The Border Country, Close Up

ALONG THE MEXICAN BORDER

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YOU'RE ABOUT TO ENTER THE BORDERLANDS. BUT BE WARNED: ONCE YOU'VE EXPERIENCED THIS RARE GROUND, YOU'LL BE HAUNTED BY IT AND BOUND TO RETURN.

We are struck dumb there's no other way to put it. Photographer Jack Dykinga and I, seasoned Arizona travelers, are accustomed to extravagant year-round desert wildflower displays. But we're bowled over by the riotous efflorescence surrounding us. Thickets of the wild blooms are everywhere.

We're in sand-dune country, a place called El Gran Desierto, perhaps five miles south of the Arizona/Sonora, Mexico, border. For two days we've wandered the border country of Arizona's southwest corner. It's mid-February, winter most places, but early spring here, sunny and warm.Last night we slept beneath Tinajas Altas, "High Tanks," a lastchance water hole for 19th-century gold rushers heading west across one of the meanest, driest stretches of desert anywhere along El Camino del Diablo, "the Devil's Highway."

Today in late afternoon we crossed into Sonora at San Luis, then drove east on Mexico Route 2 to a narrow lane threading south into the dunes of El Gran Desierto and beyond to Sierra del Rosario. The way is treacherous. On a previous trip into this place, we dropped a back wheel into drifting sands and had todig out. This time we're driving a mega-horsepower, go-anywhere, three-quarter-ton four-wheel-drive truck. We wouldn't try it in anything less.

Jack and I have similar yet slightly different aims. As always he's on the lookout for the definitive image of sunrise, or shifting sands, or shadows across a cliff face that will capture for all time that subject's photographic quintessence. That failure is inherent in this exercise deters him not at all.

My quest is no less quixotic, I suppose. For a born Nature lover, there's no place like la frontera, "the borderlands," 50 to 60 miles, arbitrarily designated, on each side of a line drawn from the arid deserts near the mouth of the Colorado River to the Mexican highlands along Arizona's southeast margin.

It's my territory. I've camped in all its terrains and weathers from the deserts of the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge in scorching mid-June to the snow-dusted oak-juniper woodlands along the Geronimo Trail heading east across the Peloncillo Mountains into New Mexico in winter. I've hiked and backpacked its mountain trails, explored its canyons, boulder hopped and waded its creeks, strolled its border-town

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streets. From its driest deserts near sea level to its forested peaks above 9,000 feet, its biological diversity is unmatched. My ambition is to know its natural history from end to end. In 10 years, I've only scratched the surface. It keeps me coming back.

I spot the first Ajo lily. “There, on your left,” I yell. Jack sees another and another. Although we had previously identified their green stems poking through the sand dunes, these are the first we've seen in full bloom. Soon they're all around, intermixed with other flowers sand verbena, brittlebush, desert marigold, evening primrose so many we stop calling out their names.

The truck lumbers on in low gear toward Sierra del Rosario, a short distance south. Soon the dunes are behind us, and we're driving across a broad flat area of compressed volcanic ash, hard-packed.

In a wash, we spot islands of chuparosa bushes, flaming red, some of them 20 by 30 feet. We stop for a look. Migrating hummingbirds compete for position above the bobbing trumpet flowers. Persistent droning draws my attention to the wash bank and small shrubs with pale flowers so tiny that at first I don't see what the bees are swarming to. It's desert lavender, a bee bonanza.

Back in the dunes at sundown, we set up camp. The sun's pink afterglow bleeds into thin brushstroke clouds on the horizon. The crests and sides of the sand dunes, wind sculpted into wavelets, are barren. Dense beds of flowers colonize sheltered hollows between dunes where the region's scant rainfall percolates through the sand to nourish them.

Late at night, under a full moon, I walk across white sands to watch hawk moths and nectar-feeding bats float among flower heads. There are no clouds. The soft breeze is thick with perfumes, and I lie on my back in the sand and gulp the sweet air. My exhaled breath vaporizes and drifts off into the quiet. The night world swirls around me. After a long time, I rouse from my bone-chilled, and creep to my bedroll.

At dawn I sit erect, still in my sleeping bag, and watch the moon set on the western horizon just as the sun rises at my back. To the south, serrated ridges rise with the sun like cardboard cutouts. Liquid birdsong burbles from a shrubby copse at the base of a dune. Jack is long gone, having risen in the dark to make coffee before shouldering his pack of camera gear and hiking off across the sands. Already, before the chill is off the morning, industrious bees are harvesting nectars and pollens overlooked by the moths and bats.

