HIKING

HIKE OF THE MONTH ESPERERO CANYON IN THE SANTA CATALINA MOUNTAINS

It's six in the morning as we set out, a frosted sliver of moon over our left shoulders, a first wedge of sunlight tick-ling the knuckle-like peaks and ridges above us. At this hour, the mountain itself remains a black, amorphous, unwelcoming mass.

Unwelcoming? Decidedly. Of the four Santa Catalina Mountain canyons that we can hike into within 45 minutes' walk from our Tucson porch, this one, Esperero Canyon, is the most forbidding.

The trail is easy to follow, but the climb is relentless. Last time I did it, my knees were garbage for two days.

But this is a seductive torture, this business of canyon trekking. It feels (to the legs) just like mountain climbing, but the sensations are different. A canyon encloses and focuses a mountain's sounds, so the chatter of cactus wrens and the coyotes' choral nocturnes become more intense, more immediate.

The walls wrap the mountain's space tightly around me, and I feel that on some emotional (or mystical) level, I am embraced by this rocky behemoth instead of being an insignificant flyspeck on its face. And the scenery is both more varied and intimate. In Esperero Canyon, you can squeeze through a meadow of shindagger agave, and five minutes later, thanks to the miracle of microclimates, you're in a manzanita forest. And with luck, the waterfall may be in business.

Bridalveil Falls is our destination today. It isn't the end of the Esperero Trail; if you persist, there is also the spectacle of The Window, a 15-foot hole in a fin of rock that frames a view of Tucson 4,360 feet below. "You have to persist pretty hard," warns a hiker whose muscle tone appears symphonic. The mere Bridalveil trek is 12 miles round-trip, six hours, and a 3,000-foot elevation gain quite enough for a desk potato who stares at a computer screen all day.

But rewards come with our climb. A minor canyon on the way to Esperero features maybe the most spectacular cast of saguaro characters anywhere in the Catalinas. One has gone berserk sprouting arms, which at the moment total 21. Another's seven limbs are frozen in a dance-like swirl around its trunk, like a monstrous mutant green Nureyev. I do not apologize for this shameless anthropomorphism; the mountain does this to you. In the midmorning light, Patty, my lifetime trail companion, peers down from a ridge at the lumpen foothills below. "It looks like cats asleep under blankets," she observes. It does.

We lurch over the crest that hikers have affectionately nicknamed "Cardiac Gap" and curl down into Esperero. High desert darkens to oaken forest. We slink through a dense grove of manzanita where thousands of bees are enjoying a springtime potluck. They ignore us; the pink manzanita blossoms are candy, and we're walking sweatshops.

Then, finally, we hear water falling.

Bridalveil Falls is a notorious coquette. It's fed by snow runoff, but unless one is expert at reading the mountain, this killer hike is a crapshoot. The water vanishes for months at a time. Today we score. A wisp of a stream, maybe 5 gallons a minute, spills over a 20-foot cliff, splashes onto a ledge that forces it to splay out like a bridal veil and tumbles into a pool not much larger than a hot tub. A miniature rainbow arcs across the spray. In the mist, jungles of lichens grow on the rocks. A few feet away, yucca flourishes.

By global standards this is a throwaway waterfall tiny, undependable, hard to get to. But Patty and I keep taking the trek for what it tells us about the Sonoran Desert, our home. First, that this land isn't only about grand gestures but also miniatures. Second, that water here is ineffably pre-cious. And finally, that it is magnificently diverse. We plod out of our desert house, and three hours later we shower in a frigid waterfall. Our pain melts into euphoria. Tomorrow, we die.

When You Go: The trail is located in the Coronado National Forest. Park at the entrance to Sabino Canyon, just north of the intersection of Sabino Canyon Road and Sun-rise Drive. Then walk seven-tenths of a mile up the paved canyon road to the signed Esperero Canyon trailhead, which will be on your left. Take food and two quarts of water per person. Do not attempt this hike in hot weather.