Happy New Mayan Long Count

When words fail . . .

. . .  there is the long count.

Walk in the Wash

The wash from Finger Rock near our house.

One nice thing about the colder weather here is letting the dogs loose in the nearby wash, the one that comes down from the Finger Rock trail. (I have less concern about reptiles.) It means walking two houses down San Simeon Drive, then cutting across openings in creosote bushes and mesquite trees.

This giant fishhook barrel cactus or Arizona barrel
is over eight feet tall.

It's a trail for coyotes and javalinas to commute from the Catalinas to neighborhood rabbits and table scraps. Some weeks ago there was a letter to the Arizona Daily Star complaining about coyotes in the city. Well, Finger Rock wash is one approach.

My favorite landmark is a giant barrel cactus nestled near an old mesquite tree. Slow growing, such cactus might take four years to grow three inches. They live about 130 years and get about five feet tall, but I have seen very few that big. This one in the wash is about eight feet tall, even taller if it were standing up straight instead of tilting towards the south.

I like to walk the dogs without a leash. They are good kids and have learned to stay close. They like "reading the morning newspaper," i.e., sniffing everything, which gets old if I am being dragged by the leash. I make noise and keep an eye out for trouble.

Jasmine & Nazar trot by a mesquite tree.

This recent early morning, I remembered to take a camera. The shapes are so amazing, and the morning light so beautiful.

Mesquite trees come in huge, over-reaching, scrawny shapes. Branches flow wider than tall, out sideways and draped down towards the ground.

Mesquite can regenerate from a piece of root. They have the deepest taproot ever documented: over 160 feet. (They were digging a copper mine when they found the root.) Its bean pods are a staple food for locals, including coyotes.

Hardy or not, I lost one by the driveway that had been planted by a previous owner. I planted a new sapling this year with the hope that I do not overwater it to death. Life may be hardy in the Sonoran Desert, but it's all living right on the edge.

Crowds & Bratwurst

It turns out that the Fourth Avenue Street Fair in Tucson was invented the same year as the University District Street Fair in Seattle:  1970.

The Fourth Avenue Street Fair began when local merchants put tables in front of their stores to attract customers before the holidays. Now, they say, it's one of the largest in the country and draws crowds of 200,000 to 350,000.

Apparently, Tucson is unknown in Seattle which boasts that its U-District Street Fair is the longest running street festival in the entire country. That Fair began as an event to heal a neighborhood divided by hippies, war protests, and street riots. I used to go there, but missed the tear gas.

We went to the Winter Fourth Avenue Street Fair yesterday. Glorious weather; huge crowd. We'd been once before, but we'd forgotten how big it is.

It's hard to believe there are so many people hanging out at these events. Times change. Most appeared to be in their thirties or older. Given that Tucson's Fourth Avenue is close to the UofA, I expected to see more undergrads. But they seemed to be in small numbers.

Walking four blocks to get there, then meandering through the six-block site, plus side streets, left us wanting to sit down in the shade. We like La Indita, a local Mexican restaurant favorite for almost thirty years.

Trouble is, I have a weakness for hot dogs. There were lots of food vendors at the Fair, and several selling hot dogs and the like. I decided to treat myself.

The first clue should have been that I was already pretty full from my chili relleno. I had ordered a small plate, but it came with beans and I am not one to leave food on my plate.

The second clue was when I walked up to order my hot dog. Prices weren't posted. For good reason.

The third clue was the price for a hot dog. Seven dollars for a Polish or a bratwurst. (What's the difference? Two disparate peoples united by a common butcher.)  I was too stunned to respond intelligently. I paid up.

Of course, the bratwurst didn't settle well. They rarely do on a full stomach. I should leave my hot dog cravings at Costco with its bottomless soda.

Other than food and a Balinese hand fan in an off-site courtyard, we didn't do any shopping. It's all too much to take in. There was one place selling cute doggie caps, but we resisted.

Halcyon Magic

Christmas trees or, as I am beginning to think of them, halcyon trees do grow bigger.

