As I hiked alone down the trail along the flood ravaged, but now dry, rocky creek bottom at South Fork of Cave Creek, I found myself in a totally new world from the hustle of the city. No drone of airplane, no rumble of railroad trains, not hum of traffic, no human voice — silence except for bird song and my own footfalls. On either side of the trail there were clusters of poison ivy, but not as thick as I remembered it from before the flood. The flood had pretty well destroyed the old picnic grounds, but a few battered picnic tables still stood near an old Forest Service out building. A red-tailed hawk had perched on a cliff above me just before I left the last humans near the picnic area. The sound of their voices had vanished and I soon came up on the Chiricahua Wilderness sign. I decided to pass beyond it for a bit, into the mountain vastness beyond. I wished that I had more time, but I wanted to visit the Southwestern Research Station, where I had spent many happy hours, and I did eventually have to find my way back to Portal in the evening and a promised homemade meal made by a friend of mine. However, by the time I got back to the picnic area, the people had left and so I paused to meditate on one of the old tables. I only settled in for a few minutes when the rattle of woodpeckers shook me out of my brief time of clearing my mind and back to the reality that I had yet to see Arizona woodpeckers, one of the birds I had come for. I just made it to a view of the dead tree (and unfortunately there are many, including a few that were apparently burned) to catch the brownish wings of a pair of these local birds as the flew off up the canyon. I had seen a painted redstart in 2015 in the nearby area and I had hopes of an elegant trogon, but neither had appeared. Earlier I had run into a small flock of sulphur-breasted flycatchers along the creek bed. A very noisy group of juveniles and maybe an adult or two, of which I got only a mediocre photo. On my way back I spotted a couple of dusky-capped flycatchers in the dry bed. Probably they were chasing insects, but I never saw them catch one. On arrival at the parking area I ran into two people who told me that trogons had been calling near the bridge and so I walked down there. Almost immediately I saw a flash of pink and green as a trogon flew out of the creek bed and behind a mass of branches. I could not get a good photo, but I had seen “my” trogon! I drove up to the Research Station and walked a short ways along the road toward Herb Matyr Dam, where my wife, our kids and I had camped several times when we were all much younger.
However, I still wanted to get a photo of a trogon and so I decided to swing by South Fork again in the afternoon and look for one. I was disappointed in my quest, but I did see and photograph a juvenile painted redstart, thus filling out the three birds I had come to see. The evening was spent in good conversation and good food and so a day ended that had, on the whole, been a very pleasant one.
In addition to birds I was, of course, interested in the insects, spiders and plants — in fact in all life. I photographed what I could in the canyon, including red satyr butterflies, golden-banded skippers, tiger beetles and wolf spiders.
My visit to South Fork was participated by a need to go back to my old Southwestern haunts one more time. I had flown to Tucson, rented a car, stayed with friends for two days and field tripped into the Santa Rita Mountains before heading to the Chiricahuas. Cave Creek is one of my favorite places on the planet and so it was the next stop, followed by the Gila National Forest in New Mexico and the Mesilla Valley Bosque near Las Cruces. However, South Fork was certainly one of my main targets. I had hiked that canyon, as well as others in the Chiricahuas, many times, visited my old mentors, Willis J. Gertsch and Vince Roth, attended the first meeting of the American Arachnological Society, hunted land snails with my graduate professor Walter Miller and other graduate students, and co-taught a field course, all in the Cave Creek area. It was a mecca for biologists and it was my place to visit after the current stressful period in my life. Unfortunately my wife was not able to join me, or it would have been a perfect trip, but still I was glad for those few hours along South Fork and for the wildlife and the peace of the canyon. South Fork still has the power to enrapture and calm as it had in the past, despite the vast changes that have occurred there. May such wild places survive the current madness.