G&C Summer 2017
Blogpost 016
July 17th – 20th
“The Cacti of Tucson”
We left Carlsbad NM for New Mexico
State University in Las Cruces, not to be mistaken for the University of New
Mexico in Albuquerque. MY fiancé, bright as she is had made such a mistake
which did not throw too big of a monkey wrench in our plans but did cause a
slight debacle over where we would stay for the night; for my mother upon
hearing on our arrival to Albuquerque had offered to us the contact information
of her friend who lived in the area which was over three hours away from where
we actually were. Regardless the day was still used to its greatest
provincial effect where Charlotte databased at the universities’ entomological
museum and I spent ten hours animating a walking (or crawling) cycle for a
two-spotted spider mite image. At the end of the day we were tired and in low
spirits but went to bed ready to drive to the University of Arizona for another
day of the same. After a couple days of hard work, we were both ready for
adventures outside the car, lab, and coffee house. On the morning of the 20th,
after intense rain and thunderstorms we headed to the infamous Saguaro National
Park, just outside of Tucson, AZ.
Southern
Arizona is most famous for its’ “forest” of polydactyl cacti of incredible
size. As we left the outer limits of Tucson, my fiancé pointed out that the far
off mountains coming in at our twelve o-clock were covered in what looked like
giant cactus-needles. They were in fact cacti themselves, which only gave more
validity to my fiancé’s response. I suppose a mountain covered in
prickly-plants is for us what a single prickly-plant is for the insects
1/1000th our size. I find it funny that thoughts relating to perceptual
size-difference introspection can be so habitual in desolate wonders of nature.
Out
of the available hiking trails we chose one of medium-length and difficulty (by
Sonora NM standards) that was just over two-point seven miles one way. As our
boots hit the dusty-red vestibule of the trail the sky was cloudless and the
sun was monstrous. The first mile was by far the most challenging; baking in
non-cumuli filtered UV-radiation. As we clambered we had to take breaks under
pockets of shade as our bodies were in no way accustomed to this kind of heat.
Nevertheless once we reached the summit of the first mountain (two-more
to go!) the high-mountain breeze and occasional cloud passage made the rest of
the journey considerably less arduous. All along our path we saw Gila Woodpeckers and Gilded Flickers roosting
in hollowed holes of the cacti’s trunk, which made for some hellish mouth and eyeholes
of an anthropomorphized plant-demon. Lizards were also in abundance like
Manhattan pigeons though we only crossed paths with two distinct breeds; one
that was long and slick more like a snake with toothpick limbs that loved
jumping onto vertical surfaces and a little gecko-type with a zebra-striped
tail that curled over its body like a scorpion’s that wagged when threatened. By the time we finished, our bodies
were drenched with enough fluid Michael Phelps would win a medal in it. But our
trip wasn’t over; there was still one more stop before we could depart.
Hugh Norris Trail
Charlotte realizing that not all things want hugs...
Enjoying the view
So many interesting and cool cacti!
Only a little exhausted from the heat...
Saguaro
NP, in addition to it’s famous CUS (or Cacti of Unusual Size) is also known for
it’s collection of etched and painted petroglyphs, which are similar to
hieroglyphics in that they’re pictures on stone faces. The prehistoric Hohokam
created these petroglyphs. They pre-date modern written history making them
hundreds to thousands of years old. I had no idea America had such permanent
evidence of ancient persons from such long ago, but Charlotte was an
anthropology minor so this sort of thing doesn’t get ignored. It wasn’t even a
half-mile hike round-trip, but regardless it became all too noticeable that I
had reached my physical limit for the day as I proceeded to babble like a
drunken lord high off blood pressure and mild-heat stroke. Fortunately,
milkshakes are a cure all so we were sure to snag some from a McDonalds drive
through window before pedaling on to Northern Arizona. On our way we started
noticing a pattern of identical billboards advertising admission to see The
Thing: Mystery of the Desert, so naturally a detour was in order.
