The joy of it all is that I get to swim in the noonday sun !! I get to hear the chorus of the spring peepers at nightfall, and I gleefully fill my canteen from a little straw sticking out of a crack in a wall on the sunnyside of the canyon below some wildly impressive pre-hispanic art.
Water is the essence of life and roaming the canyons, on hand-crafted paths, will always lead you to or away from a water source. You encounter pilas, posadas, tinajas, epresas, oases and functional acequias or canals built for the pleasure (or pain) of the Jesuits during a 70 year period of occupation. In many places today miles of mangera lead the way to the next huerta. They are black tubes transporting water to the corrals: an example of one of the many systems that still supports life in a place many call hostile and rugged.
Read what was written in 1866, by explorer J. Ross Browne, after the last of the missionaries gave up on the land and the people.
"All the vegetation visible to the eye seems to conspire against the intrusion of man. Every shrub is armed with thorns; the cactus, in all its varieties, solitary and erect, or in twisted masses, or snake-like undulations, tortures the traveler with piercing needles and remorseless fangs. Burrs with barbed thorns cover the ground; the very grass, wherever it grows, resents the touch with wasp-like stings that fester in the flesh; and poisonous weeds tempt the hungry animals with their verdure, producing craziness and death. Add to this the innumerable varieties of virulent reptiles and insects that infest those desolate regions in summer; the rattlesnakes, vipers, scorpions, tarantulas, centipedes, and sand-flies; the rabid polecats that creep around the campfire at night, producing hydrophobia by their bite; the scorching heat of the sun, and the utter absence of water, and you have a combination of horrors that might well justify the belief of the old Spaniards that the country was accursed by God."
