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Sunday, January 25, 2009

Dos Cabezas Wilderness and Willcox
























The 11,000 acres of the Dos Cabezas Wilderness is geologically the most northern range of the Chiricahuas. The Two Heads—Dos Cabezas—can be seen from Interstate 10 as you approach the forlorn town of Bowie. Fifty miles east and drivers are in Lordsburg, New Mexico, a misnomer of a town as Lordsburg is neither lordly nor very Burgy. It's a run-down interstate rest stop town. Weather was nice again with sunny skies and temperatures approaching 70F. Had this been summer these mountains would have been hot and dry.

I made a quick stop at the Fort Bowie Bookstore to look for books on the Apaches. Karen the NPS Ranger was very helpful to me and gave me the email of the great-great-grandson of Cochise who allegedly runs a sweatlodge in the White Mountains. “Write to him, he’d be very willing to chat with you about Apache traditions…but be careful as he got kind of weird with me after a while and I stopped writing to him.”

I thanked Karen for her help and then we headed toward the Wilderness off Happy Camp Canyon Road back toward Bowie. This dirt road stretches west and northwest off Apache Pass Road until it comes to a gated fence six miles from the main road. This is all wilderness, with no marked trails except for a few unmarked ATV trails around large rock formations. We were in Open Range country, but I commented that with all the beer cans, this was Open Container Country.

It looked like it would be a solitary hike today, until we saw a large horse trailer parked off the road. And then I saw the inevitable: Horseshit on the trail. And then more footprints. I did not want the dogs anywhere near any horses.

We turned around and parked at the Indian Bread Rocks Picnic Area next to a large bald granite outcropping. We could see water trickling down bald rocks. There had to be a stream nearby, right?

We headed south and hiked cross-country along cattle trails across soft, decomposed granite. The ground felt wet in places. Most of the brush was soft grass.

At .7 mile of easy hiking we came across small waterfalls and watering holes that would be entirely inviting in the summer, if it weren’t for all the discarded beer cans and bottles. Someone even spray-painted graffiti along a rock cliff. Other than the man-made ugliness, this was a pretty spot, with views of the mountains to our northeast, and truck traffic on the interstate visible from our vantage point. This place was obviously a well-known party place for locals.


"This would be a great spot to watch out for scouts" as I pointed to the northeast. We could see for miles. We were in Apache country. We hopped over old Indian mortars, wondered about some of the pointed rocks (were they used as tools?) and all around us were odd boulders balanced on slanting cliffs. There were balanced rocks all around.


We were at 4200'. The highest peaks were 7900' high and directly to our west.

We wanted to hike further. There were two saddles on either side. Kevin chose the one more to the south whereas I opted for the one more to the west where I figured the water source was coming from. Some of the rocks were slippery but I had little difficulty. What was more difficult was for the dogs to decide whom to follow. They were with me until I hit a rocky ledge, then opted to run down the canyon and up the other canyon to be with Kevin. Now I found myself in what looked precariously like mountain lion habitat: rocky cliffs with a nearby water source. Squirrels and rabbits darted about in all directions and now I was alone.

I kept climbing up over the exposed rock, aiming for the saddle further ahead. As I glanced up I saw a rather large, tan animal walking softly across an exposed ledge My heart sank. Those were the colors of a solitary mountain lion, and here the dogs were nowhere to be found. I didn’t want to yell out for them, and got angry at Kevin for not wanting to hike closer to me. I had no where quickly to go: cliffs to my north, straight rock to my west, and more steep cliffs to my east. If a lion wanted to go after me, she could have me in a split second. And there wouldn’t be anyone or anything to help me.

I grabbed my camera and looked at the animal through my telephoto lens that was oblivious to me. It was not a lion after all: its head was too dark and pointed, and its lower feet were black. The tip of its tail was also dark. What was that? A coati? It seemed to be more interested in getting to its water source, but I opted to not hike any further uphill, despite the beautiful views here of more exposed granite and strange geologic formations. I’d have to come back here another day with a larger group to explore these hills.

I saw Kevin come back down from his canyon. He was not interested in climbing up my canyon. What? He was ready to call it quits?! We probably didn’t even get two miles in, but I didn’t say anything. We were back at the truck by 2:30pm, two hours since we first left, and headed to Willcox. I would have preferred to explore some more in these mountains, but together and not separately. Kevin just doesn’t seem to hike like he used to, and prefers shorter hikes of under four miles. I had told him last night we would hike about six miles in the upper peaks further in the canyon, but the horses turned us away.