In between border towns San Luis, Sasabe, Nogales, Naco, Agua Prieta are vast tracts of backcountry. A field biologist friend likes to say, “big chunks of nowhere.” I prefer to call them outbacks.

By whatever name, they are wildlands. Some are protected as national monuments, wildlife refuges, or conservation areas. South of the border, between Sonoita and Puerto Peñasco, there's the Sierra del Pinacate, a 600-square-mile federal reserve of lava fields, cinder cones, craters, and peaks, as untamed a piece of ground as any. On the U.S. side, there are the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge and Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument on the east and the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge at about midpoint on the boundary line.

Farther east there are the Empire/ Cienega Conservation Area and the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area. And way over in the southeast corner, a comparative postage stamp in size, is the little-known San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge.

Other places are set aside for protection and managed by private organizations. These include The Nature Conservancy's Patagonia/Sonoita Creek Sanctuary, Canelo Hills Cienega, Ramsey Canyon Preserve, the Appleton-Whittell Research Sanctuary, and the American Museum of Natural History's Southwest Research Station. Even some private holdings qualify as wildlands. Among the biggest chunks of outbacks I've ever seen along the border are pieces of rugged country that have been left undisturbed on working cattle ranches.

Other areas are wilderness by virtue of remoteness or unfriendly terrain. El Gran Desierto fits that description as do some of the more rugged areas within the Coronado National Forest in southeast Arizona. Parts of the Papago Indian Reservation also fit into this category.

Another region that comes to mind for me is that of the Atascosa and Pajarito mountain ranges southeast of Arivaca. Isolated, rough country, these mountains have been mentioned as a possible site for reintroduction of the Mexican gray wolf, the predator that once roamed northern Sonora and southeast Arizona.

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Coming out of a deep doze with a start, skin tingling, my senses snap to attention. A noise. What was it? Zipped to my nostrils inside my mummy sleeping bag, I roll on my back, eyes wide. Distant stars glint in an icy December sky; a limb of the cottonwood I lie beneath creaks with cold. Nothing more. Then, just as I drift away again, I hear the howl. Starting low, then ascending the scale, it sustains for several seconds. It is not the familiar yip and ululation of the coyote. Long ago in the deep woods of Michigan's Upper Peninsula I heard that howl. A wolf? I did not know then; I do not now.

Three days before, a borderlands game guide I know down in Patagonia showed me a photograph of a large paw print. He won't tell me where he took the photo. Somewhere near the border is all he'll say on the U.S. side. He's heard howling, too, he says, late at night in lonely places. He seems reluctant to say more. He has no proof, and he doesn't want to be labeled a crank. There's the paw print, of course. Doubters say it's a dog. He's sure it's a Mexican gray wolf.

In his free time he looks and listens for wolves. He thinks a wolf or two, responding perhaps to some genetic imprint of former territory, may have wandered up from the Sierra Madres in Mexico. One of the wolves' historic runways parallels the rugged escarpment of Cochise Stronghold on the west face of the Dragoon Mountains right where I'm camped. I hope he's right.

It's going on 50 years since wolves last hunted in packs in southeast Arizona. Moving north from the Sierra Madres, wolves ranged west along the borderlands to the Baboquivari Mountains on the Papago reservation. Inevitably wolves and cattlemen clashed. Beginning in 1915, the federal government declared war on wolves and hired predator-control agents to (FOLLOWING PANEL, PAGES 20 AND 21) The incredible dimensions of Cerro Colorado's collapsed cinder cone in the Pinacate Lava Field stuns the imagination.

kill them. By the early '50s, they had been hunted, trapped, and poisoned to the point of extirpation in Arizona.

The last time a wolf was killed by federal agents in Arizona was in March, 1963, on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation in the east-central part of the state. In the mid-1970s, a wolf was reported moving north from the border along an old runway through the Mule, Dragoon, and Galiuro mountains. Local ranchers put a price of $500 on the wolf's head, it was said, and a trapper pursued the animal into Aravaipa Canyon and killed it.

Of the large predators that once frequented Arizona's borderlands, only the mountain lion and the black bear remain. The grizzly bear was wiped out first, the last one in Arizona having been killed in 1935. Neither jaguars nor ocelots were common on the border. Though some jaguars were reported in southeast Arizona in 1987 and 1988, they were probably vagrants that wandered in briefly from Mexico.

Other creatures formerly numerous in border wildlands are rare or gone. Before the turn of the century, thousands of thick-billed parrots flocked north from Mexico to the Chiricahua Mountains to feed on pinecones and perhaps to breed. Now only captive populations exist here. (See Arizona Highways, October '92) The black-tailed prairie dog and Chihuahuan pronghorn have vanished from the plains grasslands of southeast Arizona, and the Sonoran pronghorn exists only in rem-nant populations along the southwest border. The Tarahumara frog has disappeared from streams in Santa Cruz County, and the gray hawk, once abundant, is rare, threatened by the eradication of riparian habitat.

