"That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone:
Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.
"
Dorothy Parker, 'But the One on the Right,' in New Yorker, 1929
Destination Wickenburg: Hassayampa
River
Preserve
Saturday
morning, 10:00 am, and after spending most of my $43.78 paycheck
fueling my car I head for Wickenburg. My mission; write a travel story
with a pivotal emotional experience. Personally, I firmly believe that
driving constitutes an emotional experience since my fifteen-year-old
528E needs a new rear axle. For the first twenty miles I fear
the new relationship my horoscope promised is with a tow truck, but
shortly out of Surprise the desert expands forcing me to forget the
shimmying beneath my seat and focus on my travel assignment.
Shadowy blue mountains rise in
the incalculable distance blowing away the last vestiges of city life
claustrophobia, the vast emptiness dwarfing the immutable sense of
urgency endemic to modern life. The yellow, green, and russet landscape
a rustic palette of colors along ribbons of highways’ etched with
foliage.....
What does foliage do? Dang, the car’s shimmying like an
epileptic whore; man! why do I have to keep up with the 65 mph speed
limit? I should write the governor demanding a junker lane on
all major highways. Where is the wisdom in driving out of
town with less than twelve dollars, should I have just read “Arizona
Highways” and faked the trip? Hassayampa? Is this a town?
Barely visible behind a speed
limit posting, a simple green sign reads, “Hassayampa River Preserve.”
Slamming on the brakes, I swerve left crossing in front of oncoming
traffic then barrel down a poorly graded gravel lane barely wide enough
for one vehicle. In my desperation for something to write, I
forgot my deteriorating rear axle until the car gasps over the affront
of the last gravel hurdle. Pulling into the parking lot, I am
immediately irked by a billboard size sign that lists park rules.
beneath the overshadowing
Cottonwoods, an old building, surrounded by a desert garden wreathed in
butterflies, beckons visitors to enter.
Oh Geez!, the Nature Conservancy owns the site! Now I am out a $5
donation. Now I will need to drum up expert information on
every riparian habitat in Arizona and the entire history of the Nature
Conservancy in addition to an intensely leafy detail of this preserve!
Oh well, I will use the flyers and pamphlets to flesh out the travel
story.
Hassayampa River Preserve
operates under the guidance of the Nature Conservancy’s Arizona
Chapter, an international nonprofit membership organization committed
to the global preservation of natural diversity. The Conservancy’s
mission includes identifying and preserving the world’s finest
remaining examples of plants, animals, and natural habitats by
protecting the needed environment both land and water. The
Arizona Nature Conservancy purchased the Frederick Brill Ranch in 1987,
to save this natural riparian habitat. The Hassayampa River Preserve,
located on Highway 60 three miles southeast of Wickenburg, protects and
restores Arizona’s imperiled riparian areas. The Preserve operates with
the help of donations and volunteers to preserve the cottonwood-willow
forests and the rich assortment of wild life native to Arizona that
depend on the few riparian habitats left in Arizona areas to survive.
The Frederick Brill Ranch built
in 1860, houses the preserve’s visitor center, rugged frontier
personality testifies to its extraordinary history as a ranch and
stagecoach stop. No longer a stop over in our country’s
westward migration, the Hassayampa Preserve is the destination of
bird-watchers from around the country. Enthusiasts identified and
sighted 229 bird species at the preserve in addition to the
seventy-nine nesting species that call “Hassayampa” home. In the
visitor center, I meet Lorraine, a friendly volunteer and avid
birdwatcher.
Moreover, she is an extraordinarily useful woman! We quickly become
friends, and she happily points out an “aggressive Rufous hummingbird”
she has watched all day. All right, I had a two-week
bird-watching class in high school that I survived by learning how to
hide a single hitter in my pants cuff, so I am a little slow at
distinguishing the Rufous from the eight hummingbirds that hang around
the birdfeeder. Fortunately, the little bugger bombs another bird at
the feeder. But, enough of the primal woodland war experience, its time
to hit the trails where my pivotal experience waits.
Beaver-tail and Engelman prickly
pears, fend off hackberry bushes, as brittlebush, claret cup and fender
hedgehog seek the spindly shade of cholla in the preserve’s surrounding
gardens. Dozens of dazzling yellow and orange butterflies swoop through
the tall spiny chollas, fighting with the cherry red and Mexican bush
sage for brilliancy. Cottonwoods towering beside desert fan palms
wreathed in desert marigolds. An aromatic scent wafts by my nose
announcing the ‘Mesquite Meander’ trail.
I should have worn boots; these damn lizards' are thicker than atheists
at a libertarian party fund-raiser. What is that noise? There
is nothing in these pamphlets about mountain lions or other criminal
mammals. Oh Jeez, look at that thing! Hmm, I wonder how much
snake venom antidote costs?
Lizards’ race along the trail as
the more shadowy wildlife slithers through the thick ground cover
beside the sandy trail. Approaching the woods, the trail darkens under
overhanging
Ouch!
mesquite branches, and twisting
around the cottonwood-willows the trail settles into a quiet walk along
a dry bank. Off in the distance, tall grass-green reeds bend in the
moist breeze promising water to thirsty trail walkers.
Damn, I forgot my water in the car and the smell of it down here is
unbelievable! Maybe I should go back to the car. I better not leave now
since it’s already late afternoon, maybe I can fall into a water
fountain up ahead somewhere or if it is not too nasty, I can drink from
the stream.
Pursuing the tantalizing scent
of water along the River Ramble trail as a parade of red ants' march by
in flaming red armor under a watchful troop of grasshoppers lurking
beside the path. The river lazily drifts by a mere summer’s trickle of
water running through rich green foliage redolent in the moist breeze.
Oomph!
Starlings swoop and circle in
the deep bruised cleft where the river will again accept the mountain’s
springtime water offerings. After a lazy interval of
stargazing, the friendly volunteer staff emerges from the Hassayampa
River Preserve’s unspoiled trails to assist me to the nearest aid
station