Our next stop was Willcox and dinner at Rodney’s, a small shack of a diner in the Historic District just big enough for the kitchen. Rodney is both owner and cook of this one-employee place where customers take their food outside and eat at tables put there by Rodney. Or they can take the food to the Palace Saloon next door or to the theatre on the other side of the diner. I ordered soft tacos, and got a huge plate of hamburger, cheese, lettuce and southern beans and rice.

Montana Bob was sitting outside eating his tacos. He was dressed in black leather chaps, black leather jacket, black bandana and black glasses as he was finishing his meal. "This is the best food in town!" he exclaimed as he rubbed his belly with satisfaction. He is a snowbird from Kalispell, Montana who lives the winter months in his motor home in Sunsites, a small ranching community south of Willcox. I took a liking to this 59-year-old Vietnam Vet. We chatted while Kevin chatted inside the Saloon with a few locals.

"I would have come down sooner last fall but I got held up at the nothern Colorado border for three days...15 people died there on 1-25 when they got stuck in a blizzard and were driving too fast." I remember hearing about that horrific interstate pile-up.

Bob was 18 in 1968 when he was drafted for the Vietnam War. He was there for the Tet Offensive. And even thought he worked in supply, he had seen his share of killings. “I’m 100% disabled, from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, but it took me 19 years to get my payments,” he told me. "I've been in institutions several times when I was younger." He seems to be holding well these days, traveling all over the Desert in the winter months and heading back to Montana during the summer “Where I can ride all over on my motorcycle,” referring to his Harley as his "motorsickle."

The Southern Pacific railroad train chattered at least three times during our stay in Willcox. The train travels just south of Railroad Avenue on the south side of town. The railroad made Willcox back in the 1850s.

Montana Bob has been coming to winter in Arizona for seven years now. He loves to travel and used to travel south of the Border, but not anymore. “I have me a passport but I don’t go into Mexico no more” he confessed, even though he’s got friends south of the border he hasn’t seen in a while. “I don’t want to get killed by them drug dealers down there!” he added. He enjoys riding his Harley on Arizona's backroads when he's not in his motorhome where his wife normally waits for him.

Bob had to leave --he had been in town long enough--so we shook hands. I hope to meet up with him some day, somewhere.

"Make sure you come back to town and check out the Rex Allen Museum, it's fabulous!" Rex Allen was a silverscreen cowboy who was born in Willcox. Allen died in 1999 and a statue stands in his honor in the Historic Railroad Park in town. But other than this musuem there isn't much else to see in this part of town.

Montana Bob revved up his Harley Davidson and roared off. I joined Kevin in the back of the Palace Saloon, a rather homey little 1906 bar popular with the locals. He was sitting at a table of locals: One from Colorado, one woman from Texas (who looked indigenous), one from Oregon and Brown-toothed Bob from Willcox. This Willcox Bob remembers when Willcox went by another name, Camp Mahley, when his great-grandfather came here before the Civil War. “I was born here in an old Army Quonset hut," he explained, and could rattle off the old businesses in town from years gone by. The others at the table soon left and then it was just Willcox Bob, Kevin and me.

Bob was genuinely a nice man and could have told us the entire oral story of Willcox if we had time to spare. The back of the bar faced an alley, with old brick walls on either side of us. We were the only ones in the back now. Drunk Mexicans staggered in the back alley. Bob would yell at them in fluent Spanish. He was no doubt a man of this town and knew all the locals. He owned another bar at the other side of town but had others tending to it.

I liked Bob but excused myself to return my plate to Rodney next door. Kevin soon followed so we just left from there. Odd, this small town of Willcox, with one diner, one bar and the Rex Allen Museum a block away, really didn’t offer much to passers-by but the locals seem to know one another well. Besides meet for beer at the Saloon, though, I’m not sure what else locals do around here. From all the beer cans and bottles I saw along the roads today, I gather drinking is a big pastime in this part of the county, the forgotten part of the county.

Our drive back was rather quiet. Kevin was fighting fatigue and so were the dogs. Sammy and Sara were stretched out in the back of the truck, forcing Sadie to sleep as close to us in the front. She used my right driving arm as a headrest.

Ugly oversized billboards between Willcox and Benson reminded people to visit "The Thing" off exit 322, "Eat Beef" and "In God We Trust" and if you paid attention you would also notice a "SPAY AND NEUTER YOUR PET" sign.
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