Written by Samuel Baggenstos, Conservation & Wilderness Associate.
Heat and rocks. Erosion and heat. Rocks and erosion. Pick whatever combo of those three words you want and they would accurately describe the experience of our most recent hitch. For eight days we labored in the wild world of Tucson in August, battling the sun, the sweat, the rocks, the dirt, the dogs, the cats, and the cones (more on that later). I don’t want to presume, but it was the sort of hitch that may earn its place in Wild Arizona lore among such infamous events such as “the snow hitch” and “the rainy hitch” and “the windy hitch.” But I don’t have the right to start naming things. A title such as “the hot hitch” can’t be decided by an individual: it must mysteriously emerge on its own in crew parlance.
August 19th through 26th our Wild Stew Field Crew spent our hitch working at Sunland Vista, one of the two Green Stormwater Infrastructure (GSI) sites that Wild Arizona manages for the city of Tucson. There are over 900 GSI assets throughout the city, all managed by Tucson’s Storm to Shade program. Among other things, this program aims to utilize storm water to nourish a biodiverse population of native plants. Essentially the city of Tucson is rewilding the urban landscape one small (or sometimes large) installation at a time, which fits nicely into Wild Arizona’s larger mission of habitat restoration.
Sunland Vista is a 0.3 mile stretch of wash that runs through a neighborhood on the south side of town. This particular area has experienced several high rainfall events recently, causing significant erosion to the accessible foot path that winds along the edge of the wash. Our main goal this hitch was to use medium brown rocks to armor the eroding edge of the path and better retain the compacted decomposed granite that makes up the top of the walking surface. After receiving 14 tons of medium brown rock via dump truck delivery, we set to work: digging two parallel trenches on the wash side of the path, setting the rock inside these trenches, and filling in the gaps with interlocking rocks (often called rip rap). A secondary task was to address the erosion of parts of the side of the wash. We did this by constructing a sort of terrace on the hillside. We also did a variety of other tasks including grubbing/hand-pulling of non-native invasive plants, trash removal and a variety of other smaller erosion control projects.
All this brings me to a most peculiar event. At the end of each work day, we would mark our remaining piles of unused rock with orange cones to mitigate tripping hazards. One morning, we returned to the site and realized our cones were missing. When we scanned the area we noticed a shopping cart nearby in the wash, sitting upside down and covered in rocks. Contained inside the metal cage was one of our cones. Taped to the bottom of the cart was a rock with a hand written note attached to it that read: “find your last cones.” The hunt was on. After a five minute walk around the site, we found our three other cones, one which was hidden inside a pile of rock with a note taped to it: “why you kill the ant house so find your cones.” It was then I remembered that the previous day I had removed a strange compilation of trash on top of a small ant hill. We believe that this was the ant house in question. So we did what any sensible person would have done: constructed a replacement ant house out of rocks and wrote an apology in the dirt. The next day our cones were untouched. We can only assume the Sunland Trickster was satisfied with our efforts.
On the final Wednesday Rebekah soldiered on solo for the entirety of the final day, while Max and I worked a couple hours and then joined Joe and Jonathan in attending two-day training on Sonoran Desert plant ID taught by Tucson Bird Alliance in collaboration with the Storm to Shade program, which included a classroom day and a field day during which we put our skills into practice by walking around the Sunland Vista site and IDing plants. In invasive plant work, ignorance is bliss. We are now a lot less ignorant about low-elevation invasive grasses, and the wash is looking slightly less blissful as a result. Needless to say, we have work to do in the future.
Happy Trails!
—Sam
