Page 26 - Volume 3 - Walks In The Black Range

with a few inches of amber water trickling through the pale stones. Further on, in burnt over sections, beyond the wilderness boundary at Sawmill Well, young alder growth was crowding the banks, keeping things shaded enough for at least some flow, albeit with a couple intermittent dry stretches, all the way to the box.
It had seemed so easy and I had made such good time, I could hardly believe I was entering the narrowest section of the canyon, where on the north, gigantic formations of red and tan volcanic rocks grew at the top of steep, nearly bare hillsides. On the south, straight gray cliffs like book spines went up a hundred feet and more. Spruces, pines, alders and firs craned and stretched toward the sky trying to rise above them.
Directly in front of me, however, the jungle of willows, and the dark passage (even with sun almost directly overhead) began. This, I had to push through for the next half mile or so. I didn't mind. At my feet the creek was at a modest gush, with pools, some of which there was absolutely no practical choice but to wade through, up to two feet deep where tadpoles wriggled away at my approach. I paused for thought as I did when I visited the Sapillo Box a couple of years, ago: these same passages might be waist deep or higher in early spring. So, maybe the driest time of the year isn't such a bad choice after all.
Eventually I got to the mouth of Long Canyon on the south side, beyond, North Seco entered an open, well burnt over section, which would not have been much fun to walk through at the noon hour, and was happily beyond the scope of my plans for this day.
I turned back around and ate my lunch sitting on gray bedrock eroded like the pages of a book, with perfect views of perfect bends in the creek both up and down stream. As
I looked around at the quiet stream and green trees I had the feeling I was somewhere else in the Gila, or New Mexico, or the west. Or maybe it just felt like a different time, before all the drought and fires. It was over too soon. I made my way back more slowly now, shaking hands with the grandfather trees, and saying hello to the steller's jays who came to check me out. I purified some extra water.
Back at Davis Well I walked around the ponds, frogs leaping into the water at my every step, then down to the old corral and loading chute, and then down a little further to a small clearing. Walking back up old FR 893, a fox, or maybe even a coyote, most likely after getting a drink at the well, bounded through the brush in front of me. I didn't want to leave.