travel

BY: Tom Kuhn

TAYLOR BROTHERS' CABIN A HISTORIC ONE-ROOM REFUGE AWAITS HIKERS IN WILD SYCAMORE CANYON

Pushing aside a thicket of chaparral obscuring the entrance, I walk into a dark chamber full of mystery. Yellow light from my headlamp travels across walls tarred thickly with pitch from countless wood fires. Black iron pipe for hanging meat is wedged into an inky corner. In the center of the floor, beneath a natural vent in the vaulted ceiling, sits a modern fire ring, but intuition tells me wilderness travelers have found shelter here for a very long time. Twice I walked past the cave before noticing the slit opening leading into a single 30-by-20-foot room, bored by water out of red rock sandstone. Blue-black lava flowed over the top, capping the chamber.

The cave lies midway along a main route that anchors a network of trails through the Sycamore Wilderness in central Arizona. The trails bring together cool mountain plateaus with the fertile Verde River valley 20 miles south, where Sinagua Indians in the 9th century built a pueblo at Tuzigoot, now a national monument near the community of Cottonwood. After the Sinagua departed during the 13th century, the Apaches arrived, then stockmen. Brothers Ben and John Taylor drove cattle and horses down from Flagstaff in 1882, and used the cave to store supplies. Their fires, and those of American Indians before them, probably burned where the fire circle in the cave remains today. When I arrive in late May on a 9-mile solo hike, Sycamore Canyon is enveloped in lethargic daytime heat, and the creek is already dry. I carefully ration water and consider the real possibility of a retreat. Then, at Mile 8, comes a flash of reflected silver. In a bend under a bluff sparkles a surviving pool big enough to swim in. I toast my discovery by draining a canteen. Then I follow the trail across another deep wash and around a broad ledge. I turn down the path toward the one-room Taylor Cabin, fronted by a dazzling swath of royal-blue spiderwort. Built of quarried sandstone in 1931 by local ranchers who used it as a section camp, the cabin was named for the pioneering Taylors and listed on the National Registry of Historic Places. The Forest Service maintains it for public use. The cave entrance lies about 200 feet from the cabin's front door, which is held shut by a horseshoe. After nearly three hours of sunshine hiking, I feel my 50-pound backpack sweatwelded to my body. I release it and step inside to find the cabin stocked with emergency water, food, tools, a stove and cots. Cemented into the fireplace's hearth, a broken metate serves as evidence that ancient travelers had come this way. On a table, a journal bulges with notes from hikers and horseback riders. Beyond the cabin, I find a corral and hitching posts, where wildflowers muster for a last stand against the approaching summer drought. Spots of yellow, pink and red lift bravely from the sandy soil. New Mexico locust bloom pink along the creek banks. A worn path leads to the pool I'd seen. After a skinny-dip, I set up camp and a fish-net hammock, purify the next day's water, swing my food onto a high juniper branch I'd seen black-bear scat and cook dinner, just as a frog chorus begins to welcome evening. The Forest Service describes the route I followed, Trail 63, as "the main trail." A (PRECEDING PANEL, PAGES 38 AND 39) Built in the 1930s of native sandstone, the one-room Taylor brothers' cabin once sheltered cowboys during cattle roundups in lonely Sycamore Canyon. (TOP) The glow from the cabin's hearth illuminates the journals in which contemporary visitors leave their comments. (ABOVE) During 69 years, the cabin's fireplace has warmed countless cowboys, hikers and outdoor enthusiasts. (RIGHT) A nearby cave conjures visions of Sycamore Canyon's ancient inhabitants.

TAYLOR BROTHERS' CABIN

Far enough. I turn back toward the memory of a cold, deep swimming hole with a sand beach I had passed on Sycamore Creek. Two days have passed without my seeing anyone. - at the same place where I'd swum that afternoon.

This night, back at Taylor Cabin, I read by candlelight the comments in the journal as finger-size frogs bellow ferociously on the creek. The entry dates show that days, and often weeks, go by without visitors or rain. Weather and water are the main topics, and almost everybody tells a rattler story.

Sarah Miller of Flagstaff expressed alarm when she hiked in, found only dry water holes, the emergency water gone and her own water supply running short. She'd written a warning to others in the journal and carried it back to the trailhead. Milt Dahl of Tempe found the journal two days later but decided to take a chance. He took the journal back to the cabin and reported finding water upstream from the site Other hikers told of spring runoff that made creek fords treacherous; of fierce thunderstorms and the satisfaction of drying out before the fireplace; of a big rodent - probably an overconfident pack rat - dropping from the log rafters into their meal. One man reported doctoring an injury. Sure enough, the cabin has a government-issue first-aid kit and even a stash of horse liniment, although our photographer would find the cabin ransacked when he visited later.

You can see graffiti left by the men who built the cabin, and by the ranchers who used it. Nearly seven decades of wear give the cabin a feel of rustic comfort. People reported making repairs. In the same spirit, I fix a rain gutter and haul ash from the hearth.

Beside the journal lies a self-published pamphlet titled Reflections of the Past as It Rolled Along by Zeke Taylor, son of one of the pioneer stockmen. Taylor said he guided people to the cabin in the 1950s.

The Taylors, he wrote, drove horses and cattle into the canyon during winter, returning them in summer to the high country. Both men are buried in the Middle Verde Cemetery, not far from where the U.S. Army under Gen. George Crook rode out of Fort Verde against the Apaches just about the time the pioneers were starting their cattle operation.

During my three days, the water holes have shrunk 2 inches. In two more weeks, the water will be gone. I shoulder my backpack, take a last look from a ridge and reluctantly leave behind the soothing solitude of Taylor Cabin.