But what's left in habitat and wildlife diversity along the Arizona/Mexico line brings naturalists, field biologists, birdwatchers, researchers, hikers, backpackers, and outdoor enthusiasts to the state's borderland, especially the southeast sector. Field biologist and former bird-sanctuary manager Robin Baxter sums it up best, "When I finished my training, I decided that as a student of natural history I should go where there was a lot of it. That turned out to be southeast Arizona."

For variety of wildlife habitats and diversity of plant and animal species, it's hard to imagine a better place. Southeast Arizona contains the greatest diversity of breeding land birds and mammal species north of Mexico. Coatamundis are found in the region, along with ferruginous pygmy owls, elegant trogons, yellowbilled cuckoos, and Mexican long-nosed bats, plus recently discovered frog species and many snakes.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has identified eight unique wildlife ecosystems in Arizona. Seven are in southeast Arizona. And botanists estimate that in the mountains of the southeast, the number of plant species is more than 2,000, a far greater number than in the entire northeast United States.

How does it happen that this place, a small corner of the fifth-largest state in the continental U.S., has become a biological cauldron, a haven for so many unique plants and animals? The answer lies in the region's unusual physiography, its"sky-island" mountain ranges that thrust upward from the flat desert, and its water.

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A look at a topographic relief map reveals southeast Arizona's singular mix of major biotic provinces. The Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts intersect here where the Rocky Mountains reach their southern terminus and the Sierra Madres stretch to their northward limit. Animals extremely rare north of the border elsewhere regularly migrate between the Sierra Madres and southern Arizona's mountains.

And because the continental divide in New Mexico's Animus Mountains to the east is relatively low, the flora and fauna of southeast Arizona is a blend of east, west, north, and south. Bird-watchers know this. From around the world, they flock to the region to spy on an extraordinary variety of feathered creatures.

The bluebird I've spotted in borderlands mountains, for example, is the eastern bluebird. The meadowlark in flight across the open grasslands is the eastern meadowlark. And the pygmy nuthatch is just as at home among ponderosa pines in the Huachucas as in the evergreen forests of Washington state. Add to the mix regular bird visitors from Mexico, like the elegant trogon and the blue-throated hummingbird, and you begin to understand why southeast Arizona is a mecca for birding enthusiasts.

The mountains of the area soar thousands of feet from the desert floor, the tallest among them approaching 10,000 feet. When glaciers receded from Arizona's Basin and Range province at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, the weather and the land began to dry. Plants and animals sought refuge in remote wet mountain canyons. Gradually the broad valleys grew hotter and drier, cutting off migration between mountains.

Wildlife biologists, botanists, and naturalists acknowledge these places as living Pleistocene museums for the rare species of plants and animals discovered in their canyons and at the highest elevations. Others call them sky islands. A strong hiker can move from prickly pear cactus, mesquite, and paloverde in the morning up into pine and fir in the late afternoon. It's like walking from Mexico to Canada in a single day. Sky islands amid desert seas.

June 18, a hot day in the month of the least rain. At 10:00 A.M. I toss my backpack, water bottles, and other gear into my pickup truck and drive four hours, in searing desert heat, to the cool pines of Rustler Park in the Chiricahua Mountains.

Now, after a three-hour hike, I watch evening come to Anita Park, one of the high wet meadows strung like pearls along the Crest Trail, well above 9,000 feet in the Chiricahuas. My bedroll lies ready on the lee side of a large log. I've just come up from the spring a quarter mile below my campsite. For warmth I wear a synthetic fleece jacket and pants. My teapot heats over the bright flame of my camp stove. I'm alone. I lean back against the log, notebook in my lap, to survey my domain.

My timing is perfect. Rocky Mountain irises bloom in these meadows in June, and Anita Park is thick with them. Nearby a robin scolds. From far off, I hear the faint cry of a Western wood-peewee. Way over at the edge of the meadow, right (ABOVE) A sea of grass punctuated with prickly pear cacti serves as babitat for the banded quail and numerous other creatures in the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge.

(FOLLOWING PANELS, PAGES 28 AND 29) The Ajo Mountains loom over wildflowers in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.

(PAGES 30 AND 31) As Miller Canyon in the Coronado National Forest demonstrates, the southeast sector of the borderlands reflects a unique mix of major biotic communities.

(PREVIOUS PANELS, PAGES 32 AND 33) The San Pedro Riparian National Conservation area is a critical north-south flyway for migrating birds.

