Thrill of the Raucous Cooing

Far southward in Arizona, thrust up from still thirstier deserts, arose green-capped ranges. Scorched mesas and bajadas between were cleft by verdurous canyons; and threading across the dazzling valley basins, ribbons of silver coursed between leafy bowers of beckoning green. Only by visioning them as floral "islands" of the desert might one prepare the mind to grasp the contrasts waiting there in the empire of the sun. Memorable among those verdant refuges, in the domain of stately saguaro and green-skinned palo verde, is the paradise of Aravaipa Canyon. Between its flaming, stupendous walls I waded the crystal stream that had gashed a red gorge across The Tablelands of Pinal County. Desert ash, Fremont cottonwood, and southwestern sycamore leaned above the rippling coolness of the creek; willows bowered the bouldered windings of the brook. Bright birds flashed gaudily amidst the shining green. A constant chorus of cardinals, phainopeplas, doves, warblers and racketing Gila woodpeckers filled the depths of the canyon, and gave gay accompaniment to the tinkle and splash of the stream.

Had I really come through the miles of blistering heat, of furnace-like washes and dry riverbeds, of treacherous cholla, barren creosote and prickly pear? From above the crowns of the cottonwoods was signaled the answer. High on inner slopes of the canyon giant saguaros had long ago staked out their claims. This land, they testified, belonged to the desert. This deep-hidden, winding oasis of green was but the final flowering of the wastes. Dizzily atop Aravaipa's sheer, bright walls, stretching away across the roof of The Tablelands, I would find again the far cactus reaches, the quivering, heat-cursed distances of the mesas. Where else save in such islands of the desert might one glimpse the jaunty, black crests of phainopeplas? Or thrill to the raucous cooing of white-winged doves?

Endlessly, from wall to wall, from pebbled beach to cliff and back, I crossed and re-crossed the sparkling stream. The startling blood-red of a vermilion supreme flycatcher blazed as he darted out from shaded scion. Mighty sandstone precipices swung close on back. The intense blue sky appeared to have needled peaks and creviced rim, save when a fleecy cloud-sheet wedged briefly in between Yuccas climbed the brick-red talus slopes with mountain mahogany and cliff rose, and clung in the joints splintered columns of the cliffs. Then, at a swift turning of the creek, a band-tailed Mexican black hawk sprang into the air from his batrachian dining by the water's edge, and swung in swirling flight above the broad-crowned cottonwoods. His sable sweep against the red cliffs and the dazzling blue over the glistening green, above the glinting channel seemed to portray, in ways that words could not, the contrasts and the splendor of the painted gorge. Here, between narrowed cliffs, was islanded wonder of the desert.