by Zachary Matchinski, of Lake Superior State University
Saturday was set aside to finally do some hiking around the area for the first time. We left at around 8 am in hopes of getting back before the hottest part of the day. We hiked out of the canyon, and walked along the top until we turned around and started heading back at 10:30. The coolest part was when we got to top and looked back at the canyon and you could see the exact path of Aravaipa Creek since the trees followed the path perfectly.
As the rains continued in Aravaipa Canyon, that did not stop us from helping out Aaron, The Nature Conservancy Land Steward, with projects around the preserve. On Sunday, we helped him repair some barbed wire fencing that was damaged in a big flood. One of the landowners within the preserve owns horses, and this fence is crucial for keeping them out of the wilderness area. Horses can be very detrimental to the land as they eat a lot of the native vegetation that has been planted to slow the process of erosion, and they also compact the ground, making it harder for plants to grow. Half of us cleaned out all of the debris that had piled up and buried some of the fencing during the flood while the other half took loppers and cleared all of the plants and tree branches to make a clear path along the fence on each side.
Once we finished fixing the fence, it was time to go swimming in Aravaipa Creek. While in the creek, everybody was watching the sky very closely, since we have all experienced just how quickly blue skies can turn dark gray with thunderstorms. This is exactly what happened as sunny blue skies were quickly taken over by gray storm clouds coming over the mountains. We headed back to the house and got everything packed up, just in case we had to get out quickly before another flood came through and trapped us in the canyon for several days. After getting everything ready to go, the storm dissipated and we were able to stay in the Aravaipa guest house for another night.
The next morning, we planted more Coyote Willows with Aaron and Pepper, Aaron’s nine month old puppy, along a different stretch of the creek. After we finished, we had time to do another project that Aaron needed help with. We headed a couple miles back up the canyon to plant Sacaton in an effort to get some more native grasses established in the area.
With rain projected for the next few days, and the probability of a major flood increasing with every storm, we left Aravaipa on Tuesday morning to head back to Ruby. Along the way, we stopped at Taqueria Pico De Gallo in Tucson, where we got some of the best Mexican food that any of us have ever had. After filling up on tacos, we met Emily Burns, the Program Director for Sky Island Alliance, at her house and had a pool party for a few hours.
After we left Emily’s house, we ran a few errands before we all said our goodbyes to Aleidys, the Sky Island intern who has been spending some time with us, before dropping her off at her apartment for the last time, and it was time to head back to Ruby. On the way there, we got some very welcome news from Pat and Howard, the owners of Ruby. With all the rain that Ruby had gotten, the main lake had come up several feet while we were gone, and it was finally deep enough for us to go swimming! When we finally got back to Ruby it was around 8:30 and as soon as we were all unpacked and got our tents set up, we all called it a night, most of us were tired enough that we didn’t even have anything for dinner.
We all knew that Wednesday was going to be a long day. It was specifically set aside for all of us to work on our project write ups, since our first draft was due on Thursday. Thursday started out with some excitement as we worked together to give Ben a haircut, and then went swimming in the lake for the first time all semester. After the fun of the morning, we had a lot of work to do between revising our papers and starting to write up our species accounts for the semester.