(PAGES 34 AND 35) The rugged Peloncillo Mountains with their rounded bills and little timber anchor the southeast corner of the Arizona/Mexico borderlands.

(OPPOSITE PAGE) Sycamore Canyon, in the Coronado National Forest, is one of only a handful of riparian zones remaining in Arizona.

Continued from page 27 beside the trail, there's a bed of claret cup hedgehog cactus. A quartet of ravens, silhouetted high above the meadow, dances and “talks” across deep blue space. My water pot boils. I pull my reading headlamp from my backpack. I am content.

April, the Saturday before Easter. A spring hike in Florida Canyon, Santa Rita Mountains. At around 6,000 feet, where the trail crosses the creek, yellow monkey flower and dwarf lupine bloom. Tiny quicksilver cataracts, spawned by snowmelt, plunge over rock tiers festooned with blue-green mosses and pale ferns. The air rings with birdcalls: canyon wren, painted redstart, verdin.

Another 500 feet up, hiking a north-facing slope, I'm stopped by calf-deep snow.

Wearing only hiking boots, shorts, and a light windbreaker, I turn to go back. Then, right beside the trail a manzanita bush in full bloom sprouts from a snow-bank.

Late afternoon in November. I am hiking into Stronghold Canyon West in the Dragoon Mountains. A year of scant rain, and the creek is dry. Apache used to camp not far from here, so I'm looking for grinding holes in the bedrock. Mexican jays scold and flit from limb to limb up the canyon ahead of me.

I hear the faint gurgling, an undertone at first, of running water. Can I believe my ears? Then, suddenly, flowing water. The subterranean stream bubbles to the surface for not more than 100 yards. And with the water, grinding holes, a lot of them, some worn in rocks beside the stream, others in large boulders midstream. Most, the ones for grinding acorns and seeds, are round. Others are larger and oblong with drainage troughs at one end. I picture Apache women washing clothes in them; but I'm only guessing.

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Everything changes. I leave the stream and sit on a broad flat-topped boulder near a grinding-hole site. The leaves of cottonwood, velvet ash, sycamore, and walnut are yellow and gold with a hint of red. A pair of towhees forages in dead leaves on the bank. Black and yellow butterflies float above a small pool. The chilled air carries the faint odor of mint.

Water in a dry place is magic. I understand why the grinding holes are here.

There used to be more water here, though never very much. Spanish explorers charted 50 separate cienega springs in Arizona, and luxuriant canopies of cottonwood-willow forests once flourished along Arizona's major desert rivers. Many streams that once flowed year-round are now dry most of the time. Today between 90 and 95 percent of our original wetland-riparian zones is gone, and gone, too, are the beavers, otters, and fish that lived in them.

Throughout Arizona less than one percent of all habitat is riparian. But in the Coronado National Forest that percentage rises to two percent. Two percent - that must sound paltry to those accustomed to wetter places. Not counting mountain areas, where many creeks carry live water year-round, the number of perennial streams in southeast Arizona is about 20, some of them flowing on the surface for less than half a mile. Anyone who knows the area can tick off the names of a half dozen: the San Pedro, the Santa Cruz, Sonoita Creek, Cienega Creek, Aravaipa Creek, Swamp Springs.are wildlife havens, attracting visitors by the thousands to places like the San Pedro River, Sonoita Creek, and Sycamore Canyon.

Two percent. That's all. And that takes into account the wetlands and marshy places called cienegas in the Southwest. But that two percent is the lifespring that nurtures the abundant wildlife here in the southeast corner of the state.

The isolated wet canyons of the Santa Rita, Huachuca, and Chiricahua mountains have become unique biological laboratories where researchers are constantly on the lookout for rare species of plants and animals, including insects. And the riparian corridors of our river valleys Nearly five inches of rain fell in Tucson, my home, during January, 1993, making it the wettest January on record here. The ground was saturated, and for a month afterward a thin stream bubbled to the surface in the wash below my house and ran aboveground for half a mile. The lure of water in the desert is powerful, and I walk the streambed daily. When the water disappears, and the arroyo becomes a dry wash again, I'll stop.

In early February, clumps of red-purple verbena bloom in the wash, and sprigs of penstemon have begun to sprout everywhere. Will this be a good year for desert wildflowers? Good years are linked to rainfall, we know. But had the rains come at the right time? I think of last year and the owl clover and Mexican goldpoppies blooming in profusion along State Route 86 on the Papago reservation.

I check my notebook. Another week marks the date one year ago in mid-February that Jack Dykinga and I abandoned ourselves to the flowering sand dunes of El Gran Desierto. I pick up the phone and dial his number.