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No mailboxes can be found for 120 miles in this Sonoran Desert land too tough to tame

civilization

SOUTHERN ARIZONA HAS A TOWN TOO TOUGH TO DIE, TOMBSTONE, AND A DESERT TOO TOUGH to live in. Heaven knows, people tried, but a few brief mining camps and cowboy shacks were all that this stretch of the Sonoran Desert could support. Even the prehistoric people here were nomadic, moving from water hole to water hole and harvest to harvest collecting wild foods. Deserts are like this.

It's a short walk from Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument's campground to the Victoria Mine, but it reveals the essence of the land ahead. Half a mile from the road, I entered another world, a firmament in which humans have never figured out how to feel at home. This land was always too hot, too hard, too dry, too distant, too... something. Even today it is frontier, the edge of civilization, the drift line of society's last wave. A despoblado, that's what people call it, meaning that no one lives there. No mailboxes can be found west of here for 120 miles.

My shoulder pack held enough food and gear for several days. Following an easy up and down trail scratched across the rolling granite ridges, I soon could no longer hear the sounds of cars. Cactus wren songs carried on the breeze.

Ahead lay dumps of unwanted rock from diggings at the Victoria Mine, founded by an unnamed prospector in the late 1800s, now abandoned for nearly half a century. Bats, not miners, now use the shafts and tunnels. The coffee-colored rock around the shafts looks much like the weathered granite of the rest of the mountain, but keener eyes than mine liked what they saw. The half dozen pits and (PRECEDING PANEL, PAGES 10 AND 11) Volcanic boulders provide a precarious home to rock daisies in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument's Puerto Blanco Mountains. (THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT) Sunrise lights Organ Pipe's namesake cactus, here surrounded by a dense mix of chollas, creosote, paloverdes and ocotillos. The receding ridgelines of the rugged Ajo Mountains anchor the horizon. Mikul Levy's one-room store catered to the men who worked his Victoria Mine 100 years ago.

Signs in two languages alert the unwary to the dangers of abandoned mine shafts in the national monument.

(RIGHT) A saguaro stands watch over a dense patch of senita cactuses. More commonly found in Mexico, the senita cactus' range extends north only into Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.

Holes pried into the hillside attest to the search for gold and silver in the 1880s. And foundations for a headframe and a large iron wheel for power belts reveal this was more than a pick-and-shovel operation. Rock walls outline Mikul Levy's one-room store, Tienda de Campo America, which thrived around the turn of the century. The roof caved in long ago. Levy once owned the mine, too buying it from a onetime Mexican bandit named Cipriano Ortega and named it after his foreman's wife, Victoria Leon. Because of its proximity to the Mexico border, the mine also was known as La Americana, so no one would confuse it with a south-of-the-border site. A few rails from handcar tracks show where the miners pushed rock over the edge or into wagons that hauled it to distant mills. But falling ore prices and rising groundwater in the shafts ultimately rendered mining impractical and buried any hope of profit. Leaving the mine, I headed northwest to Senita Basin, which holds the only stand of senita cactuses in the United States. A chunkier version of the organ pipe, the senita may produce up to a hundred arms and stand 25 feet tall. In late spring, it blooms with pinkish, funnel-shaped flowers that contrast with the hoary head of gray spines on the arms.

The monument's namesake organ pipe cactuses mingle with the senitas amid a thick underbrush of bursage, chollas and creosote. In spring, flowers from dozens of species fill the sandy spots with color. Poppies, owl clover, primroses, phacelias, asters and desert sunflowers just begin the list.

This would have been a good turnaround spot for a day hiker, but I had my backpack and pressed on. As the sun peeked from behind billowing storm clouds and the wind carried the scent of rain, I made for the next place-name on the map: Milton Mine. This mine was once owned by Jeff Milton, one of Arizona's most noble lawmen. Others were more famous - John Slaughter or Wyatt Earp, for example but Milton was the dean of badges. His story was told by J. Evetts Haley in Jeff Milton: in Jeff Milton: A Good Man with a Gun. I've met old-timers who knew Milton, and, to a person, they affirmed that he was honest, reliable, fearless and indestructible.

In the early 1900s, Milton rode this borderland alone looking for smugglers and outlaws. He caught many and brought them back to jail. A few wouldn't come peaceably, so he buried them. His motto was: “I never killed a man that didn't need killing; I never shot an animal except for meat.” He wouldn't even kill rattlesnakes because they meant him no harm.

Milton had a sense of humor, too, though sometimes it cost him. Once he took an urban executive on a desert trip to look at a mining claim he wanted to sell. The man saw Milton crumbling a chiltepin pepper on his own breakfast and inquired what it was. Milton replied, “Water cooler. It makes things cool.” Now, chiltepin is just about the hottest thing going; it's M&M-size dynamite and hotter than a summer sun only a welltempered mouth can survive a bout with it.

The man nodded like he'd learned something special. Later in the day, when he was hot and thirsty, he asked Milton for some of those “water coolers.” Milton soberly handed him a couple. After the man drained most of his canteen trying to put out the blaze in his mouth, he called off the rest of the trek. Milton figured that prank cost him $20,000, but he gathered himself another supply of peppers the next time he visited one of the canyons in Organ Pipe where they grow wild.

As you can still see today, Milton's mine was a trench where he and friends scooped out copper and silver ore. He worked it a few years and then sold it to someone else, raking in the mine's only real profits. Then he went back to being a lawman.

I camped a few miles north of the mine beneath threatening clouds. Rain drizzled most of the night. Flashes of lightning blazed across the sky and the wind howled. I slept fitfully in a nylon cocoon hikers call a bivy bag. Somehow my wool cap slipped over my eyes, and I didn't see the sunrise, but when the whirl of hummingbird wings buzzed my head, I knew the rest of the world was up.

