Flying Blind Under the Junipers

It was a dark and moonless night...

Mullein , native to the Old World, thrives in disturbed soil, and has been introduced throughout much of the world. It is often considered an invasive weed, and is a prolific seed producer.

            When the annual AntCourse takes place at the Southwest Research Station in the Chiracahua Mountains of Arizona, I have a choice of rooming with three other instructors or camping.  Having experienced the housekeeping habits of my colleagues, I chose to camp in a lovely spot a quarter mile up and across the creek in a forest of alligator juniper, the ground covered with long, fine grass.  My trail tent was really just a large piece of waterproof nylon with grommets, and I set it up open to the pleasant scene around me, so I could enjoy the charm of a slanting, early morning sun that made the dewy grass sparkle.  Lying on my sleeping bag, listening to the rain making pinging music in the junipers and pattering on my tent seemed a far cry better than bare feet on a gritty bathroom floor, grubby towels, or a table covered with potato chip debris and ant collecting detritus.

My campsite among the alligator junipers of the Southwestern Research Station in the Chiracahua Mountains of Arizona.

            The trail to my little paradise led from the station’s classroom building, past the lab building with its tadpole-filled kiddie pool experiment, then through the remains of a decrepit apple orchard toward the creek.  The trail passed through a field with mullein weed, an immigrant from the Old World, with its dramatic grey, velvety leaves, and spikes of yellow flowers.  The leaves with their band-like extensions down the stem were more interesting than the flowers that never seemed to quite get it together.  Beyond the field lay the creek. Crossing it was usually a hop from stone to stone, but after a thunderstorm, it was a raging torrent that would have swept me away.  In that case, I used the wooden bridge a couple of hundred meters downstream and made my way to my camp via the wet meadow.

Left: Cave Creek in flood after a thunderstorm. Such a flood would subside in only a few hours. Right: the trail through the wet meadow of sedges and rushes associated with the natural spring that waters the Station (note the pump house and well house).

            AntCourse had activities such as lectures, or ant identification into the night, and it was important to remember a flashlight.  But even without a flashlight, when the moon was out, I readily found my way through the mullein field, across the creek and up the trail to my camp.  The problem came on a moonless, cloudy night, the night of the farewell party, the same night that I did indeed forget my flashlight.  As the party wound down, I was perhaps not four sheets to the wind, but at least three, if you included my flying jib sail, having partaken of several of my famous tequila sours.  Oh well, I thought, I've made this walk so often, I can do it in darkness, and set off.

            Things went well through the old orchard and the mullein field, for it was easy to tell when I veered from the gravelly trail into the grass, and I made correcting veers like an ant following an odor trail.  Crossing the creek was OK too, but rather than risking slippery stones, I simply waded and made my way up the opposite bank, turned right to keep the sound of the creek on my right.  But the feel of the ground was less distinct here.  No problem, I thought in a boozy haze, I will look overhead for the canopy gap over the road, and indeed, I seemed to perceive a very very dim, elongated clear zone overhead and followed it.  Looking straight up while walking in the dark has its challenges.  After 20 to 30 minutes of tripping over logs, getting poked by trees, stumbling over rocks, and almost falling into the creek, it began dimly to occur to me that I had no idea where my camp was, or for that matter, where I was.  Finally, a steep slope guided me almost to the creek and into a barbed wire fence.  Huh? Where did that come from?  But then I saw the dim, flat surface of the road beyond the fence. 

Walking back down the road, even on this starless, dark night was easy, and when I got back to the party, I borrowed a flashlight and made it back to my camp in 7.5 minutes.  That night, I gained a new and vivid insight into the expression, "stumbling around in the dark".  The fact is, we are not cats or owls, but creatures of the day, and without light we are lost.

AntCourse, class of 2005. The thirty or so students learn how to identify ants, ant evolution, and ant biology from the eight or ten instructors. As photographer, I am not in this picture.