An early scene in Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker includes a magic Christmas tree that grows bigger and bigger.  At least, this used to happen in Pacific Northwest Ballet's annual productions when I saw a performance aeons ago.

They do grow bigger.  It happens as you keep buying more lights and ornaments to hang on them.

We bought a couple of strings of lights and decorated a palo verde tree in front.  It's no small feat, if you know how palos verdes are weirdly bushy and razor-blade spiky. We decided a few more strings would improve it. Yesterday I put up two more and it occurred to me how true: Christmas trees really do grow bigger.

Speaking of aeons, year end, and the end of the world, has everyone seen the Australian PM Gillard confirm the end of the world according to the Mayan calendar?  Happy Yule and Merry Halcyon Days!

Cascabel on the San Pedro

The fair site in the mesquite bosque that is Cascabel.

Cascabel isn't a place as much as a concept. It's an area on the San Pedro River about five miles north of where the paved road from Benson ends. The dirt road continues down the San Pedro (it flows to the north) another 25 miles or so until San Manuel, which puts you back on asphalt again near Oracle. That 30 miles of dirt would take you past another concept in geography, Redington, all the time keeping the Santa Catalina Mountains on your left. But we didn't go past the pottery kiln just south of the old hamlet of Cascabel.

Shari noticed an article in our local Tucson newspaper, the Arizona Daily Star, about a ghost town coming alive annually for a fair, the Cascabel Community Fair -- in this case, the 32nd annual. We donned our boots, packed the two furry kids in back of Smokey Ganesha (our Explorer), and headed for the San Pedro.

Cliffs by the San Pedro that look like castle walls.

The drive was well worth it.  Not the I-10 freeway to Benson, or the paved road past the Mormon church spire, but the San Pedro itself. It's a narrow band of mesquite bosque (forest) by the river bed bounded by the Rincon and Santa Catalina Mountains on the left and the Little Dragoon and Galiuro Mountains on the right.

The San Pedro saw Hohokam settlements and Pueblo people migrations. Unlike the Phoenix (Gila and Salt Rivers) and Tucson (Santa Cruz) basins, the San Pedro hasn't seen much modern development. It's downright remote. So its archeological sites are much better preserved and accessible. Its remoteness has protected it, which makes the San Pedro feel particularly special.

One of two quilt booths

They claim over a thousand people come to the two-day Cascabel Community Fair. They probably had more this year, given the newspaper article. There was a regular stream of cars on that dirt N. Cascabel Road, and there were scores and scores parked under mesquite trees.

According to one Fair organizer, there are about a couple of hundred people living within a ten-mile radius, a very diverse community. They create the event, and we met some of the nicest people. The nucleus of the Fair is a homestead where a pottery kiln had been constructed. Pottery, alpacas, local honey, quilts (yes Cini, quilts), jewelry, paintings, cards, and even Christmas bric-a-brac were for sale. The food booth, the largest of the booths, had banks of crock-pots loaded with chile (bland, but hearty) and whatever it is that makes a sloppy joe.

And the band plays on.

Locals had bumper stickers against freeway and high voltage electric lines in the valley.  Apparently, the powers that be had an idea of constructing a freeway bypass of Tucson that would have run the length of the valley, and another idea to lace the valley with high tension towers. Among the two dozen or so booths were tables devoted to the local environment.

Three guys were playing music, mostly country (some Hank Williams) and vintage pop, and all good. The amplifier, mercifully and tastefully befitting the bosque setting, was turned to a setting where you could hear the music without wanting to shield your ears and run.

The artist community castle.

It struck me that most of the attendees were older people.  The hippie generation is grey-haired. More SUV's and BMW's than pickups and funky vans. But there were lots of pickups. A teenage gothic couple, all in black with that metal-pierced look, seemed awkwardly dressed for the occasion, but they were enjoying the event.  Another awkwardly young (probably local high school) couple seemed to be on their first date.

