Gooseneck Trail

A Subtle Green

On Friday Bear had another new experience in the desert when he saw his first Mojave rattlesnake. I use the term “saw” rather loosely as though I was keeping a close eye on the trail in front of us, it’s quite narrow in this section and as we rounded a kink he walked right past it and I, following close behind, only saw it at the last and instinctively hopped over it.

After my heart started beating again, with the snake so docile and Bear so well behaved, I took a few moments to watch it from a safer distance. It was on the small side, motionless apart from an occasional flicking of the tongue, and seemed to have a green tint to its coloring. The funny thing is, I only see hints of the green in the pictures, perhaps a trick of the light or a trick of the fright. It was coiled up on top of its tail and never sounded the alarm with its rattle. After a few quick pictures and taking a moment to revel in its beauty, we warned an approaching cyclist and continued on our way.

I love peaceful encounters with rattlesnakes but I don’t need to come that close to one ever again. I wasn’t sorry we were taking a different route back to the car but I am thankful I got to watch it for a little while, it was only my second time seeing this species and it’s such a treat to watch them when you both feel safe.

Sometimes It’s Good To Be Wrong

I had always imagined the desert here was a vast expanse of sand and an occasional cactus. I’ve never been so happy to be wrong as beauty abounds in the Sonoran Desert in forms large and small. Early on a sunny July morning this Harris’s hawk and I surveyed our desert home from the Gooseneck Trail.

Pushups

With a pounding headache and growing nausea I had to chuckle as I walked down the trail that this would be a sunrise best enjoyed sitting on the back porch beside the pool, except that having done only one other short hike the past month it felt good to be out on the trails. Between allergies acting up and being tired I chose an easy short hike close to home, a section out on the Gooseneck Trail, with my planned turnaround the first big rock formation. I reached the rocks at sunrise but didn’t find anything to shoot, if I had been feeling better I would have found interesting plants and patterns in the rocks but the creative part of my brain was moving at half-speed, to be generous.

After a long drink I put my bottle back in my bag and prepared to leave when I noticed a stick on the rocks beside me. The stick started doing pushups and I stood frozen in confusion as I’ve seen a lot of sticks and this is not typically how they behave. There was a beat. Two. Three. Four. Oh right! A lizard! I slowly and steadily moved a smidge down the trail so I could photograph him and thankfully he did another set of pushups, the rising sun lighting up his brilliant blue belly.

I headed back up the trail with lighter footsteps, forgetting for a moment the headache and nausea, feeling for just a moment that perhaps I could extend the hike. With the rising heat I wisely decided that discretion was the better part of valor and I headed back to the car and a lie down on the couch. From last weekend, this weekend I didn’t manage even a short hike, though the afternoon swims have been refreshing.

A View of the Wash

In Oregon we got occasional heavy downpours but mostly the summers were bone dry while the winter had frequent drizzly showers that kept everything damp and preposterously green. In Arizona we get some rain in the winter but it’s summer that brings the monsoons. Rain may be rare but when it arrives it often pours down in buckets, perhaps accompanied by high winds and thunder and lightning (I can count on one hand the number of lightning storms I saw in two decades in Oregon). I haven’t seen much rain this year, when it has rained I’ve either been at work or it’s been dark, so I still haven’t seen a wash run. Our neighborhood is on a hill so there are washes running through (one beside our house), some more natural looking than others, so one day it will happen. This chair would have an excellent view of a running wash, sitting in the middle of a desert wash along the Gooseneck Trail, and by the looks of it has probably seen its fair share of summer storms.

Kid’s Table

A pair of Harris’s hawks with a good view of the surrounding desert on a hot summer morning in July, an adult on the left and a youngster on the right. Taken in a different section of the preserve from the two families I watched this spring.