Soldier Trail – 2/17/2019

Water at a rocky canyon crossing lower on the Soldier Trail. February 2019.
Water at a rocky canyon crossing lower on the Soldier Trail. February 2019.

A Principled Stand, The Story of Hirabayashi v. United States by Gordon K. Hirabayashi with James A. Hirabayashi and Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, page 155:

Periods of meditation are Quaker in style and spirit. Under the open sky and hills, we feel very close to the nature of things. Life becomes meaningful in a vivid way.

More images from 2018/2019’s wet winter – this time from Soldier Trail – the highlight of this hike was seeing the rushing falls in Soldier Canyon and, more of a surprise, seeing the water pouring over the rock structure near the junction of the Soldier and Molino Basin Trails.

Soldier Trail takes its general route from an old powerline and road to the prison camp that provided labor for the construction of the General Hitchcock Highway. Highway construction began in 1933 with the prisoners originally in temporary housing at the base of the mountain – in 1939 the camp moved up to the Vail’s Corral area where the remains of the prison can still be seen.

During WWII the Catalina Federal Honor Camp housed draft resistors and conscientious objectors – including Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mennonites and Hopi – in addition to prisoners convicted of federal crimes such as immigration-law violations, tax evasion and bank robbery. The first version of the General Hitchcock Highway was completed in 1951. Before being torn down in the early 70s the prison site served as a juvenile prison, was turned over to the State of Arizona and housed Forest Service crews.

In 1999 the prison site was renamed the Gordon Hirabayashi Recreation Site. Gordon Hirabayashi was one of the approximately 45 Japanese American draft resisters who were sent to the camp during WWII. Committed to non-violent resistance to the unconstitutional racially motivated curfew on, and removal of, Japanese Americans during WWII he served 90 days at the Catalina Federal Honor Camp after his initial conviction was unanimously upheld by the Supreme court in 1943. It would be over 40 years before a 1987 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling finally overturned his wrongful conviction.

If you want to read more there are a number of interesting articles online – a few are listed above – but I also highly recommend A Principled Stand, The Story of Hirabayashi v. United States by Gordon K. Hirabayashi with James A. Hirabayashi and Lane Ryo Hirabayashi. Published in 2013 the book is a collection of Gordon Hirabayashi’s writings and letters – published and unpublished – that have been selected and edited by James A. Hirabayashi, Gordon’s bother, and Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, Gordon’s Nephew.

Of particular interest to readers of this site may be the chapter on the Catalina Federal Honor Camp – a few quotes:

Page 150:

There are approximately two hundred inmates, and most are engaged in constructing a road to the mountain resort at the top of the hill. I joined the road crew that worked crushing and shoveling rocks into a dump truck, which was quite monotonous and a non-incentive activity, I assure you.

Consequently, by November 1943, at my request, I was transferred to the baking department. There I became “adept” at mixing, rolling, and baking bread, learning the techniques for various rolls, pies, cakes, etc. I hope to learn something by the time I leave.

Page 152:

There were a lot of Mexican border jumpers … , quite a few selective service cases, many Jehovah’s Witnesses, several pacifists of the FOR type. The latter group was the most aesthetic in appreciation, and I joined them once in climbing a little hill back of the camp to gaze at the beautiful, indescribable Arizona sunsets. The Native Indians were of two types. One type, which included many traditional Hopis, was objecting to being drafted into a white man’s war.

Page 154:

A group of us retreat to our favorite meditation spot for a refreshing, stimulating period of quiet. My thoughts: There is no excuse for tolerating injustice or violation of the brotherhood of man merely because we are incarcerated.

One part of the Hirabayashi family’s history that has been stuck in my mind is the story of the White River Garden. A Principled Stand, page 16:

In 1919, four families of the Pontiac collective, including two Hirabayashi families—my father’s family and the Toshiharu Hirabayashi family—moved to Thomas, Washington, a rural community twenty miles south of Seattle. These families formed a Christian cooperative, White River Garden, and purchased forty acres of land. Then the difficult development process began: clearing the land of stumps, digging ditches for better drainage, fertilizing the soil, cultivating, and building their homes.