A short walk away was a sort of a funky forest castle. A Tasmanian guide (been here for thirty years but still had a thick accent) offered admission for a dollar.  He said it was built by Mexican construction workers using their own techniques and materials and had served as an artist community. We spent a buck and Shari toured the upstairs loft where she found an altar with pictures of Ramakrishna and Anandamayi Ma. Nice.

So I think we will give the Cascabel Community Fair very high marks indeed. I'd like to go again next year and drive a few extra miles to see the hamlet that's supposed to be the ghost town. I'd take the big camera with a telephoto lens and get a better shot, early in the morning, of the cliff that looks like castle walls. And maybe I will spend a dollar and go inside the artists' castle while Shari holds the two furry kids outside.

May Google not sue me for infringement.

Judeo-Christian Values

We used to call
them demagogues.
Now we call them
religious fundamentalists.

Mr. Ryan confidently warns that a Barack Obama "win" threatens "religious freedom" (that's code for evangelical Christianity) and Judeo-Christian values. If it's really Judeo-Christian values Mr. Ryan is worried about, which ones are they? Telling the truth? Loving your enemies? Serving the poor? Paying taxes (the coin with Caesar's image on it)? Or does Mr. Ryan refer to the uniquely Judeo-Christian value that those who do not conform to our belief system don't count in the eyes of God?

Why doesn't Mr. Ryan simply accuse Mr. Obama of being the Antichrist?

Why can't people simply disagree on policies instead of calling each other names? Why do we have to assume that the other side is made up of evil people who do not share our values?

Why can't the media report the news instead of hiring talking heads to predict what will happen, and pontificating on what witticism or gaffe may or may not have an affect on the predicted outcome?  Does anybody out there watch BBC news on public television? That's how I remember news broadcasts before the days of CNN, FOX-noise, and MSNBC. One can actually learn something new watching BBC.

But we do not want to learn anything. We want politicians and the media to reassure us of our own prejudices. We want entertainment.

Democracy itself is not a Judeo-Christian value. Being told what to think is a Judeo-Christian (and their similarly scripture-based, sister-religion, Moslem) value. The idea that everyone gets a vote developed from our "pagan" heritage, the ancient Greeks.

Maybe that's why we are suppressing the vote, because democracy isn't Christian. States like Florida and Ohio are incapable of organizing an election where people do not have to stand in line for hours to vote, some even being turned away. What, did the election come as a surprise to these states' governments? "Gosh, we didn't think so many people would come out and vote." Hello? The only possible excuse for such incompetence is intent.

Thank God the election will be over after tomorrow. I can at least hope for some decrease in the vicious, arrogant nonsense being shoveled out. Maybe a one-half decrease. When attitudes and language become so polarized, and only one side can "win", the other half will not be reconciled to the result.

I put "win" in quotes because nobody really wins. It's a guaranteed loose-loose scenario.

Etch a Sketch Romney in the Sky

Someone thought it would be a good idea to sky-write the letters "ROMNEY" over Tucson. The pilot started by creating a smiley face, then "R", then "O" -- you get the idea.

One problem was that it was ten in the morning and, from where we live, he was writing towards the east and the sun, which is why I couldn't take a photo of the entire work.

The pilot was an expert, cutting the shapes amazingly precisely. Symbolically, I thought to myself, by the time "ROMNEY" was spelled out, the smiley face had disappeared.

I thought to myself, this is the sum and substance of the Mitt Romney campaign: upside-down smoke without substance.

Agamemnon at Coolidge Dam

Once the Gila and Salt Rivers flowed pretty much year-round, making the Phoenix valley a rich agricultural region for Hohokam and O'odham peoples. When the Anglos laid out Phoenix's water lines, they used the existing canals dug by the ancients. But today, thanks to irrigation and municipal diversions and wells, plus climate change, these rivers sacred to the old peoples are mostly dry.

The Coolidge Dam was built in 1935 on the Gila River, just before it flows north into a canyon, then west into the Phoenix basis where it is joined by the Salt River.

