(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . The Devil's Highway [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-06-06 El Camino del Diablo runs along the U. S. -Mexico border where Arizona meets Sonora. It is a starkly beautiful and dangerous area. The land is dry, but when a chance thunderstorm causes the parched and rocky washes to fill and dump water into the open desert, flowers bloom in profusion. Their seeds were waiting, sometimes for years, to spring up and produce more seeds. Immigrants and travelers to the California gold rush have paid with their lives for attempting to cross the desert, especially when the lower tanks at Tinajas Altas were dry. The Camino in unforgiving of fools. Friends of Edward Abbey are alleged to have buried him illegally there. I have read that there are many graves near Tanajas Altas where people died because the bottom tanks were dry and they did not have to strength to continue to the less accessible higher tanks. As I’ve mentioned in an earlier diary, I never got to Tinajas Altas, although I came in sight of the Tinajas Altas Mountains (See: en.wikipedia.org/...) from both sides. The first was when my father drove the Fortuna Mine Road to the east as far as he could go with a conventional automobile (he was always testing his car’s endurance, sometime to near disaster!) on one Sunday, the second was when a group of us from NMSU drove the Camino del Diablo to the west from Ajo and then ran out of time as we saw the bleak Lechuguilla Desert in front of us. Oddly there are no Lechuguilla Agaves in Arizona they are found in the Chihuahuan Desert and are an indicator plant for it, but since the name means “little lettuce” it may have been applied to other species of Agave found there. Before we turned back, we camped overnight near Tule Well in the Tule Mountains. I set some pitfall traps (I had permission from the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge.) As night fell the stars came out in an unbelievable profusion, so many that I had difficulty tracing the outlines of the constellations. Halley’s Comet was in the sky at the time and I eventually found it with binoculars. A rather poor return! The night was absolutely silent. So much so it hurt the ears and the silence seemed palpable, like an oppressive presence. In the modern world we are so assaulted by noise that the complete lack of it is shocking to a degree. The pitfall traps next morning contained only a few spiders. But even in this desolation, there was life. At one spot along the Camino there apparently had been some rain as the Brittlebush was in bloom, as were some other wildflowers, while around the rainfall patch was desolation.. Traveling to Tule Well we had stopped briefly at Papago Well. There were a very large number of Honey Bees, probably Africanized, drowning in a water tank and the bees seemed to be coming from another raised tank. We were very careful not to disturb the bees!! By this time several people had been killed by these and we did not need any complications in an already dangerous trip. We had crossed lava beds of the northernmost part of the Pinacate and an area of sandy desert that had some of the most extreme cacti that I have ever seen, with spines longer than the width of their segments. Even in the desolation of the Camino, there was life. The cacti, however, were very much armed! At one spot in the road we stopped so I could examine the curious mounds formed by the leaf-cutting ants, Acromyrmex versicolor. I was astonished to find them carrying Creosote leaves. I had never thought that such seemingly poisonous leaves would be good fertilizer for their fungus gardens, but there they were, carrying the leaves into their cone-shaped mounds. Saguaro forest along the Camino del Diablo. Elephant Tree, Creosote Bushes, Saguaro and Ocotillo along the Camino del Diablo, Arizona. The Camino del Diablo is a grand desolation that was mostly preserved (thanks for commentators who corrected me on this- the Border Wall construction has wreaked the border itself), although part of it is a bombing range (We had to sign a waiver holding the federal government harmless in case we should get blown up!) . Few people venture on this road, and probably even less since the Border Drug Wars. The only people we saw was earlier in our journey, when we ran into a geology class from Arizona State University on a field trip. I do not think that they went as far as we did. However, there there is a beauty in this vast wasteland that continues into the Pinacate reserve in Mexico. It is a truly great wilderness and one that the traveler who is lucky enough to go there should never take lightly. 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