Hike of the Month

HIKE OF THE MONTH Southeast Arizona's Turkey Creek Offers a Walking Experience in Canyon Wilderness

Long hikes are great, especially the all-day ones that leave you bone-weary and self-satisfied. Great training, you know. Hut, hut! But there's an-other hike just as satisfying for opposite reasons. More of a me-ander, I suppose, than a hike, it's an outdoor walking experience with no set goals, no distances to cover, and all the time in the world. Time to stop and gaze at things, to smell flowers, observe birds, eat lunch, and, yes, nap. Such a hike is my springtime ramble up Turkey Creek. The hike begins northwest of Klondyke, a tiny settlement in the Aravaipa Valley. Turkey Creek runs through a steep-walled canyon just outside the Aravaipa Canyon Wilderness. A nearly impassable jeep road crisscrosses the drainage bottom.

"Oops! Forgot my wading shoes." That's my first thought as I head upstream. An old pair of tennies would serve, better yet river sandals worn over wa-terproof diver's socks or the surplus Vietnam boots I had bought for wet hikes. I boulder-hop where I can; more often, I wade, hoping I won't ruin expensive new hiking boots. It's spring, and as the glories of Turkey Creek open before me, I quickly forget new boots and cold, wet socks. On cue the trill of a canyon wren de-scends the canyon wall. It's a busy time for birds, and I see or hear acorn and Gila wood-peckers, vermilion flycatchers, Common black hawks, western bluebirds, pyrrhuloxia, red-tailed hawks, hummingbirds, Say's phoebes, and cardinals.

Although the winter floods scoured portions of the canyon, enormous cottonwoods and syc-amores, willow, Arizona white oak, netleaf hackberry, ash, wal-nut, alder, box elder, cypress, Arizona grape, and other trees and shrubs grow in the bottom. Vivid scarlet penstemon and Indian paintbrush sprout from rock cracks.

Thickets of white-flowering bushes appear beside the creek. The smell of the flower is a bitlike baby powder, and the odor of a crushed leaf is sharp, res-inous. I ask a local horseman for an I.D. "Star leaf," he offers, but my field guide yields no such name. Perhaps it's an ex-otic, an escapee from some long-ago canyon settler's door-yard garden.

After about a mile, I come to a sign pointing the way to a prehistoric Salado cliff dwell-ing, a tiny rock and mud hut. Ancient farmers hunted game and foraged wild foods here and tended crops nearby.

For lunch and a nap, I find a shaded boulder up a little side canyon. Swallowtail butterflies, yellow and black, sail through shafts of golden sunlight. Up near the rim, white-throated swifts snatch insects on the wing. Looking down toward the stream, I spot a solitary coatimundi drinking.I walk all day. I don't know how far don't care. On the way out, I meet Catie Fenn, a Bureau of Land Management ranger out of Klondyke. As we're chatting, Catie whispers, "Look up there." I turn. Way up, hun-dreds of feet above the canyon floor, still as stone, a bighorn ewe stands watching us.

WHEN YOU GO

To reach Turkey Creek from Phoenix, take U.S. Route 60 to Globe, then U.S. 70 eight miles past Fort Thomas to Aravaipa-Klondyke Road. Turn right (southwest) and proceed 28 miles to Klondyke. From Tucson, travel east on Interstate 10 to Exit 340, Willcox, then go 60 miles north on Fort Grant Road to Klondyke.

The trailhead is 10 miles northwest of Klondyke over a rough road that fords Aravaipa Creek several times. A four-wheel-drive vehicle is required.

Backcountry roads may close during wet weather. Contact the Bureau of Land Management, Gila Resource Area office, 711 14th St., Safford, AZ 85546; (520) 428-4040, for information about road, weather, and streamflow conditions before venturing up Turkey Creek.