the great dental adventure of 2012, part 3

This post is part of a series. To read the first post, click here. To see more Dental Adventure photos, click here.

MORE LIFE ON THE RIVER

It was late in the afternoon when we left Mexico in search of a new spot to sleep that night. From Yuma we drove back up to the Imperial Dam area, this time to Martinez Lake and Fisher's Landing, about eight miles north of the dam. Fisher's Landing is located right on the Colorado River. About a half mile away, out in the dusty desert, is the Fisher's Landing campground where we stayed overnight. I found it interesting to encounter another recreational area on this river, this one not on BLM land but commercial property, with a store, a restaurant, and several streets lined with houses. As we'd driven on a long road through the desert to reach this campground, I hadn't imagined we'd find people living here, in actual houses. But it turns out that people really like to be on the river. Some retire here, staying year-round. Some spend the winter months here in their RVs. And some, like us, drop in for just one night as part of a dental pilgrimage.

In fact, humans have been hanging around here for a long time. Native people occupied land on the shores of the Colorado River as long as 8,000 years ago. Way before that, the Colorado River had a very different course; it's thought that 12 million years ago, this river flowed west to Monterey Bay, close to where I live now, and formed the Monterey submarine canyon. As the Sierra Nevada mountains began to arise, the river was diverted south. Now it enters Mexico and empties into the Gulf of California– that is, what's left of it after the Imperial Dam diverts 90% of it into canals, and after the Morelos Dam in the Mexicali Valley diverts the rest of it to irrigate crops.

I loved Fisher's Landing, though I'm not sure exactly why. Maybe because it was the first place I slept after all my dental work was done, or because I could walk from our campsite to a shop that sold beer. I rarely drink alcoholic beverages, but the mellow river vibe and my post-dental exhilaration seemed to call for some tangible form of celebration. I invested in a 6-pack that ended up lasting for several months. I felt like I was getting into the spirit of the place when I held a cold bottle in one hand and a hot dog in the other. We ate outside in the warm evening air, our nearest neighbors far away in this sparsely populated campground.  

THE KING OF ARIZONA

The next morning we began the wilderness portion of our trip, which took us away from the river for a while. We were speeding into no-man's-land, and I felt the delicious sense of freedom that always comes to me on empty desert roads. We headed north on US 95 to visit the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge, which covers over 650,000 acres in Arizona. It gets its name from an old gold mine called King of Arizona, or K of A, thus the acronym "Kofa." I liked the word "Kofa" even without the secret-code-like explanation, liked traveling into mining territory where intrepid individuals had searched the lonely hills for gold, hoping to get rich. 

This part of the Sonoran Desert is home to the Castle Dome and Kofa Mountains. These mountains aren't huge, but they are jagged, with the kind of peaks that Desert Bighorn Sheep like to inhabit. A Boy Scout campaign in 1936 called attention to the endangerment of this animal, whose numbers were decreasing as a result of habitat loss. This effort was a success, and land was set aside to protect the bighorn sheep, of which there are now about 428. I hoped we would see one as we turned onto Palm Canyon Road and slowly drove eight miles into the middle of nowhere.   

We parked near the entrance to the Palm Canyon trailhead. Another RV was nearby, but it soon departed, leaving us alone in the wild. We ate lunch in our tiny dining room and prepared for the hike up the steep trail to the native California Fan Palms, one of the only naturally occurring stands of these trees in Arizona, a remnant of cooler, wetter times in this area. The walls of the canyon were huge, and its darker interior beckoned us to climb. As we approached, I realized how much I'd been craving contact with a purely natural environment, and how eager I was to get close to the desert in its untouched state.

My hike into Palm Canyon was magical, the best part of the entire two weeks. Our group reached the lookout spot for the palm trees together, then split up. Bev headed back down the trail to the RV. Sundari clambered up onto a small cliff to meditate for a while. I followed the path of boulders washed down by previous rainstorms, examining rocks and flowers and enjoying the silence of this huge yet enclosed space. I lingered at different elevations to feel how each height was different, a world unto itself. I stared at compositions of stone and brush and marveled, as I often do in such places, at its self-sustaining existence, its independence from human concerns. Everything here was perfectly arranged, superbly balanced.

I kept looking up at the peaks, hoping to catch a glimpse of a bighorn sheep, but of course none appeared. Maybe if I stood here in the morning I'd see one, but not in the brightness of the afternoon. I was treated to the sight of something just as fascinating, though. As I hopped from a boulder down to the next level in my journey down the hill, I heard a rustling motion and saw a quick movement under a rock next to my feet. I jumped back up to the boulder in fear, thinking I'd startled a rattlesnake, but when I looked closer, I saw a Gila monster pulling back into its lair. I was thrilled and apprehensive. I wanted to take a picture of it, but how close could I get? Weren't these lizards poisonous? I circled its rock carefully, looking for a vantage point. The creature was shy and kept crawling backwards into the shadows, but I managed to get a shot of it staring out at me with suspicion in its eyes.