At the time Washington’s Alien Land Law prevented non-citizens from owning land – so the White River Garden purchase was made in the name of the oldest child born in the United States – Aiko Katsuno, 10 years old at the time. Government officials felt this arrangement was an illegal subversion of the law and after a victory in the Washington Supreme Court Washington State took the land back from the White River Garden Corporation. The families were forced to lease the land in order to stay and work the property they had developed.

It wasn’t until the early 1950s that the Supreme Court ruled that forbidding aliens from owning land was a violation of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. The White River Valley Museum has several photographs from White River Garden including a photograph of the White River Garden families and friends including a young Gordon Hirabayashi!

Poppy just off Soldier Trail. February 2019.
Poppy just off Soldier Trail. February 2019.
Falls in Soldier Canyon. February 2019.
Falls in Soldier Canyon. February 2019.
Water flowing near the Soldier Trail and Molino Basin Trail junction. February 2019.
Water flowing near the Soldier Trail and Molino Basin Trail junction. February 2019.
Grassy hillsides on Soldier Trail. February 2019.
Grassy hillsides on Soldier Trail. February 2019.

Tortoise Shell – 5/12/2019

Shell pieces. May 2019.
Shell pieces. May 2019.

Coming down MacDougal Ridge, looping back towards the Babad Do’ag Trail, I curse at the brown and white in the grass sure it is cardboard trash – but closer the shapes and textures come into focus, I stop and my mind slowly puts the puzzle together – not trash, remains, probably of a desert tortoise.

I hadn’t ever thought about what remains behind after a Desert Tortoise dies – I suppose in retrospect it is obvious that the shell would remain – maybe I have seen a shell in an exhibit at some point? Regardless seeing the shattered pieces bleaching in the sun was slightly shocking, oddly fascinating, poignant. I hope every year to see one – not the ideal first sighting of the year…

It has been a mild May – we had clouds in the sky and a few minutes of hail for this hike – the weather is making some of the trails I would normally start to avoid this time of year quite a bit more attractive!

Tortoise shell. May 2019.
Tortoise shell. May 2019.
Tortoise remains. May 2019.
Tortoise remains. May 2019.
Gila Monster near the Babad Do'ag Trail. May 2019.
Gila Monster near the Babad Do’ag Trail. May 2019.
Checkerspot. May 2019.
Checkerspot. May 2019.
Silverpuff. May 2019.
Silverpuff. May 2019.
Ocotillo with the Rincon Mountains in the background. May 2019.
Ocotillo with the Rincon Mountains in the background. May 2019.
Looking down on the Babad Do'ag trail - with gunshots ringing in the distance... May 2019.
Looking down on the Babad Do’ag trail – with gunshots ringing in the distance… May 2019.

Brinkley Point, Full Moon – 4/19/2019

Ridge out to Brinkley Point. April 2019.
Ridge out to Brinkley Point. April 2019.

Brinkley Point, perched in the middle of the Santa Catalina Mountains, is protected by an off trail approach and a modest distance and elevation profile that don’t really lend themselves to bragging. A beautiful sunset, a wait in the fading light, and then the real show begins – moonlight on the inner basins, ridges and canyons. Alone on the small point I take pictures, briefly watch headlamps on the East Fork Trail and let my mind wander. Early in the AM I wake up to take a few more pictures and find the sky covered by clouds reflecting the city lights.

Sunset - looking across the Santa Catalina Mountains and over Agua Caliente hill to the Rincons. April 2019.
Sunset – looking across the Santa Catalina Mountains and over Agua Caliente hill to the Rincons. April 2019.
Night on Brinkley Point. April 2019.
Night on Brinkley Point. April 2019.
Camped under the full moon on Brinkley Point . April 2019.
Camped under the full moon on Brinkley Point . April 2019.
Moonlight and clouds - looking towards the city lights from Brinkley Point. April 2019.
Moonlight and clouds – looking towards the city lights from Brinkley Point. April 2019.

Snow Day – 2/22/2019

Pusch Peak - snow and clouds! February 2019.
Pusch Peak – snow and clouds! February 2019.

