers.

The brothers were to claim later they had received no draft notices. No proof was presented that they did. Nor was it ever really resolved who fired the first shot. John and Tom never retreated from their insistence that their father, believing a mountain lion was attacking a mare, grabbed a rifle and staggered in his long john underwear out into the half-darkness. When the gunfight ended, nonetheless, Jeff Power, 85, was dead. So were the sheriff and his deputies. The brothers and a companion, Tom Sisson, fled. At one point, 3000 men hunted them. They finally were captured 40 miles into Mexico by a Cavalry troop from Fort Huachuca.

Sisson eventually died in his cell, and before they were freed in 1960, John and Tom Power had languished almost 42 years at Arizona State Prison. Both died in a small trailer, their final home, at Klondyke, north of the Galiuros. Even now, in that county, the case cannot be recounted without rekindling partisan passions. text continued on page 30

Mt. Baldy Wilderness: Alice in Wonderland meadows, tall, stately pines, lichen-crusted boulders, spring wildflowers...a dreamland for nature lovers in Eastern Arizona.

What sets Arizona's Wildernesses apart are the stark changes that occur in the “climate ladder,” from lower to higher elevations, in each area. As one climatic “rung” blends into another, there also is a transformation in the kinds of plants and animals that predominate. A biological rule-of-thumb says that 1000 vertical feet are the equivalent of 300 north-to-south miles. Thus, the difference between the 3500-foot desert grassland at the base of the Sierra Ancha and the pine-fir forest at 7500 feet would be the same as if a traveler had driven 1200 miles, roughly the distance from the Mexican border to northernmost Alberta, Canada.

Animals have decided dietary preferences. Prickly pear and acorns attract javelinas and the smaller creatures at home there, the ringtail cats and roadrunners. At about a mile above sea level, oak-sycamore woodlands thrive and the residents are raccoons, gray squirrels, and Cooper's hawks. But neither the desert nor woodland species venture often into the higher pine forests, where there are greentailed towhees and cottontails. Finally, the mountaintops are reigned over by bear and the likes of elk and hairy woodpeckers.

The people that are adventurous enough to hike or ride horseback into these wondrous enclaves are, fortunately, more adaptable. They also are blessed with that peculiarly human quality called perception.

Three years ago, Governor Bruce Babbitt, an inveterate backpacker, hiked into the Chiricahua Wilderness. He followed tumbling Cave Creek and surmounted the 9000-foot Bootlegger Saddle. Although he saw marvelous sights an aerial battle among hummingbirds over a patch of damp delphiniums, for one he missed what he wanted most. Like so many others, he hoped to see a coppery-tailed trogan. Undaunted, he expressed what might be the wilder-ness explorer's ethic. “The excitement is being there, not what one does there.” A variety of life zones abound in Arizona's Wildernesses. (Above, left) The hot and dry lands of the Galiuros are home to the javelina and the roadrunner. (Above, right) Host to green-tailed towhees, cottontails, and raccoons are the big timber heights of the Chiricahuas.