ROB BETTASO

They say that “hindsight is 20/20.” If so, then why, when I look back on October, is it such a blur? I guess it is fuzzy in my mind because it passed so quickly, and it passed quickly because I was unusually mobile. My travels took me to the Arizona borders with Old Mexico, New Mexico, the Navajo lands, and, I suppose I could also include the border with the White Mountain Apache lands – though the latter doesn’t really count since that border is only a quarter mile from my house. Had I ventured to see the recent annular eclipse at its prime viewing spot in Arizona (and one of the best eclipse viewing places in the country), I would have also traveled to the combined borders of Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico -- at the only location in the U.S. where four states meet (the logically named: “4 Corners”).

The eclipse was one of the few days last month when I wasn’t exploring beyond my own general neighborhood. In fact, I thoroughly enjoyed experiencing the eclipse just the way I did: near my home, solo, walking along the boundary of the Apache lands, and marveling at the weird lighting and the bizarre shadows that the occluded sun created as its mighty, but diffused, rays bounced between the leaves of our local oaks and the needles of our various conifers. The altered light gave the world around me an eerie glow and everything was truly surreal; at least for a brief moment in time.

The reasons for my greater than normal amounts of travel in October were as varied as my destinations: there was my uncle’s memorial service in Pomerene; camping and nature study with my biologist brother while we visited wildlands in the Whetstone and Huachuca mountains as well as the San Pedro River; joining friends for their elk hunts in the juniper country near the Navajo Nation; and lots of hiking, biking, and birding within the White Mountains but at more remote locations than I typically visit.

As the month came to an end, I welcomed the fact that I had completed my more distant travels and was able to shift my focus to enjoying LOCAL outdoor time with such longtime friends as Anne, Dave, and Mike; plus the folks I have gotten to know more recently via the Nature Center and the Audubon chapter. When one doesn’t have to waste time being cooped up in a vehicle getting to a natural area, it means that one has all that much more time to spend actually enjoying nature! Sometimes it occurs to me that I need not even leave my own backyard, as I could easily grab my hand-lens (a magnification tool that is as important to botanists and the folks who study invertebrates as a pair of binoculars are to birders and hunters) and spend a day crawling through the weeds of my small yard, admiring myriad plants and animals of the micro-variety. But of course, I can’t really imagine that any of my friends would want to join me on such an expedition….

One of my more recent local forays was with Gaston, as we rambled through the backcountry of Fool Hollow State Park. We met at 7 a.m. and, since we could tell right-off-the-bat that there were very few species of water birds to identify at the Park’s primary feature (a large reservoir), we opted to head out for higher ground and look for critters that might be active in the mixed oak/conifer habitat of the Park’s upper elevations. Around the reservoir, the willows and cottonwoods were in various stages of color change; and, as we hiked up into the conifers, only the oaks, wild grape, and wild rosebushes were sporting autumnal hues – a mix of yellow-greens, gold, rust, and brownish-reds. The cool, quiet air was pierced occasionally by the calls of flickers, jays, and the croak of a raven.

Once we had reached the higher ground, we meandered along the tops of sheer cliff faces and along the edges of several boulder fields. We also enjoyed spectacular views of the dark blue reservoir, contrasted with the anemic blue of the autumn sky. Most of the trees were pinyon and junipers (PJ); and the chickadees, titmice, juncos, and sparrows were very actively foraging in their dense foliage. At one point, Gaston was admiring a tall and noble snag when he noted that there was a hawk perched on one of its many gnarled branches. We could tell that it was a Sharp-shinned Hawk despite the fact that it had its back to us. As Gaston set up his tripod and camera to take some photos of the unperturbed raptor, we agreed that I would slowly close the 50 yards or so of ground between us and the hawk.

I walked slowly and quietly and was able to get quite near to the snag but the sharpie never did shift his position to face us (though he did occasionally turn his head nearly 180 degrees to keep an eye on me). Once I had reached within 30 feet of the snag, he suddenly hopped just slightly from his perch, opened his wings, and immediately dropped down; within the blink-of-an-eye he disappeared. Even though we could no longer see him, we knew that he must have flown low and wove through the thick stand of PJ until he found a more private perching site. No doubt, the hawk had perceived us long before we noticed him. To wild creatures, humans must seem like lumbering oafs, who are as noisy as they are smelly.

Later, we hiked to some cliffs that were above the reservoir’s inlet – the point where Show Low Creek feeds water into the reservoir. We stayed on the plateau and maneuvered in an upstream direction. The now dry floodplain of the stream was wide and there were brown meadows and weedy fields in many portions of the valley. We were still hiking mostly through PJ, but the sandy ground was now also heavily vegetated by various cacti and yucca species. At one point, while Gaston was absorbed in taking a photo, his shin brushed a prickly pear. Very casually, he finished composing and taking a few photos, and then he sat down to pluck cactus spines from his pant leg and then from the skin underneath. Like many successful photographers, Gaston is a calm and patient man.

Just outside of the Park boundary, there were still a few of the old ranch properties; but, other former ranches had been sold and were now being subdivided into neighborhoods of “ranchettes.” I couldn’t help but feel a pang of regret that the old ways were inevitably transitioning into the new; and it was obvious that as such changes continued, many beautiful wild places would be lost to the city’s growth. How is it, that when we love a wild place that we have been lucky enough to stumble upon, we almost immediately commence to building on said place such that, before long, it no longer resembles the original place that we loved? Then, all too often, we pull up stakes and move to the next wild place, because the old place has become too crowded. In many ways, humans seem to resemble the social insects (colonial bees and ants, in particular) in that we suffer from an affliction of restless industriousness.

By the time we returned to our vehicles, the sky was equal parts azure-blue and puffy, white clouds. I checked my GPS unit and saw that we had done a total of 5 miles within the Park. We chatted about the different birds we had seen and estimated the number of species to be in the mid-teens; not especially high, but given that waterfowl numbers were minimal, it wasn’t too surprising a tally for a morning that had gone from breezy early on, to quite windy by hike’s end. We munched on some snacks and watched bluebirds and robins fly back and forth between open fields and the adjacent woodland of pinyon and junipers.

When we finally decided to say our goodbyes and head to our respective homes, we noticed that about half of the formerly cottony-white clouds had taken on a more moisture-laden, blue cast; almost like they had been bruised. One can always hope for rain, even at a time of year not known for much precipitation. When I got home, it was not raining, so I puttered about the yard, admiring small bugs feeding in the seedy grass-heads.