One day in the late 1960s I went hiking with my English professor, Mr. Kendell and the geology professor Mr. McLain, both of Arizona Western College, up the trail that led to the top of the cliffs above Palm Canyon, in the Kofa Mountains. I had never been to this view point, which was far above the palms and at around 2000 ft above the teddybear cholla covered plains below. At this point the cliffs were extremely impressive, dropping sheerly below us. I had spent some time in the main canyon and short periods in the palm grove and another side canyon with a single Washingtonia fan palm, but had never experienced the remarkable effect of being on top of the deep chasm that was below us. I had not even known that the trail we were on even existed, but the mountain experience was about as intense as one could get and left a lasting impression on me.
I grew up in Yuma County, Arizona, and was never out of sight of mountains. My dysfunctional parents did one thing that helped me survive my rather strange childhood- they almost always went on a Sunday excursion into the desert and especially into the mountain ranges that surrounded the Yuma vicinity. I was taken to the Gila. Laguna, Castle Dome, Muggins, and Kofa Mountains in Arizona and the Cargo Muchacho, Chocolate, and Coyote Mountains of Imperial County, California. I could then get off on my own and often did. Later I visited the Kofa Mountains a few times with a few friends and, as in the above description, with my teachers. Also the coast range in San Diego County. When I went to the University of Arizona, I took several field courses and was able to visit and camp in several other mountain ranges, as well as obtain an introduction to the Sky Island ranges of Southeast Arizona, such as the Chiricahua, Huachuca, Santa Rita, and Penaleno Mountains. Other ranges included the Pajarito, Santa Catalina, Rincon, Sierra Ancha and on the Mogollon Rim. On a trip to Baja California we camped in the central ranges and hiked the trails. The only time I saw no mountains was during the five total years I spent in Florida, but even then I traveled to Puerto Rico and visited the Cordillara Central and the Sierra Loquillo. Finally moving to New Mexico I had numerous mountains to explore- the Organs, Floridas, Pellencillo, Animas, Sacramento, Guadalupes, and several others, as well as a few in Texas. Field trips at meetings and projects took me into the Rockies and the ranges of West Texas, as well as mountains in Trinidad. Vacations brought me into the San Francisco Peaks and the mountains of the Gila Wilderness. All in all I had a much broader experience with mountains than I ever did with other topographical features!How are mountains formed? In most of the western mountains that I have been in, volcanism had at least a hand in the formation of the range or peak. All of the cascade range, for example, including the imposing Mt. Rainier, are volcanos, as was demonstrated by the cataclysmic eruption of Mt. Saint Helens in 1980. The Organ Mountains are to a large degree composed of monzonite, a granite-like rock. Monzonite is an intermediate igneous intrusive rock that started out as lava, but never broke the surface until erosion removed the overlying sedimentary and other rocks and exposed it. It differs from granite in having a much lower content of quartz. Some mountains are a direct result of the collision of continents or of uplifts by earth quakes, but in truth all are in some way or another caused by tectonic movement, either because of magma rising to the surface, folding of rock layers or by fault blocks.
Biologically mountains are fascinating. The concept of life zones was developed by C. Hart Merriam based on the San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff, Arizona. In mountain ranges the flora and fauna changes with elevation. On a hike up Greenhouse Trail in the Chiricahua Mountains my family and I came to a spot that could easily have been in Canada, despite its location not far from the Mexican border. In the Sierra Loquillo the tropical rainforest was very much in evidence.
Mountains thus have a lot of pluses for a biologist, especially Arizona’s Sky Islands and I have never encountered a boring mountain range. There are numerous microhabitats in each canyon, spring, pond, lake, or tanaja (natural water tanks). Since I moved to Washington State I have added the Cascades to my collection and even struggled up the stairway at Mt. Rainier’s Sunrise trail.