The Turquoise Ledge (27 page)

A
bout two weeks ago in one of the rainstorms a big saguaro fell, and shattered into five or six large pieces about ten feet from the odd knob of basalt above the Gila Monster Mine. The big segments of the cactus blocked the trail so that horses had to detour around them. Within a few days the heat began to ferment the cactus, which gave off a strong wine odor.

The saguaro was part of a small grove of the same size—sister plants ten feet tall with many long branching arms which marked their age at one hundred fifty years or more. I took a close look at the rocky ledge where the fallen cactus once stood but could see no apparent cause for its demise. Its companions in the grove appeared untouched by the wind and other forces that had taken down their sister.

Years ago during an evening thunderstorm a saguaro fell across the road, and a friend who'd just left our house returned to get help to move the big saguaro so his car could get by. The toppled saguaro had broken into five or six sections in its fall. Most of the sections were at least two feet in diameter, and weighed hundreds of pounds each because saguaros store water in their tissue and weigh more than a ton. Many cacti are able to regenerate from severed branches or pads, but not the saguaro.

I went to help roll the sections of broken saguaro out of the middle of the road. After the rain the evening air was cool so I was surprised, even shocked at the body heat that radiated from the broken pieces of the giant cactus, just as the body of any dead thing remains warm for a while.

By daylight, the saguaros are spectacular enough with their towering strange presence. But the first time my younger son saw them he was six years old and it was dark. He saw them in the car headlights and he asked me why there were so many telephone poles here.

After dark, especially in the moonlight, the saguaros come to life. You can feel a subtle energy as from the gathering of a large clan. They move gracefully, and sway in the wind.

The fallen saguaro becomes a home and resource to a great many beings—insects, rodents and birds that help devour the moist fermented cactus pulp, and later take up residence in the wooden ribs of its skeleton. Over the years the skeleton turns to a grayish white dust that leaves a white outline or “shadow” of the cactus on the ground where it fell.

The saguaros are mighty beings who are linked to life and death for all living creatures in this desert. From the saguaro fruit the Tohono O'Odom brewed the sacred wine that put them in the presence of their beloved ancestors during the summer ceremonies to welcome the rain clouds back again.

 

In the big arroyo near the rusted steel culvert half buried in sand, I glanced to my left and there was a turquoise rock on the ridge of freshly washed sand and pebbles. I found another smaller turquoise rock near the place of the sound of air rushing out.

 

One of Godzilla's heirs, a tiny mesquite lizard about an inch and a half long, was out under the mesquite tree eating tiny golden cockroaches after I moved my rain lily pots to try to discourage the grasshoppers.

If Godzilla lizard were still alive he'd never allow the baby lizard to eat any roaches. Now the territory under the tree and the aloe patch belongs to the two or three baby lizards that recently appeared. They are so tiny they are nearly impossible for a predator at some distance to see.

Godzilla the mesquite lizard reached a critical size—once he got so big and able to chase off rivals and to eat even more cockroaches and grow even larger, he became much too visible. On the ground or the wall or a branch of the mesquite tree, Godzilla became an easy target for roadrunners and racer snakes.

My most vivid memory of the Godzilla lizard is the morning I was watering, and moved a pot of red geraniums on the porch. Out came the most beautiful golden scorpion the size of my thumb. The sunlight made her glitter like solid gold and on her back, perfectly formed and curled in perfect rows, were dozens of golden translucent babies too young to leave their mother.

How beautiful they were in the sunlight, I thought, and an instant later Godzilla lizard raced up, fearless of me, and in two gulps ate the mother scorpion and the babies on her back, just like that. So we eat and then one day some hungry creature eats us.

 

Last night the local TV news reported that baby rattlesnakes are being born now, and the mothers protecting the babies “seem more aggressive” than usual. Despised and maligned since the Europeans invaded, rattlesnakes were thought to abandon their babies at birth. Two or three years ago researchers found that mother rattlesnakes remain close by to protect their newborn babies for at least ten days.

The eradication of ignorance about rattlesnakes moves slowly in Tucson. People here still believe that “relocating” a rattlesnake found in their yard does no harm to the rattlesnake. The fire department dumps the snakes out in the middle of nowhere in the heat of the day with no shade or shelter from the burning sun, in unfamiliar territory. Most of the relocated snakes will die.