It must have been quite attractive in its heyday, with art deco ornamentation. Now it's quite run down, as if abandoned.

There's a campground that looks like it used to be popular destination. It's run down with only a handful of campers, a dinghy or two with bass fishermen, and picnic shelters by the boat launch that you would not want to use (the tables or the launch), unless you are a vulture.  There were several hanging around.

Octoberfest on Mt. Lemmon

Summerhaven, more precisely, Mt. Lemmon Ski Valley, has an Octoberfest celebration on the weekends. Shari and I took the bait but didn't get hooked.

$5 parking, $20 for a couple of bratwursts, and $5 bottled beer are a bit rich for us. And I should have anticipated the music. I detest German oom pah pah. We could have ridden the short chairlift to the top of the ski run, but at $9 each, it wasn't worth it either.

However, the drive up Catalina Highway, a sky island scenic route, is stunning. Giant saguaro cactus are plentiful at the lower elevations, then oaks and junipers, and above 6,000 feet, pine forest. At the top, which is 9,157 feet, there are stands of aspen.

Next Octoberfest, we will bring a picnic lunch and take Jasmine & Nazar for a walk in the forest. Once at the Mt. Lemmon quasi-German function is enough.

Autumn on Its Way

It was in the low sixties this morning as we took our two furry children down the street for their morning walk. With a chill in the air, this was the first time I have worn jeans and a thin cardigan since early spring.  Like March. Jasmine is frisky. We think she likes the chill.

Dress is changing, at least at night when it's colder. Now I remember why I still have jeans and cardigans.  All these will be forgotten each day as the sun gets higher in the sky. We are expecting 99 degrees today and 100 tomorrow. But the evenings, nights and especially early mornings have a slight chill to them.

Did anyone see that full moon? Gorgeous. And in the early morning, if I stick my head outside and look up, the pre-sunrise sunlight has obscured every star in the sky except for two bright objects, Venus and Jupiter.

Mr. Owl

The first clue was a couple of days ago. There was fresh owl scat on the brick walkway under the big gum (eucalyptus) tree. Then very early this morning, in the dark, the hoot of an owl.

Around sunrise this morning, I heard an odd, repeated cry. I went in back and two birds flew out of the pine tree. One appeared to be an oversized dove. It was the one making the noise. The other was a large owl.

Both settled in the gum tree, the large dove warning its fellows about the predator. The owl settled on a hidden branch, exactly above the spot where I had found its scat.

I hope it feeds greedily on the little nocturnal rodents. But I wish it would attend to its nature elsewhere.

Unearthing the Driveway

The Treacherous Step Exposed

It started out small, like most projects do.

People walking down our gravel driveway reach a downward slope where they have to step up and over. Loose gravel made that step perilous and we were expecting a hundred people for a backyard party. I knew there was some asphalt underneath, so I swept, shoveled and hosed a small area to reveal old but workable paved driveway surface.

Then our local community pitched in to pave East San Simeon. The blacktop looked so clean, I was embarrassed to have dust and gravel from our driveway tracked onto and defacing the new black surface.

So one morning, while still cool and the sun was barely above the horizon, I went out with a shop broom to where gravel meets new blacktop.

Blacktop meets old grey-top.

Optimism faded immediately. Sweeping was hopeless. I tried a shovel. Nothing doing.

The gravel was embedded over and within a thick layer of fine dirt that over decades had been compressed into a hard block, like caliche or hardpan clay. The hardpan was several inches thick. I needed to break it up with a tool.

Concerned about damaging the old asphalt, I started with a hand tool. I felt like an archeologist. It was way too much work for too little impact.  I needed something bigger, but not my iron pike. I started using my pickaxe.

I hacked away with the adze edge, gently or hard depending upon thickness, then shoveled the broken hardpan onto my screen and sifted gravel from fine dirt. The gravel I spread on our side driveway. The dirt I wheelbarrowed to several strategic sites. After about three hours of hard labor, I had put down a layer of gravel on the side driveway, created a large hill by the mailbox, but had cleared a only few feet of driveway.

