Rather than write an article about one single outing, this piece is going to be a string of unrelated anecdotes, connected only by the common theme of Nature. You can basically consider this OSW entry something of a “house cleaning” effort, or perhaps a “catch-all” for some of my more pleasant memories from recent months.

In September, I once again joined my friends Lin and Ken for part of an elk hunt in the pinyon-juniper habitat northeast of Pinetop. Ken had the only tag and it was for an early cow hunt (rifle). When I joined the guys a few days after they had already set up camp and done some scouting, they relayed to me how abysmal the prospects had been thus far, with very little in the way of elk sign and no actual sightings of critters themselves.

I don’t normally bring luck of either type (good or bad) to those around me, but, the morning of our first collective hunt, Ken suggested that Lin and I set up on a high ridge and “glass” (use binoculars to scan) the area in which he hoped to fill his tag while he concealed himself just above a brushy dry wash not far from a metal trough that a local rancher used to water his free-ranging cattle.

Up on the ridge, Lin and I each took a different vantage point of the land sloping down into the wash and the adjacent “livestock drinker” which, naturally, was also an attractant to elk. Occasionally, we would use our radios to let Ken know that we had not seen any elk and were freezing our tails off (although we were relatively high on a ridge, a higher hill to the east of us was blocking the sun that was just beginning to emerge above the horizon).

Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a small herd of elk (a bull and several cows), but unfortunately, they had been spooked about a mile from where Ken was and were running full speed away from the area in which he was positioned. Given the low density of elk in this somewhat marginal habitat, we all assumed that our best chance of the morning had just slipped through our itchy trigger-fingers. Nonetheless, Ken suggested that he stay in the area of the wash and that Lin and I hike back to Lin’s truck to follow a dirt road that would take us in the same direction from which the elk had fled.

We did so but failed to locate the bedding area from which the elk had originally come as they headed toward the water source. What we did find, though, while we hiked around looking for sign, was a large deposit of petrified wood. Outside of the Petrified Forest National Park, this was easily the best collection of fossilized trees either of us had ever stumbled upon in our lives. By this time the sun was up high enough that its slanted rays lit up the ground where the crystalized wood lay scattered randomly in many different forms, including logs, stumps, and big and small chunks. The extensive pile of sparkling debris was more than enough to make the trip a huge success for me. And no, we didn’t take any of the petrified wood. Incidentally, on this particular hunt, Ken didn’t get an elk, either. Sometimes the best treasures are the ones left where they were found.

Next story: Later in the fall, I went kayaking with my friend Mike at a reservoir northwest of Pinetop. Everything about the day went perfectly: the weather was temperate, we had the “lake” to ourselves, the scenery was stunning, the bird life abundant. Because we spoke little while we, each in single-seater kayaks, paddled across the reservoir and up its tributary canyon, the entire day had a peace and tranquility that stretched in every direction as far as the eye could see or the ear could hear.

After roughly five hours of lazy paddling, when we finished exploring, we loaded the boats back up on top of Mike’s truck and secured them safely with straps. I assumed we would head straight back home to Lakeside, but Mike wanted to make one stop en route to a narrow canyon within the Little Colorado River drainage. He suggested that we might check the area in what remained of the day’s light to see if we could kick up any uncommon bird species.

Because the habitat in which we hiked was more arid and sand-stony than the Pinetop area, we both hoped we might see a few of the desert birds that we don’t get in the forests around home. Almost immediately, as we descended a treacherous trail down into the canyon, we heard a Canyon Wren singing his half-tone-scale song and sounding a bit like someone walking their fingers down the white and black keys of a piano, right to left, increasing in speed along the way. We sauntered along the canyon floor for a while and were happy to see classic arid land birds including gnatcatchers, thrashers, and sparrows. Despite the excellent birding, eventually the waning daylight prompted us to return up the canyon and back to where we had parked.

We made our way back to the main road but stopped again when Mike decided to drive down a two-tracker that led to a deeper section of canyon he hadn’t visited for many years. We exited the truck and took a short walk to where we stood on a cliff edge to take in the last moments of twilight. On the far side of the chasm, an eerie call bounced around off the rocky walls. We ruled out several critters as being the source of the odd sounds: no, not any species of rodent nor any of the mammalian types of carnivores; so what, then? It simply had to be a night bird of some sort but it didn’t sound like any of the owls we knew, nor any of the nightjars. There was no water nearby so it couldn’t be a waterbird of any sort. Eventually, just before it got too dark to see the far wall, Mike found the bird in his binoculars and described to me where to find it in mine. Sure enough, it turned out to be an owl, a Great Horned Owl, to be precise. But, it was an immature owl and so was making a call that the adults don’t make, which is why neither of us had known for sure what it was. We left the young owl to his haunted canyon and finished the drive back home.

Speaking of owls, let me append to the brief tale above another outing I made with Mike about a month after our kayaking foray. We had gone out to poke around in another canyon, this time part of the Silver Creek drainage and, once again, the story involves an owl. On this particular trip, we did not do any kayaking and instead spent several morning and afternoon hours hiking. After dropping down into the canyon, Mike pointed out various nearby canyon-wall panels of petroglyphs as we picked our way along the rocky floor.

On this trip too, the birding was good, and, after seeing numerous different desert songbirds, I wondered aloud if we might find another owl. We hiked on and, before long, I noticed a habitual perching spot of what I assumed was a large, predatory bird – as evidenced by large splashes of the bird’s dried excretions (guano) on the perch itself and then on down below, on the canyon floor. Shortly after noting the perching spot, we came to a small pile of feathers, some of which looked like dove feathers but then also, here and there, a couple of owl feathers.

Before we had walked another hundred yards past the fallen feathers, suddenly, up spooked an adult Great Horned Owl, as silent as a falling snowflake. The big owl (aka a “flying tiger”) sailed down-canyon and out of sight, and we did not see him (or her?) again that day. We hiked until we decided it was time to turn around and head back to the truck and then drove on home.

Well, what do you know, I’ve come to the word limit for another article, and I’ve barely scratched the surface of all the stories I could tell of these past few months. I guess that is the only downside to having so much fun – that time should elapse oh so quickly before you even notice its passage. Maybe next month, I will try to wrap up some of my combined recent adventures, or, maybe not. I may decide that it is time to move on and will focus instead on only the outing that is freshest in my mind.