“The Thing of the Desert”
If you’ve ever found yourself on a
major American highway, then you may from time to time detect an advertisement
for one of America’s favorite tourist-trap variants; the mystery box. The
mystery box is an outdated but irrefutably effective advertising technique used
favorably by traveling showmen, con artists, and people with The Great as
their unironic title. The concept can be boiled down to four simple steps:
1.
Inform public you have a thing without offering any indication of what
it could be in any size, shape, or form.
2. Offer general admission to see the thing for a mere sixpence
a piece.
3.
Profit!!!
The mystery box a flawless trap
that prays on the idle imaginations of travelers such as my fiancé and myself.
Now neither of us would be considered dupable, and knew that The Thing was
most likely a small personal collection of taxidermied fusion-monsters and
aliens made from paper mache. The kind of thing you’d find often in an episode
of Gravity Falls, and it was because of this fact that inspired a
puckish urge in the both of us.
As
we made the appropriate exit we saw a single story steel warehouse painted in
striped carnival colors that had faded over years of notable neglect. The
THING had been painted over the stripes in enormous letters in the shape of
a title from a science fiction paperback. The facility we entered was a
tremendous gift shop for Arizonian-themed trinkets identical to every other
gift shop in the state. A door for The Thing was a good ten paces from
the sales clerk counter and admission was a dollar each and so we bought the
tickets to ride whatever awaited us on the other side of that door.
The
door led out of the gift shop and onto a concrete sidewalk leading us with
yellow painted Bigfoot tracks leading us to a single-story steel warehouse. A
rectangular hole had been cut out of the warehouse to serve as a door. To our
left was a collection of trailer-homes and too our right was a ten-foot tall
wall of sheet metal boxing us inside the compound. If we are ever destined to
get murdered in America, it would be in a place like this.
We
entered the steel warehouse following the Sasquatch tracks and found ourselves
standing on one side of a barbed wire fence erected along the centerline of the
structure. The entire room presented a strange and animated spectacle. On the
other side of the wire was an old fashioned car, heaps of antique do-dads and
furnishings, and an iron-barred cage full of wooden human carvings depicting
medieval torture methods. It would seem that my fiancé and I had paid two
entire dollars to see someone’s personal horde of bestial proclivities. The
cars and antiques were benign but the torture scene was completely out of the
blue. There was a wooden man getting stretched on a rack, a woman shackled to
the wall being tormented by an executioner with a red-hot poker, and a woman
with a bleeding back screaming at a man with an axe. The display was bizarre
but impressive like a Wax Works exhibit or something you might see in a Rob
Zombie music video, or Rob Zombie feature film for that matter.
There
were two more steel warehouses of this collector’s museum, which included glass
cases full of little wooden figurines, more antique knick-knacks, and a hummock
of twisted bits of lumber painted to resemble wooden-clown sprites that hung
from the rafters with wire and string. These were everywhere and in every
warehouse and gave the exhibits a perpetual cacodaemoniacal vibe.
A face?
At
last we reached the final warehouse and home of The Thing, which ended
up being a coffin fixed to the floor with a sheet of transparent plastic
separating The Thing from the outside world. What lay inside the coffin
was the mummified corpse of a Chinese mother holding in her arms the mummified
remains of an infant. The whole thing was artificial of course as the infant’s head-to-body
proportions were way off and the mother’s face looked more like a Halloween mask;
with decaying eye sockets staring strait up at us above a gaping mouth filled
with blackened tooth stumps. Whoever this belonged too was clearly off their head
and out of their mind and God bless them for it. This was exactly what
Charlotte and I had envisioned as we stepped through that first steel tomb. Yes
the place was ominous and cheap but underneath its coarse surface there was
gold. Macabre fanaticism is an art style not lost on us, as we hope to one day
fill our future home with just as many (if not more) articles that would be
better suited in a cabinet of curiosity than a home for actual living adults.
Needless to say we got our monies worth and left Arizona with matching
expressions of youthful idealism.
Charlotte admiring The THING!
George being special
We reached the 6,000 mile mark?!?!?!?!
not going crazy.... we were already insane!