Pickaxe, shovel & wheelbarrow, the screen behind my legs.

But those few feet were so pretty and so precious that I felt like I was unearthing sections of the ancient Appian Way. No one had known it was there.

I could keep up with the neighbors because I had a hardtop driveway. My pride bloomed. If I unearthed a few feet each day, soon I would uncover the original asphalt all the way to the bottom of the hill. That's only 150 feet.

In addition to aesthetics and history, the hard surface would increase runoff and direct precious rainwater to the acacia and palo verde trees in our little wash.

So it's been my hobby for the last six weeks or so, especially on a Saturday morning.  A few hours of carefully hitting and scraping with the pickaxe until the hardpan breaks off from the old asphalt surface. Then screen (dust everywhere), dump the gravel, and dump about four to ten wheelbarrows full of fine clay soil/dust. That's more than enough for a day.

Just one little, twelve foot section left.
It's the darker rectangle within the sun's glare.

The sun gets warm, I am sweating and dragging, and lizards are actively running around the yard. It's time to jump into the swimming pool than take a nap.

We had some rain a few days back, and that softened the hardpan to where I could just scrape it up with the shovel. Trouble was, wet dirt is heavy and hard to screen. What I gained in shoveling versus pickaxing (is that a verb?) I lost on my back trying to separate large gravel from sludge.

I suppose they make machines that do this in a few minutes. Maybe when we get rich and famous, we'll hire some guys to lay down some new asphalt. But until then, I managed to get some really good exercise and Jasmine the Wonder Dog, who never really liked walking on the gravel anyway so she'd walk on the cinderblock wall instead, can now walk on the driveway without any bother.

And I have these really neat large piles of dirt on the West side that I can form into terraces. But that's another project and another blog.

Sunset to the East

The sun, most everyone knows, sets in the West. Which is only one reason sunset on August 23rd was so spectacular.

These two photos were taken looking to the East and a little South.

The real reason this sunset was so spectacular is the size of the cloud that reflected the evening sunbeams.

It's impossible to capture the immensity in a photo. Imagine that it's your field of vision, this huge, glowing red cloud perched above and behind ominous dark clouds.

Then this red cloud gets bigger and bigger as it slowly moves towards the south, finally fading as the sun itself recedes lower below the horizon.

It doesn't take long.  Everything changes in just few minutes.

Harvesting Melons

Okay, gotta brag about the fruit from my tiny garden.

This cantaloupe is the grand daddy of them all. 6.6 pounds. It grew on the vine that clings to the fencing mesh-wire that keeps the little critters out.

The melons get so heavy, I make slings out of mesh bags that Trader Joe's use to pack avocados four at a time.

I have several melon-hammocks tied to the mesh-wire, and another large cantaloupe ripening and soon ready to harvest.

In the other photo you see the cantaloupe and some muskmelons. You get an idea of their size from the Le Souk Ceramique cereal bowl which is almost six inches in diameter.

Cheers,
Shari.

Monsoon Frogs & Turtle

If two incidents can make a pattern, we have one. Two years in a row we have had a Noah's flood monsoon storm pass through the Foothills on the Fourth of July. Do we know how to celebrate the Fourth or what?

It's not just the wind and water. The Wet brings out critters you otherwise never see. Our Fourth of July gathering is blessed with frogs -- one tiger striped little fellow found its way into the kitchen where a guest, familiar with these things, pronounced it an endangered striped Chiricahua frog and gently took it outside.

The down side is the croaking. These frogs make a lot of noise -- all night. They are looking for mates and they don't have a lot of time. The sound is not as pleasant as frogs on Whidbey. It's more like the wailing of something in great pain. Lovesick, I suppose.

So frogs have become a staple for our Fourth of July parties. No, we don't eat them. We just look at them with flashlights. Then the following morning we net them out of the cement pond -- easily a dozen or two.