My neighbors dump “relocated” rattlesnakes in the big arroyo below my house because they've heard I am a friend of snakes. I keep the area around the old corrals hospitable with a water trough and places for snakes to hide and to find rodents, but it is difficult to say if any of the snakes that were relocated here survived. The resident rattlesnakes stake out their territory and don't easily accept refugees because the overpopulation of an area will bring starvation for everyone. Then the relocated snakes have to deal with the roadrunners that live here, and with the great horned owls that kill and eat whatever they please. The odds for survival even at my place aren't good.

 

Last year Lyon and Snapper together managed to smash and tear to pieces a huge rattlesnake that lived under the dog house. The two mastiffs worked together, and while both were bitten, they had little swelling or pain. Lyon was emboldened by their success and became very aggressive with snakes. I found myself on alert and whenever I heard the mastiffs barking out back, I'd run out to make sure they were not killing a rattlesnake or other reptile.

Last Thursday evening I went for a swim. While I was away, Lyon tried to smash a big rattlesnake that had come into the dog yard. Maybe Snapper had learned her lesson last year because this time she apparently didn't participate in the attack. Last year she had helped divert the snake's attention, so Lyon could kill it without danger to himself. But this time he met the snake alone; most likely Lyon had brought down his huge right front paw to smash the big snake's head, but the snake had struck first. Ordinarily a snakebite into muscle is far more dangerous to a dog than a bite to the dog's head or neck. Luckily Lyon had developed enough immunity from previous bites to the skin on his head and neck that a bite into the muscle wasn't life-threatening.

But Lyon's front paw swelled up as big as a catcher's mitt. I gave him antihistamines and pain pills prescribed by Dr. Christo the veterinarian. By the following morning the swelling had gone down and he seemed fine. I was curious to see whether the dog had managed to kill the snake that bit him, so I searched the dog yard but found nothing.

By Saturday night Lyon had developed a secondary infection in his right paw and leg, and by Sunday morning, the veterinarian had to come to the house.

The site of the fang holes sloughed off necrotic tissue, and I wondered if Lyon was going to have further damage to his leg. Humans who get snakebitten on their limbs often suffer permanent withering of the muscle and nerve tissue; but they would not have previously built up as much resistance to the snake venom as Lyon has. The vet left antibiotics and antioxidant vitamins, and I let Lyon sleep on the floor in the bedroom because sleeping near their master helps mastiffs to heal. Monday morning the swelling had decreased dramatically, and Lyon wanted to return to the dog yard with the other three mastiffs who know enough to leave snakes alone. Will he stop attacking rattlesnakes? Time will tell.

Lyon is the smartest most beautiful dog I've ever lived with. He is black, silver and apricot brindle. He came from a renowned breeder and a great lineage created by Mrs. Greco, after World War Two when the English mastiff and other mastiff breeds were in danger of extinction in Europe due to the war.

So few old English mastiffs remained there was danger of degeneration from inbreeding unless a radical step was taken. The old English mastiff registry in England gave Mrs. Greco a one-time permit to breed a German mastiff to one of her English mastiffs, and the off spring were registered as old English mastiffs. This step gave the Greco dogs enough genetic diversity to be intelligent, gentle, free of hip or other problems and they are very beautiful—especially the brindles.

My English mastiffs learn human routines quickly; they dislike interruptions of these patterns. Once a house-sitter took Lyon with him while he fed the horses. The house-sitter forgot to turn off the faucet at the water trough. As he began to walk back up the hill to the house, Lyon stood next to the water faucet and barked until the house-sitter came back and shut off the water. Lyon knew the routine of feeding and watering the horses because he accompanied the humans, and he knew the last thing he and the humans always did was walk over to the water faucet to turn it off before they went up the hill.

Lyon has a strange routine with the long dry fronds of the potted pony tail palm by the clothesline. He slowly walks under the fronds so that they drag over the entire length of his head, back and tail, lightly touching, tickling him. He slips into a trance of quiet ecstasy, and continues to move back and forth under the dry palm fronds for minutes on end. Once or twice he's caught me spying on him but he maintains his dignity as he continues to let the dry fronds flutter down his spine.

Through circumstances beyond my control, I ended up with six of these wonderful mastiffs—all of them related to one another. I was the midwife for all of the pups Lyon and Thelma had, including the births of Macho and Osa. Snapper and Rosie are Lyon's daughters but from Xena, also a Greco dog.

