ARIZONIQUES

A Guide to Places, Events, and People Return of 'Them'

Tequila and a bucket of river water: the best relief I've found for a red-ant sting.

Some folks who visit the Southwest worry about rattlers and scorpions. Nonsense. They should worry about Pogonomyrmex californicus, the harvester ant.

According to entomologist Larry Stevens, who has studied Grand Canyon ants, Pogonomyrmex packs the most "powerful toxic venom of any organism in the New World." Experts disagree on what that toxin is, but they do agree it causes excruciating pain.

After my last encounter with the beast, I slept with my foot in a bucket of cool river water to dull the pain. Were I allergic to the toxin, I would have taken an antihistamine. As it was, a dose of tequila helped.

Like so many residents of the Southwest, Pogonomyrmex migrated here. The ant moved up

Edited by Vicky Hay Illustration by Walter Porter

the Colorado River from Mexico and California. Despite a formidable bite, the little fellows are searching for seeds, not toes. Although they will eat small insects, they usually forage for brittle bush, Indian rice grass, or brome seeds. They cross paths with humans when campers leave picnic morsels within reach.

The Navajos and Hopis consider ants sacred-residents of the underworld. One legend says that, during the destruction of the world by flood, Ant People took in Hopi ancestors and showed them how to work and harvest. Ants have thin waists because they shared so much of their food.

Red ant workers are timid, but, according to experts George and Jeanette Wheeler, the nest's guards are "undoubtedly the fiercest, the boldest, the most irascible" ants of the Sonoran Desert. Yet even the bold need sleep. Ants go to bed atnight in their colonies beneath the sand. When, at your desert campsite, you lie back to gaze at the stars, you can forget about them. Just be sure you're awake before the guards come out for morning patrol.

Unique to Arizona and the Southwest. The Great Wall of Winkelman

Winkelman has a special gateway: a free-form adobe wall crafted by sculptor Marilyn Zwak under the auspices of the Arizona Commission on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

An agave and yucca fence forms a backdrop for the 115-foot-long, steel-reinforced structure, whose serpentine shape recalls both the nearby Gila River and the Native American spiral motif. The wall required 279 wheelbarrows of asphalt-stabilized adobe, says Zwak. Volunteers and community service workers helped mix the adobe and weave panels for the fence.

"We received an Art in Public Places grant," recalls Zwak. "Our purpose was to help identify the town, which had reached a point of spiritual depression following its economic troubles." Winkelman, a mining town, has suffered from the copper industry's decline.

A border of malachite donated by Asarco from its Ray copper mine complements other decorations of found objects-scrap metal, pottery sherds, old ranching implements, and even chunks of slag. Tying these symbolic elements together is a hand-etched design, carved before the adobe dried.

Maintained by Winkelman's Two Rivers Art League, the earthen wall stands on Hewes Avenue at the junction of State Route 177 with State 77.

Where They Fell

Memorial Day brings to mind solemn national cemeteries. But many of Arizona's territorial war dead still lie where they fell. We know some of their names and often how they died, but the exact locations of their final resting places are unknown.

Consider Maj. James F. Millar and three privates who died in an Apache ambush in March, 1866. They were buried at the site somewhere south of Florence. A young doctor, a member of the California Volunteers, escaped the ambush and fled, wounded, into the Arizona desert. His body was never found. Two years later, two brothers and their sergeant were ambushed as their cavalry escort protected the U.S. mail. These three lie somewhere northeast of Scottsdale.

Some words spoken in the fifth century B.C. still have meaning for Arizona. "For heroes have the whole earth for their tomb," said Pericles, Athens' famous general. "There is enshrined in every breast a record unwritten with no tablet to preserve it, except that of the heart."

Friends' Travel

For this month's preview of travel events sponsored by Friends of Arizona Highways, see page 3.

Calendar

May 5-7, Tucson. About 400 racers compete for generous prizes in the Tucson Bicycle Classic, beginning Friday at 4:00 P.M. with a timed trial up A Mountain. Weekend events culminate in an 80-mile circuit race. Telephone 884-5564.

May 5-7 and May 26-28, Phoenix. The Phoenix Symphony performs a pops program at the Pointe at Tapatio Cliffs, with Doc Severinson as conductor. Telephone 264-4754.

May 5-June 11, Flagstaff. The fourth annual "Trappings of the American West," a juried show featuring the work of about 50 Western craftsmen, takes place at the Coconino Center for the Arts. Telephone 779-6921.