Peloncillo Mountains

the forgotten mountains

FINDING BEAUTY AND SOLITUDE IN THE HEART OF THE PELONCILLOS TEXT BY GREGORY MCNAMEE PHOTOGRAPHS BY JACK DYKINGA

SUNRISE COMES EARLY TO THE PELONCILLO MOUNTAINS IN MID-AUTUMN.

As the world slumbers, the ascending sun rolls its rays across the ancient lakebeds and sandy hills of easternmost Arizona, brightening the flanks of the mountains, gradually spilling light into their hidden canyons and illuminating cave mouths and overhangs, warming the cool air. With the sun's touch, this quiet place begins to speak nature's language: Quails coo above the drumming of deer hooves, hawks cry out overhead, coyotes howl as they greet the dawn, and the wind stirs, carrying with it, from time to time, the low growl of truck engines from the highway a dozen miles off.

Approached from the east or west across broad desert valleys, the Peloncillos fill the horizon. Running along the state line with New Mexico and across three Arizona counties, they make up the state's longest single mountain chain, as part of a vast volcanic range that ends at the White Mountains to the north and stretches far into Mexico to the south. They form the southeastern gateway into Arizona, a natural barrier easily crossed only at the low pass through which Interstate 10 now climbs, retracing the route of the old Butterfield stagecoach line.

Thousands of vehicles cross the Peloncillos every day via that great coast-to-coast highway. Yet the Peloncillos seem to hide in plain sight. Overshadowed by the more dramatic Chiricahua and Dos Cabezas ranges that bound them to the west, the Peloncillos seem almost an afterthought of creation. Even Territorial historian Will Croft Barnes, who found glowing words for almost every corner of Arizona, rushed by them, distracted by the surrounding countryside. He paused there to acknowledge the Peloncillos only as "smooth round hills with little timber and no outstanding peaks."

The closer one approaches, the WILDER the Peloncillos appear— BROKEN WALLS of granite, scatters of JUMBLED BOULDERS, WIND CAVES cut deep into the rock.

True, a couple of the hills are round, and mostly treeless (the name means "little bald things" in Spanish), apart from the occasional alligator juniper rattling its branches against the wind. But smooth? Not at all, not even held against the formidable measure of the Chiricahuas and, off to the north, the mile-high escarpment of the Mogollon Rim. Anyone who wanders into the Peloncillos soon discovers they are in fact quite rugged, challenging for even a practiced rock-climber or desert hiker, to say nothing of the merely curious passerby.

Nowhere is this more so than in the middle section of the range. Lying partly within the Peloncillo Mountain Wilderness, so designated in 1990 to protect some 20,000 acres of the area's unique environment, the mountains rise in sheer reefs ranging from 4,700 to 6,500 feet in elevation. The closer one approaches, the wilder the Peloncillos appear-broken walls of granite, scatters of jumbled boulders, wind caves cut deep into the rock. Wildest of all is the 5,250foot-tall, diamond-shaped crown of granite called Orange Butte for its burnt ocher color. Easily seen from the interstate, it rises above the low floor of the San Simon Valley and blocks the way, as if guarding the mountains beyond and their hidden landscapes of box canyons, stony amphitheaters, fields of volcanic hoodoos and detritus-covered slopes that lie deeper within the range. The names on the map say much about this difficult but beautiful terrain: Sand Well. Lost Lake. Bitter Creek. And, my favorite, Doubtful Canyon, so named, presumably, for its undependable water supplyor perhaps for its power to shatter a wagon axle.

Marked though they are by such ominous names, guarded though they are by imposing stone bluffs, the Peloncillos still allow entry, drawing visitors along bone-jarring, winding, but generally good, dirt roads that link isolated ranches to the distant highway. Someone with a sturdy vehicle-preferably a four-wheel-drive one, although an ordinary sedan can tackle most of the Peloncillos' dirt roads and a still-sturdier pair of walking shoes will find the mountains surprisingly accessible. Even so, only a very few venture along these roads, and most of them are locals with their minds not on the scenery but on the hard business of tending cattle.

Ranching in the Peloncillos began circa 1880, when a transplanted New Englander named H.C. Day established the Lazy B

[BELOW] Beyond an agave's living sunburst, Roostercomb peak rises, once a solitary hideout for the Clanton gang and Geronimo's elusive band. [FAR RIGHT] Just north of the Peloncillo Mountain Wilderness, a wood-and-iron gate marks the entrance to the Lazy B Ranch, a working cattle ranch once owned by Sandra Day O'Connor's family.

spread below Round Mountain, just north of the present Wilderness. Day's ranch grew until, at its height, it covered 160,000 acres of grassland and rock and stood as one of the largest cattle operations in southern Arizona. Among those who cowboyed here were Day's grandchildren Sandra Day O'Connor, now a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and her brother, Alan Day. They fondly recall their youth in the Peloncillos in their 2002 joint memoir Lazy B: Growing Up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest, published by Random House.