The primitive trail beyond the mine has been used by people and animals for thousands of years. In recent centuries, paloverdes overgrew the trail, forcing even the coyotes to detour.

Occasionally I spied a flake of obsidian from a broken arrow point, or a seashell someone had carried from the distant ocean to use for jewelry or as a utensil. Shards lay by the trail where a clay pot had been dropped by some ancient traveler. Since no pottery was made close by, it had been carried from at least

To the northwest stands Kino Peak, big, stark and somehow looking unfinished - a castle of rock carved by rain and wind from the neck of an ancient volcano.

40 miles away. The pottery was plain, without design or painted lines. It is theirs, not mine, so I didn't disturb it. The experience felt like shaking hands with people a thousand years old. I wondered who they were and what made them smile.

To the north lie the Puerto Blanco Mountains, rising a thousand feet above the valley. I thought that a dip in the ridge might provide a pass to the other side, so I followed the dry wash bottom that direction. When it grew rocky, I climbed its bank and found a trail made by wildlife and prehistoric people. In some places, it passed between cholla cactuses, and in others it wound under low branches of paloverde and ironwood trees. Occasionally it went through a patch of brambly catclaw acacia, one of the desert's most deceptively innocent-looking citizens. Its clawlike thorns can rake exposed skin and draw blood. I gave them a wide berth.

The trail grew fainter. In some spots, gravel atop smooth rock made the footing treacherous. Cliffs of white and yellow tuff, spewed by an ancient volcano, rose to the side. An easier pass a few miles west of here also is called Puerto Blanco "white door" - for these tuff cliffs. A saguaro cactus managed to make a living on a rocky ledge scarcely wide enough for an owl to perch.

At the pass, I stopped for lunch and the view. To the north, I saw range after range of mountains. Wind whipped the limbs of foothill paloverde trees. The scrapings left by a bobcat and tracks of a mule deer marked the earth. Ravens squawked overhead, hoping that I'd be messy and leave them some crumbs.

Descending the rocky north side of the pass, I veered left and followed a web of foot and animal trails to Dripping Springs. Fighting my way through a maze of plants and limbs, I reached the cavern that holds the spring. Coursetia bushes - trees by desert standards - flaunted their yellow and purple pea-flowers. Several velvet mesquites flanked the cavern's entrance.

Even before I saw the pool, I heard the water dripping into it. The pool, in a dim alcove the size of a walk-in closet, is mineralized and smells of sulphur. Tracks of deer, birds and coyotes on the apron of the pool registered some of the visitors. A pair of eyes at the water's surface belonged to a submerged toad waiting for a dragonfly to arrive.

Desert travelers are tied to water. Every cupful is precious. Even though I had brought enough water with me, I felt safer knowing this spring existed. I scooped up a handful to taste. I've sampled worse, but it is wetness that matters. The satisfaction lies in the luxury of having water at hand.

To the northwest stands Kino Peak, big, stark and (LEFT) Established to protect and preserve some of Arizona's most dramatic cactus species, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument encompasses 330,000 acres of sublime Sonoran Desert on Arizona's border with Mexico. Kino Peak rises on the horizon.

(ABOVE) A javelina skull rests among teddy bear cholla cactus spines as the desert reclaims one of its own.

somehow looking unfinished - a castle of rock carved by rain and wind from the neck of an ancient volcano. The ascent to the top looked impossible, but proved easy once I located the small rock cairns marking the way. Bighorn sheep make it to the top handily, but that is little comfort to humans.

Someone had told me how to find the trail's start, but they also warned me that straying off the route led to numerous dead ends at the tops of tall cliffs. After climbing up a steep slope, around a cliff, up a false summit and dropping down a chute, I followed a series of switchback ledges to the summit. Not a climb for faint hearts or careless steps. The view from the summit encompasses peaks stretched to the horizon, and I think I saw the Sea of Cortes.

The peak was named for Eusebio Francisco Kino, a Jesuit priest who traveled throughout the region in the 1690s and several times crossed what is now Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. He established missions and mapped unknown places in the Arizona desert. But most of this land then, as now, was unpopulated. Doubtless, Kino had other concerns, but he didn't stay there, either.

I've heard that we're born with a love of a place. For some it is the sea; for others, alpine meadows, farmland or prairies or maybe the dense timberland of tall pines or even the city. Some wanderers spend a lifetime trying to find out which is theirs. I've found mine in Arizona's desert despoblado.

Editor's Note: A warning to would-be travelers in this area of the state: Federal law re-Location: Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument is 34 miles south of Ajo.

WHEN YOU GO

Getting There: State Route 85 from Phoenix, or State Route 86 from Tucson.

Fees: $4 per vehicle entry; $8 per site per night for camping.

Lodging: 200 camping spaces for motor homes, trailers and tents; four spaces for primitive camping. Other accommodations outside the monument can be found at Ajo, Gila Bend, Lukeville and Why, as well as in Sonoita, Sonora, Mexico.

Travel Advisory: A permit is required for backcountry camping. Spring and fall are the most popular times to visit.

Additional Information: Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, (520) 387-7661 or 387-6849.

Requires entry only at border crossing points designated by U.S. Customs. The Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Ref-uge and Organ Pipe areas are vast and unpopulated. A person entering on foot cannot carry enough water to survive the trip across the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. Tucson-based Bill Broyles' book on Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument is titled Where Edges Meet. Jack Dykinga serves on the board of the Sonoran Desert National Park Project, which is trying to incorporate the Cabeza Prieta into a new national park. He also lives in Tucson.