A second day of snow in the desert! The almost-accumulating snow in our backyard was encouraging, and the snow on Pusch Ridge was alluring – but we pressed on northwards, past Catalina, all the way around to the American Avenue Trailhead in Oracle. Soft shin deep snow made our short Mariposa and Bellota Trail loop a unique experience! Even in Oracle the day had changed by noon – drips of melting snow were falling from the trees by the time we were back at the trailhead – but the snow on Pusch Ridge from Naranja Park in Oracle was amazing. Snow Day!!!

Bighorn Mountain. February 2019.
Bighorn Mountain. February 2019.
Domes above Alamo Canyon covered in snow. February 2019.
Domes above Alamo Canyon covered in snow. February 2019.
Snow covered Cholla on the Mariposa Trail in Oracle State Park. February 2019.
Snow covered Cholla on the Mariposa Trail in Oracle State Park. February 2019.
Snow covered Bellota Trail in Oracle State Park. February 2019.
Snow covered Bellota Trail in Oracle State Park. February 2019.
Snow covered Bellota Trail in Oracle State Park. February 2019.
Snow covered Bellota Trail in Oracle State Park. February 2019.
Snow in Oracle State Park. February 2019.
Snow in Oracle State Park. February 2019.

A Merry Buster Mountain Christmas – 12/25/2018

Light on the top of Buster Mountain. December 2018.
Light on the top of Buster Mountain. December 2018.

Buster Mountain – if it didn’t have a name I wonder how often this spot on the map would be visited – just one of many protrusions on the ribs running west and down from Pusch Ridge. But the question is irrelevant, this rolling hilltop is named for Buster Bailey – probably best know thru Charles Bowden’s Frog Mountain Blues – and the summit register is filled with signatures.

Leviathan Dome, Wilderness Dome and Solitude Pinnacle from Buster Mountain. December 2018.
Leviathan Dome, Wilderness Dome and Solitude Pinnacle from Buster Mountain. December 2018.

From Frog Mountain Blues, p. 46-47:

He has become a footnote. Up on the mountain, there is a Buster Spring and above Buster Spring rolls Buster Mountain. For the old man this seems a trifle strange. He is Buster Bailey, seventy some years old, a man living in a junkyard with a household bagged at the bump. In a city of half-a-million, he is a ghost. And now they’ve gone and made him into some kind of landmark.

A new bridge over Canada del Oro on the Oracle highway swallowed the land he settled as a boy in 1927. The new Catalina State Park spreading against the north side of the range has entombed the ranches he worked and built in the thirties. Mesquite roots chew the soil of his old corrals, hackberry spreads over the spot where he once put his still, and a bulldozer has sliced off his old house lest it blemish the natural setting.

Frog Mountain Blues was published in 1987 and the details are aging – the city of half-a-million has added hundreds of thousands, nearly double depending on what you consider ‘the city’, and Catalina State Park as anything but new.

A few pages later a Jack Dykinga photograph shows bulldozers under curving utility lines, Buster Mountain in the distance on the left and Leviathan Dome rising out of Alamo Canyon on the right. Giant machines plowing thru the desert is a sort of sad ageless classic, but the 77 corridor thru Oro Valley has had so much construction and development for so long that it is hard to muster any deep emotion for a bit more or less asphalt.

Looking south along Pusch Ridge from Buster Mountain - Table Mountain, Bighorn Mountain and Pusch Peak. December 2018.
Looking south along Pusch Ridge from Buster Mountain – Table Mountain, Bighorn Mountain and Pusch Peak. December 2018.

The storm has given us a gift today – clouds and light all around, rain mostly in the distance. In a few more days this area will be legally closed until May, but it will be practically closed until next winter when the summer heat recedes. It is a privilege to be on this landmark, unseen ghosts on the empty mountain side, alone above the city of just-over-a-million.

Watching the clouds and storm on the way down from Buster Mountain. December 2018.
Watching the clouds and storm on the way down from Buster Mountain. December 2018.
Samaniego Peak from the trail up to Buster Mountain. December 2018.
Samaniego Peak from the trail up to Buster Mountain. December 2018.