Later I learned that Gila monsters like this one only eat about five to ten times per year, feasting on frogs, small birds and mammals, lizards, snakes, reptile and bird eggs, and dead things, eating up to 35% of their body weight in one meal. When they eat, their bodies store fat and water in their thick tails as well as the rest of the body. They spend most of their time in underground burrows, which they dig out with their claws, and rarely move more than a mile out of their home range in their lifetimes. Gila monsters are preyed upon by coyotes and hawks, but if they avoid being eaten they may live up to 25 years. Seeing one of these creatures is rare, as they are very shy and don't get out much. I took my Gila monster sighting to be a sign of good luck. 

Yes, they are poisonous, but they won't kill you unless you really work at it. They produce their venom in small amounts in their salivary glands and inject it into their victims through chewing, which means they have to gnaw on a human for a while before enough poison is released to cause lethal harm. The shorter venomous bites do cause excruciating pain, though, as well as swollen glands and general sickness. This lizard was unfairly labeled as deadly and hunted by humans over the years, but in 1952 it became the first venomous animal to receive the benefit of legal protection. As with so many other spectacular creatures, its numbers have been reduced by habitat destruction. Here in this idyllic desert canyon, my Gila monster was living a life of relative privilege. 

As I made my way carefully down the canyon on the off-trail path I'd chosen, I checked around my feet for more interesting animals who might be lurking under the rocks. My caution was partly out of respect for the sacredness of this canyon. The feeling I got here reminded me of the Steep and Narrow at Pinnacles, or Red Cathedral at Death Valley, or the place near my campground at Joshua Tree where I hiked alone and saw the sunset. Like those other spots, Palm Canyon shows dramatic evidence of geological processes that took ages to complete, giving it a quality of being set outside the human awareness of time.

A PLACE TO REST

Back at the RV and done with my hike, I listened as Bev described what happened to her as she sat outside the RV, while we were still on the canyon trail. Another car had pulled up beside her, and two women got out of it. The older woman told Bev that she was here with her daughter to scatter her husband's ashes in Palm Canyon. He'd loved this place, had hiked here many times, and had asked to be brought here to stay after he died. Today they were complying with his wishes. I thought about that man as the afternoon waned and we began preparing dinner. A fellow appreciator of the desert mountains, he was likely a kindred spirit; his ashes would share the canyon with the Gila monster and whatever bighorn sheep made this place their home. I wondered if his wife and daughter felt lighter after bringing his remains here, and if his soul was at this very moment embracing the silence that lies within Palm Canyon.

After dinner, we watched as a fog arose over the vast expanse of desert scrub. Near the canyon opening, we were raised above this plain and could see far into the distance. I loved the terrain here, with its miles of flatness and its mountains suddenly spiking upwards. The evening mist reminded me of the marine layer that creeps in from the sea at home in Santa Cruz. I imagined that the Sonoran Desert was an ocean, and the mountains were islands. My Tent Cot was a raft on a surging wave. The sun dropped lower in the sky, and now distant mountain outlines were more visible. These looked like waves, too. I lost myself in daydreams of deserts turning into oceans and back into deserts, let my mind dissolve into the idea and release its hold on reality. I put the Drainpipe on my camera and shot the sunset, knowing I couldn't quite capture it, not really caring. A photo can recall a fantasy, too.       

The air was still as the sun went down, and hardly a breeze ruffled my tent while I watched the full moon rise over the walls of Palm Canyon. I will always remember that sunset and moonrise, the way each built up to a tremendous climax, no distraction by movement in the desert atmosphere. Sometime in the night, while I slept, the wind picked up. I lay there with only the tiniest sliver of my mind awake and listening. The rest of me was immobilized. The Tent Cot was sturdy and its heavy frame did not move all night. I heard its walls flapping like sails and I was dreaming wild dreams of flying, racing, diving.

The next morning I woke up feeling clean, scrubbed by the nighttime wind and the extremes of my dreams. It was a wonderful morning to be perched on the edge of the mountains, waiting for the sun's rays to break over the top. Soon we were driving away and the place where we'd slept was disappearing into the wilderness behind us, the desert absorbing our energetic imprint and showing no sign that we had been there at all. Even our tire treads were invisible among the others that lingered here where no rain had washed them away.