Tortolita’s Back Door

From the satellite image, I’ve found a corral as a landmark. I hadn’t see it before, but I soon find a back alley off the corner of this corral. There is just enough room to get the SUV through the overgrown foliage of short spiny mesquite trees. They have been taking advantage of the occasional flowing water in a deep sand wash, during rains. We get through both potential obstacles.

Sometimes, I must get out and plan how to use this rough excuse for a road.

This goes on for a while, until I see the wide wash where I know the trail begins. This trail that I’m looking for, one that I’ve walked for 30 years, is now a popular mountain bike trail, one of many in these mountains.

As the jeep trail continues, I’m concerned that it will mislead us again.

Soon enough, we can assume that the old bike trail has been widened to a jeep trail. First the path was a cattle trail. Then, the walking path turned into a slightly wider more used mountain bike trail and then someone took a quad, or 4×4 illegally along the disturbed features. After just a few more vehicles, it is still a very rough two track route.

I take precaution to slip into 4×4 low gears, as we waddle and weave our way through the desert scrub. After climbing out of a cattle water catchment ditch and navigating a couple of sharp 260 degree curves and lumpy gouged terrain, the route continues through the desert until this road just fades away. Yes, just around the time that we decide to park and enjoy a hike, it disappears anyway and a walking/biking trail leads into a thicket of yet another wash.

A part of this trip is to visit an old friend, a crested saguaro. Many years ago, I discovered it; its top just beginning to morph into what would become a crown. There is a Crested Saguaro Society that documents and labels all that are known. I contacted a representative intending to register it and name it after DF. I didn’t hear anything more for a few months. One day, I returned to the website and found that my discovery had been stolen and the rep had laid claim to its discovery. Yea, small people get weird about these things.

We are close enough to familiar features that I am pretty certain that this is the correct route. I have a slight hesitation as we walk into a wash and out. The space seems shorter than in satellite photos, but I surmise that maybe that is because of the size of the image.

The area looks like a typical walk in the Tortolita Mountains in the winter.

It has been dry this year, much drier than usual. Leaves are just falling off of the mesquite.

The grass, the squat trees and the foliage are generally different hues of golden yellows and grey sticks amongst green accents. It feels good to be out of the city and back walking in the quiet and calm of Tortolita. There is still no wind today, and a very un-winterish 80F on this first hike of the New Year.

Airforce jet chem-trails create a haze in the sky, which makes shadow, stealing the clear blue that we love.

It is tough to adjust the camera to the odd light.

Many of the photos are left with a dull pallor. Taking off sunglasses adds more color to our experience.

It doesn’t feel like long when we encounter the first familiar rock formation along the trail. It is the county line bedrock that we I have lounged on several times.

There is a picture of me laying on it in the County Line story.

I almost lose the trail at a bend where a space spreads the trail out. I suspect that the other route at this fork now goes to Honey Bee Canyon. My old trail of solitude has become too popular, but the lack of markings will help keep things quiet for a while longer. These did after all, just started out as cow trails, leading from water to grass. At this intersection however, the cattle have trampled out the evidence of trail.

All along the trail there is oddly debris. After some time, it is obvious that a biker has come through here trimming.

These trails in the Tortolitas do get overgrown, sometimes within a season. I can imagine a speedy biker’s bloody legs and arms, or torn black shorts.

Oddly the debris is left in the trail itself, instead of being cast to the side. With all of the long prickers and barbs, these would lead to flat tires. We are careful; the walk is often actually tedious, looking down constantly to avoid these little landmines.

Despite caution, DF gets caught by one poking through the sole of her shoe.

The anthills are all dormant. Usually we can feel it here, but today, no energy emanates from these circles.

I am on a mission to get to the crested saguaro and take another “over the years” time-lapse photo of its progressive growth. Still, I’m surprised, when DF points and says “there’s one!” To me, busy watching my step, the crested being seems to just pop up.

Our old acquaintance feels like a teenager grownup aloof; we’re irrelevant. It is perhaps growing into a monarch, projecting the attitude of an aloof king?

There is always something exciting about these crested saguaros.

We move around it, taking pictures from different angles, giving it the attention like one might of a child relative that we haven’t seen for a while at graduation. It poses proudly.

I want to see the old stomping grounds, maybe head up to the windmill.

It has been a few years since I would take to this trail freely naked, something like once a week. There are familiar reference points and memories come to mind…

To Be Continued:

There is quite a lot more. This one will be two parts, coming in a few days more.

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