"Most any place provides better grazing than the sparse, open high desert country south of the Gila River on the border of Arizona and New Mexico," they wrote. Still, that Did not deter their parents from working the mountains, contending with the elements and doing their best to keep their cattle in feed and water along the length of the rollercoaster range.

The Day family no longer runs the Lazy B, but the vast ranch, its entrance marked by a wood-and-iron gate, remains a going concern. Its present owner runs a herd of about 2,000 cattle across the Peloncillos and the surrounding flatlands, proving, as O'Connor and Day write, that "it is possible to survive and even make a living in that formidable territory. The Day family did it for years, but it was never easy. It takes planning, patience, skill, and endurance.

Add imagination to that list of traits, or at least the ability to nurse along a long-shot dream, to endure out here. The prospectors and treasure hunters who came to the Pel-oncillos over the last two centuries had such vision. They hoped to find gold or make good on tales of lost Spanish treasures. They're long gone, those grizzled old-timers, and not one of them brought home a fortune for his trou-bles. But their traces remain, preserved in odd corners of the range. Once, slipping on some loose rocks at the base of McKenzie Peak and sliding down a dozen yards of scree while struggling to keep my balance, I kicked up a rusted, sealed tobacco tin. I supposed that it might contain either old tobacco or, even more likely, a mining claim, decades old and probably long forgotten. I returned the tin to its original hiding place and scanned the hills for signs of the miner's pick. Sure enough, I made out a few half-dug shafts high up on the rock-none of them leading to the veins of gold that their diggers hoped to find.

Prospecting no longer lures many dream-ers here, but amateur rock hounds come from all over the world to hunt the middle Peloncillos' official rockhounding site, 5 miles southwest of the Lazy B Ranch along Round Mountain Draw. Working patiently through the mountains' volcanic jumble of broken stone, they turn up agates, quartz and the occasional gemstone. Patience also rewards the visitor who comes to watch the abundant mountain wildlife. As biologists say, the best way to view wildlife is simply to stay put for a while and see what comes along. Those willing to do so-stopping at the flanks of Orange Butte, say, or at the mouth of Doubtful Canyon-eventually will spot dozens of species, among them deer and elk, countless birds of prey, cov-eys of Gambel's quail, pronghorn antelope, jackrabbits, javelinas and even the occa-sional coatimundi.

All that natural bounty draws goodly numbers of mountain lions, whose eerily human yowls can send shivers down your spine on a dark night. In years past, the lions were joined by jaguars, thought to have disappeared entirely from the mountains. But a few years ago, Warner Glenn, a Cochise County rancher, spotted one at the southern end of the range.

Less rare but still elusive, the Peloncillos' desert bighorn sheep show up from time to time as they step into view against the bluffs, always within easy clambering distance of an escape route. Study the edges of the mountains, the caves and rocky outcrops and the places where granite cliffs meet the agaves, soaptree yuccas and creosote bushes of the desert floor, and you just might get to see one of these magnificent creatures for yourself.

Still, the most compelling reason to leave the familiar comforts of the interstate and endure miles of bumpy back roads into the mountains remains a simple one: Sheer solitude awaits. In all weather and all seasons, the Peloncillos see only a few people: ranchers, birders, a handful of hikers, sometimes a biologist or two. You don't have to look far to find a rocky knoll, a box canyon or a hidden draw in which to hide yourself away for a while and forget the busy life beyond the mountains. With even a little bit of exploring, it's possible to find country that hasn't seen a human footprint for years.

Says Bryan Walker, a young cowboy from Springerville who works on the Lazy B, "Just following the cattle, I've come across some nice little canyons full of springs and standing water, and I've been the only person there. I've even found a couple of places that have old Indian petroglyphs. Everywhere you go around here, there's a lot to see."

So there is. I think of all the sights I've been privileged to witness over the years: A flock of sandhill cranes winging its way across the face of Roostercomb peak, seemingly effortless against a stiff wind. A view

of Mount Graham from Orange Butte at sunrise, a distant playa glinting in the early sun. A rock breaking open as it clattered down a hillside, exposing the rose-colored quartz crystal inside. And, most memorable of all, the frosty winter night when I was treated to the sight of dozens of shooting stars, their tails as bright as sparks from a campfire, while the Milky Way gleamed, almost close enough to reach up and pull down a blanket of stars against the cold.

Out on the highway that night an endless ribbon of headlights cut across the darkness, cars threading from New Orleans to Los Angeles and points between. But bedded down on my narrow bench of rock above Canteen Spring, in these forgotten mountains full of secret places, I heard only the hoots of owls and the occasional crash of stones set loose by unknown feet. Waiting for sunrise in the cold night, I thanked those falling stars for a retreat so close to the world and yet so far away. AH Gregory McNamee of Tucson is the author of Blue Mountains Far Away: Journeys into the American Wilderness and many other books.

When Jack Dykinga first arrived in Arizona in 1972, the Peloncillo Mountains' jagged silhouette signaled to him that he had indeed found his new home.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: U.S. Bureau of Land Management, Safford Field Office, (928) 348-4400; Willcox Chamber of Commerce, (520) 384-2272 ог toll-free (800) 200-2272.