Pat Bean's blog

A view of the Ajo Mountains across from the Organ Pipe Cactus Visitor Center. — Photo by Pat Bean

Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.” – John Muir

An organ pipe cactus as part of the Kris Eggle memorial at the Visitor Center that was named in his honor. Eggle was a park ranger killed near the U.S.-Mexico border. — Photo by Pat Bean

And a Lifer and the Ajo Mountains

            My wanderlust, these days, is sustained by day trips around Tucson. So it was that I decided to visit Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. The next day, as I was reading To See Every Bird on Earth by Dan Koeppel, which is about the author’s bird-chasing father, I came across a tidbit about the monument.

The Ajo Mountains’ double arch. — Photo by Pat Bean

Koeppel remembered a trip the family had made across country in which his father birded Organ Pipe, and had identified several new species. As a birder, I immediately looked up a list of common birds at the monument. It appeared that I had seen them all.

So it was with much surprise and delight when I identified a dusky-capped flycatcher at the monument, a bird I had never seen before. The sighting came at the very end of the visit, providing an extra layer of icing to a chocolate-cake day that was already well frosted. The bird was a lifer, my 710^th species.

Earlier, my off-the-beaten-path heart sang when the day’s activities took me, my canine companion Pepper, and my brother Robert, who came along for the ride, off the pavement on a 21-mile loop drive that took us part-way up into the Ajo Mountains.

Roadside cactus blossoms

The tall candles on the landscape were the saguaro and organ pipe cacti that brightened the landscape around ever twist and turn, of which there were many. Yet another surprise of the trip was coming around a bend and seeing an arch, and then discovering that there were actual two arches. A tiny arch sat atop the larger one.

I’m not sure how the day could have been much better, well worth the 325 miles the round-trip covered.

My brother asked where we were going next, when I dropped him off at the end of the day. The question delighted me because not all of the people I know enjoy long, bumpy off-the-beaten path and into the desert kind of trips.

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Bean Pat: New England Nomad http://tinyurl.com/ks56pvc Another blogger exploring their world. Since I can’t travel everywhere, I also enjoy seeing some of it from my armchair.