But the tortoise yesterday was a first. We had a big pour yesterday. Monsoon rain can be very local. A quarter mile can make a huge difference. Lately most of the rain has hit downtown and south. Yesterday it hit the Foothills, up to two or more inches depending on location.

When the rain gets that heavy, I am out in the back sweeping water away from the back doors. As I often complain, people here don't think about rain when they build houses. Without the wood dams that I have caulked down by the thresholds, sheets of water would be oozing into the TV room and kitchen. Not good. The concern is enough that I sweep the water away. It's a fun way to get exercise and really get into the Wet.

So I'm out there sweeping water and there is this tortoise by the side of the house. I have no idea where these guys live 51 weeks out of the year, but it's astonishing what shows up in the Wet. Bugs the size of pigeons. I can hardly wait for the tarantulas.

Hydrocarbon Harvest

Sheets of the precious hydrocarbon harvest.

It's monsoon season, the Sonoran Desert's version of the Wet, and many people do not realize that in addition to all the fauna and flora that actively thrive and bloom this exciting time of year, it can also be time to harvest hydrocarbon from our swimming pools.

Cut and formed, ready for shipment.

The blue blooms burst out, blushing from the sunshine absorbed during the spring and summer weeks. The azure film covers the pool surface, ready to be pulled out, cut to size, processed, and converted into the myriad uses that we have all come to take for granted. But it all begins here.

Close up shows the fine cellular construction of
this versatile native material

Known under the trade name "solar blanket", the hydrocarbon sheets can be used to cover and insulate swimming pools where the sunshine is not as plentiful as blessed Baja Arizona. The versatile harvest can also be used for packaging, whether in sheets or separated into popcorn sized pieces, used in residential insulation applications, serve as pet-bed liners, and even exported to China where they grind up the prized sheets into a fine powder used to color Blue Hawaii mixes.

If left too long in their Sonoran solar habitat, the hydrocarbon sheets become over-ripe, pieces detaching and freely floating through pumps and filters where they gum up the works, so it's good to harvest them when ripe.

The Fifth Season

A headline today reports the hot weather the country has been experiencing.  NOAA is quoted, "Most of the contiguous U.S. was record and near-record warm for the six-month period, except the Pacific Northwest."

Except for the Pacific Northwest?  Sorry about that, Lower Alaska. 

As for Baja Arizona, it's nor-mal. We just call it the summer and monsoon seasons.

See, we have the usual seasons: autumn, winter, spring and summer. But we add a fifth season, monsoon.

Just when I thought the dry heat was getting to much, it turns into the Wet. The change is dramatic. There are clouds in the sky, lightning in the afternoons, and even rain. Evaporative coolers (swamp coolers) have little effect and the A/C keeps the cool. It stays warm at night because the clouds and humidity hold the heat.

The desert smells different. Especially when it rains, the fragrance of the creosote bush is spectacular. New green growth appears on some plants, like the ocotillo which can shed and grow leaves several times a year, and some plants have learned to take advantage of the Wet and flower this time of year.

Bugs, like beetles the size of a small bat, come out that haven't been seen in a year. And worth a separate blog, frogs and toads appear like they have been transported from a different planet.

Most of the world has four seasons, but I wonder if Vivaldi lived in Baja Arizona, would the Four Seasons be the Five Seasons? If Beethoven knew the desert monsoon, would the fourth movements of his Pastorale Symphony have even more thunder and lightning?

Agamemnon on Big Sacred Mountain

The paved road that starts from near Safford, below 4,000 ft., and ends up over 9,000 feet in the Pinaleños

We Anglos tended to name geographical things after ourselves. We used George Washington's name, for example, for cities, counties and states.  McKinley got an Alaskan mountain (thankfully now known as Denali). We also tend to name our housing subdivisions after the trees that were removed to grade and "improve" the sites.

