Dispatch: Tony Hillerman is Dead

On Oct. 27 the Associated Press reported the death of Tony Hillerman. The author of more than 30 books, most of them in some way about the American Southwest, Hillerman is best known for his mystery novels set on the Navajo Reservation--and, in a few of them, the Hopi Reservation—in northeastern Arizona and New Mexico. As a writer Hillerman was adept at justifying the mysterious ways of the Navajo and Hopi to world, and in doing so he illuminated not only the cultural depth of the nation's largest Indian tribe, but also the precarious and often misunderstood connections between the Southwest's native cultures and the dominant Anglo culture. He was 83. He had lived through several different cancers and illnesses over his long life; he saw action in World War II, and he worked for years as a journalist in Oklahoma and New Mexico before finding fame in the 1980s as a mystery writer.

-Dispatch, 10.22.08

Stop and stay awhile on this well-water loop hike

Having lived all my life in the arid Southwest, I’m a sucker for even the most humble of water features. Rushing mountain creeks, stands of cottonwood and sycamore, springs bubbling out of the usually coy, sun-blasted earth, have always inordinately attracted us lifers, mostly because of their rarity.

There are few easier ways to see the benefits and diversity that a little water and a little elevation can bring to the otherwise parched landscape than to take a trip up to Madera Canyon, and one of the easier, well-watered hikes in the canyon is the Bog Spring-Kent Spring Loop, an approximately five-mile climb back into the verdant wilderness area and back down a disused jeep trail paralleled by a perennial stream.

Once you hit the trail (see Getting There below), it’s about a mile hike, most of it a fairly steep climb along a well-maintained foot trail, to Bog Springs. You move up from the lower elevations dominated by alligator juniper, pinion pine, yucca and agaves, into, by the time you reach the first spring, a lush riparian habitat with fat sycamore and walnut trees, the ground spongy and grassed, the air cool, the shade plentiful.

One has a pretty good chance of seeing one of the canyon’s more tropical-minded birds around a spring, so consider sitting back on the cool ground, listening to the water babble, and waiting to see what darts in for a look at you.

Back on the trail, another mile or so up with the ponderosa pines, along a ridge with expansive views of the canyon and the Santa Cruz Valley—if you’ve never seen the mine tailing from this view, prepare for a revelation—and you’re at Kent Spring.

Stop and stay awhile here as well. This is not, in my view, a hike for its own sake, but a route into a rare environment that deserves to be luxuriated over. Pack-in a blanket and a picnic, forget about registering a new land-speed record or getting your heart rate up to optimum level.

When you’re ready to head back, trudge carefully down the steep access road to make it a loop. The creek that runs alongside the road has several small waterfalls and relatively deep collecting pools. Along the way you’ll pass a third spring, Sylvester Spring, a good place to fill up your water bottle with delicious clear spring water.

One note of warning: The road down is steep and rocky, and is not recommended for the unsure of foot or anyone with knee issues. You don’t have to make it a loop; if you want, you can just head back down the trail, retracing your steps back to the car. Then it’s back down to the desert, hopefully rejuvenated by water and all the natural beauty it provides.

Getting There:

Take Interstate 19 to the Continental exit, follow the brown signs about 13 miles to Madera Canyon. When you get to the canyon, you can catch the trailhead from the Bog Springs Campground or from the picnic are and amphitheater—both areas are well-signed. Either way, make sure to pay the $5 user fee where you park or you’ll be ticketed for sure. Why we should have to pay extra to use our own public lands is beyond me, but that’s the law—for now. From either starting point you spend a little time on an old road; from the campground it’s a 0.7 mile hike up to the junction, where you’ll catch the skinny trail that leads up to Bog Springs.

Originally published in the Sahuarita Sun

The team here at Arizonaroamer.com returned this week from our annual board of directors meeting at Phantom Ranch, Grand Canyon.  We descended into the gorge via the Bright Angel Trail around 8 a.m. last Wednesday and rose to the rim two nights later along the South Kaibab's rough-rock spine.  It was beautiful at Bright Angel Campground, as usual.  We were sitting on the hot beach by the river when a group of river-runners came in to shore, and we got a long look at a female big-horn sheep having a drink and a chomp at Bright Angel Creek.  I wish I were there right now.

This was the first year we took my nieces along, two skinny blonds, nine and seven.  We all nursed a case of low-level anxiety starting out, not knowing how the girls would take to the distance and the technicalities of the steep, rocky trail.  They took to it like a couple of canyon-bred mules to the pack train.  By the end of the hike I was sore and a little cranky while they were skipping and pretending to be camels trudging through the soft sand near the river.   There were absolutely no problems whatsoever, but then these girls have been hiking trails around Prescott, Arizona, at about a mile high, since they were tots.  Still, I think that even with a modicum of training any healthy, outdoorsy kid their age could manage the 15-mile round-trip, as long they get at least a full day of rest at the ranch before heading back.  We're hoping that one way to ensure the survival of the American wilderness is to make people who love it. 

An interesting side note on the trip:  We rented two rooms at Grand Canyon National Park's Maswick Lodge, at about $150 a piece, the night before we entered the canyon.  A member of our party decided that he wanted to camp on the rim instead of being cooped up in a generic hotel room; so he rented a space at Grand Canyon's Mather Campground for $18 a night.  My brother and I went over to the campground after dinner to say hello and were immediately struck jealous.  The air was crisp and the campfire high. We sat and talked about the future, as people will do around the fire, as the thick darkness loomed just beyond our glowing space.

When we went back to our room we learned that a ball of hair the size of a golf ball had been found in our mother's bed.  It might have been the campfire still in my eyes, but it looked to me like it had teeth.  I love Grand Canyon National Park, and I would not hesitate to recommend a stay at any of the park's several hotels, but this was a bit disturbing.  It all turned out to our advantage in the end, however.  The hotel charged us only about $100 for both rooms as an apology.