Written by Grace Davenport, Wild Stew Field Crew Member.
On our first hitch back of the new year, some of us returned to the place of our last hitch of last year: the Santa Catalina Mountains, east of the Golder Ranch area of Oro Valley. We continued our work rerouting certain sections of the Cow Pies social trail as part of its adoption into the official trail system as the new Stone Cactus Loop trail. Horseback riders, mountain bikers, hikers, and the occasional cow all use the trail, which is part of the greater Golder Ranch area trail system.
Eric Ruljancich from Outslope Trail Solutions met us multiple times throughout the hitch to flag out sections of the new trail for us to brush and tread. Jen from the Santa Catalina district of the Forest Service hiked the 3 miles in to bring us some Pulaski reinforcements. On a backpacking hitch, visits from the outside world are always welcome! Another friend brought us some much-needed churro bites.
We were blessed with rain the first two days of hitch and ate dinner in our tents. Overnight the rain turned to snow on the peaks around us.
Several areas of the trail along a steeper slope required some more serious rock work, and we constructed retaining walls and armored crossings, as well as building one rock dams in older eroding sections of trail now abandoned to help with soil retention and erosion control as they renaturalize. Overall, we built about half a mile of new trail reroutes, 5 armored crossings, 4 retaining walls, and countless renaturalized areas along the old trail alignment including transplanting of vegetation, construction of one rock dams, de-compacting soil, and visual obscuring of the old path.
A red-tailed hawk soared over us on the last day of work, landing nearby on a rocky outcropping. The hawk began ripping into its prey, releasing a cloud of feathers. Davis captured some incredible close-up photos of the hawk, highlighting its steely-eyed stare and wicked beak.
Living outside for a week at a time offers the incredible opportunity to bear witness to the natural rhythms of weather, animals, and plants. We watched clouds roll across the sky, traced the trajectory of the sun as it rose above the Santa Catalina Range and set on the far edge of the valley. After the rain, dry washes filled with water. Birds sang out in the morning and coyotes yipped at night. The city sprawled out at the base of the mountains, a gridded carpet of lights in the evening. There was all that life down there but so was there up here.