The Spanish named a lot of geography after saints. There is something charming about the names Santa Rita Mountains and San Pedro River. The San Pedro runs south to north. Parallel to the east is Aravaipa Creek and its valley. Again to its east, also running south to north in this part, is the Gila River. The San Pedro and the Aravaipa end up flowing into the Gila which then cuts through some quite hilly terrain (the occasion for Coolridge Dam), then flows into the Peenix basin. The Gila, by this time a dry river bed most of the time, flows west and ends up in the Colorado River, or what's left of it in Baja Arizona. It's in the upper valley of the Gila that the town of Safford (named, of course, after an Arizona territorial governor) is located in some pretty rich farm country.

Looming some six thousand feet above Safford are the Pinaleño Mountains, the highest lift of any mountains in the state. Its peak, Mount Graham (10,720 ft.) is named after an army officer who helped map the area. The Apache name is Dzil Nchaa Si An, which means Big Sacred Mountain. There is something simple and reverent about native names. They didn't need maps so they didn't worship cartographers.  Or astronomers.

Agamemnon in the Pinaleños, looking back towards
Safford and the Gila River valley. 

The Pinaleño Mountains are not in an Indian reservation, which rendered the Apache nation helpless in its fight to keep the Max Planck Institute and the Vatican from constructing telescope observatories on its peak. Big Sacred Mountain is, well, holy to the Apache. Mountains are where ordinary people, with reverence, can get empowered from higher beings. But the Apache didn't build churches for their sacred ceremonies, so they had no evidence to convince the astronomers' friends or the Parks Department ("Land of Many Uses").

A paved road takes you from the Gila River valley, below four thousand feet, up the Pinaleña Mountains to well over nine thousand feet. Twenty-one miles and seemingly endless hairpin switchbacks take you from Sonoran desert to junipers, then pine, then dense fir forests, even Douglas Fir. This is a very special sky island with some five different eco-sytems in its varying elevations.

I am pleased to report that Agamemon and I enjoyed the climb thoroughly. Especially getting to Ladybug Peak where all of a sudden, after yet another hairpin curve, the road comes out the other side of the ridge and you get stunning views of the other side, the Aravaipa valley, and even the Santa Catalina Mountains.

Looking west from the Pinaleño Mountains, near Ladybug Peak:  the Aravaipa valley, 
beyond that the San Pedro valley, and beyond that the Santa Cruz valley where Tucson is located.
But you can't see Tucson from here. That may be Baboquivari in the middle of the horizon.

On a hot Memorial Day weekend (we are already in three-digit highs), the air was clean and brisk at the higher elevations. Gorgeous, invigorating and inspiring.

Agamemnon on Redington Road

Agamemnon on Redington Road

Our little Honda Fit, Agamemnon Jetson, is named after its ancient color (bronze -- get it?) and its futuristic shape. In Tucson, it stands out a bit, but so do Smart Cars and motor scooters. Lots of pickup trucks, muscle cars, and SUV's in Tucson, and in the wealthy Foothills, lots of Mercedes and two-seater vanity cars.

Tucson from Redington Road

A car like Agamemnon might pass in Tucson (we won't even mention Peenix) metro area, but in the rest of Arizona, it's an oddity. This is a cowboys and Indians frontier state where the Sonoran Desert and dirt roads breed pickup trucks and other vehicles with big wheels, big engines and high clearances driven by guys wearing big hats.

Looking south, past agave bloom to Rincon Mountains

Redington Road is an extension of Tanque Verde Road, sort of. Tanque Verde may have been a dirt road in its past, but now it's mostly a four to six lane upscale urban retail sprawl heading east. Recently widened to accommodate the growing suburban population, Tanque Verde ultimately resumes a conventional, two-lane status and turns into Redington Road. This is an area of very nice houses surrounded by lots of acres. Continuing east and gaining elevation, we arrive at the boundary of the Coronado National Forest where the asphalt ends. From city to country estate to desert all in the space of a mile or two.

The first six miles of dirt road take you to the pass itself, merely a high point somewhere between the Santa Catalina Mountains and the Rincon Mountains. Another twenty-two miles of dirt road takes you to Redington.