I
only walked three times in September. Yesterday, October 6, I walked for the first time in weeks. The dirt and the stones of the trail welcomed me back. I felt it through the soles of my walking shoes; a softness, a giving way, a gentleness that welcomed me like an old friend. I suppose the trail and I are old friends after thirty years of my horseback rides and walks. For years I wasn't sure I'd be able to keep the old house or the acreage so I tried not to become too attached to the place. But now I've lived with these black basalt peaks green with saguaro and palo verde years longer than I lived in my beloved birthplace of sandstone, lava hills and juniper. All along I've been blessed.

The morning was cool and cloudy so I put on my Arizona Cardinals hat and I didn't bother to wear sunglasses. The sun came out as I started up the hill and passed the ant palace of stone. I wished then that I'd worn my sunglasses. But I felt so good to be walking on the trail I didn't mind the bright sun.

As I approached the side trail to the entrance of the Thunderbird Mine I saw something on the ground—trash of some sort. From my front porch off in the distance I'd seen two people at the mine entrance earlier in the morning. I went to remove the trash on the side trail but as I got closer I saw it was a pair of sunglasses. They fit.

The trail turned toward the east and I was glad for the sunglasses, and I felt such happiness for the generosity of the world. As I approached the Gila Monster Mine I was watchful for the two light beige rattlesnakes, one small, one larger, who like to nap in the middle of the trail where the sand is soft and fine.

At the Gila Monster Mine the broken limbs and trunk of the great saguaro still lay across the trail where the windstorm felled it weeks before. Shod hoof-prints showed that riders made their horses step over the broken cactus arms and start a new path to the left of another piece of an arm.

I passed the dance plaza of the javelinas and the deer where soft sand gets deposited from a small arroyo. Nearby I noticed a very elegant ant palace all in the base of an outcrop of orange pink granite. The coolness of the morning brought out the ants; their motion caught my attention. I forgot to look for the bright orange round rock on the hillside to the north-northeast.

I came upon the spot where I had earlier found the opalescent tumbled glass in the arroyo sand near the trail crossing. I always look for the reflection of the sun off other fragments of arroyo-tumbled glass in the sand. From there the trail goes up the hill where I must not look or I will see the two-story abomination. Then I had a premonition that the man and his machine had done more damage to the arroyo.

As I stepped around the mesquite at the edge of the big arroyo, I saw that the man and his machine had removed more large boulders and further destroyed the habitat on the bottom of the big arroyo. He left behind a reddish basalt boulder broken open in the middle of the arroyo as if he planned to take it next.

All the good energy I'd felt from the walk on the trail suddenly vanished. I felt sick. I'd really hoped that the tons of boulders and rocks the man and his machine had already removed would complete the landscaping of his gargantuan yard. But alas! He intended to turn the big arroyo into his own personal rock quarry.

Here is the catch with karma, or curses and witchcraft: they often don't take effect fast enough. Karma may not even things until your next life.

The Celtic curse, which the British poet Kathleen Raine had pronounced under the old tree by the sea against Gavin Maxwell, her ex-lover, took effect almost at once. Within three months Maxwell's beloved sea otter was killed while under Raine's care; then Maxwell's cottage by the sea mysteriously burned to the ground. Within twelve months of Raine's curse Maxwell developed brain cancer and was dead six months later.

I could have called again to complain that the man was operating a sand and gravel pit in violation of the county zoning laws but I wasn't hopeful. This is the old West and private property rights are absolute here; there's no such thing as the common good. I'd already had two county officials from different departments tell me they couldn't stop the man and his machine.

I lost all my walking momentum at the site of the damaged boulders, but a short distance past I found a turquoise rock, triangular in shape and the size of my thumb. I hadn't walked since the last rainstorm. I found another piece of turquoise stone the size and shape of a butterfly on a sandbar near the hidden place where I hear the air rush out of the Earth. The big arroyo was no less generous with its turquoise stones despite the new damage and new loss of boulders.

This machine man strikes me as the sort who will gouge more boulders from the big arroyo each time the county contacts him, to show his contempt for the government and environmental laws.

Each time I walk, I notice I feel better as I get farther away from the gouges and holes where the boulders were removed. The next big rainstorm and flood down the big arroyo would erode the bank and hill beneath the huge ugly house; the holes would fill in with rocks and sand. Eventually a five hundred year rain would come and carry down boulders from the slopes of the Black Mountain to jam the big arroyo at that place once again.