San Pedro valley from Redington Road, Galiuro Mountains in the distance

Local members of Redington Chamber of Commerce

Redington is marked on most road maps as if it were a town with a gas station, mayor, and a chamber of commerce. In fact, it's only a concept in name, a farm-ranch accessible only by dirt roads. Once the home of a post office, one of its founders was lynched in Florence on suspicion of being involved with a stagecoach robbery near the ranch.

I think the map makers did not want to leave an empty space in the middle of the San Pedro valley, so they seized upon the idea of Redington.

Agamemnon and I got past mile 18, about two-thirds of the way to the Redington metropolis, over a reasonably good gravel and dirt road, rarely going over 20 m.p.h. for fear of hitting something with the bottom of the car. The stunning view of the San Pedro valley and the Galiuro Mountains in the distance can only be hinted in a photo. Add the agave blooming this time of year, and you have a very Sonoran experience.

It was Memorial Day weekend, but very few vehicles, and almost all of them pickups.  Most of the holiday weekend activity was in the three informal shooting ranges. These areas are designated by the broken glass, cans, and other garbage that carpet the ground and brush.

As Tucson News reported last November, the EPA is investigating these three sites of Merkin macho. "The area is littered with lead shells and bullet ridden trash that people have used for target practice. . . . According to the complaint filed with the EPA, soil samples collected from various sites at Redington pass show extreme soil lead levels. . .. There were several signs warning people not to dump waste and to pick up their shell casings . . ..  Almost all of the signs we drove past were riddled with bullet holes."

Agamemnon and I kept moving as we heard the rat-tat-tat of pistols and the bursts of a machine gun. I kid you not. This may be the real Merka of Sarah Palin, and Jesse Kelly would call these contaminated garbage dumps "freedom," but I have to admit I don't like guns or garbage.

East of the pass is a ranch. One has to admire the fortitude of living here. Some distance away, by the side of the dirt road, is a sweet sight. Some kind person took the trouble to build a brace for a barrel cactus growing among rocks. For me, that ranch and cactus brace are parts of the real America.

Agamemnon and I got back to town safely; no incident. I'm awfully proud of the little guy trekking over rugged Sonoran hills in the company of 4x4 trucks and off-road vehicles. Not only can this tough little beast handle the dirt roads, it is air-conditioned, has an iPod connector, plays MP3 disks, and gets damned good mileage. It looks cute, too.

Sonoran Green Stick Blossom Festival

Palo verde (green stick) is one of several pea family members that thrive in the Sonoran Desert. (The others include mesquite, acacia and Mexican bird of paradise.)

One variety of the palo verde, the blue (because there's more blue in its green), is the Arizona state tree.

Thanks to legislators with knuckle-head priorities, Arizona also has a state gun, the Colt single action army revolver. Hey, in Arizona, even Democrats own pistols and ride horses.

Native to the Sonoran Desert, the palo verde blossoms in spring. Golden flowers cover its sparse, green branches. When they fall, it's like a gentle shower of spinning gold flakes dancing with the sunbeams.

The flowers attract swarms of bees, their loud hum beginning at sunrise. I don't hassle them. They are busy with their work, gathering and pollenating.

The blossoms make a bright yellow carpet over ground, walkways and shrubs. You see blossoms playfully impaled on saguaro spines.

This spring, the green stick blossom festival has been particularly spectacular. The rain we had last December encouraged a lot of flowers.

Japanese art film directors love to show blooming cherry and plum trees, their blossoms falling like rain. Here in Tucson, it's a gentle, golden rain of palo verde blossoms.

Only the festival is better here because we can eat the fruit. We have one up on the Japanese merely flowering fruit trees. The peas of the palo verde are edible, and thanks to the bees, bugs and birds, plentiful.

They are small and a bit time consuming to shell, but even raw, they are incredibly mild flavored. A quick saute in butter and hmmmmm.