WHERE NATURE MEETS NURTURE APRIL 2016 ESCAPE • EXPLORE • EXPERIENCE THE NATURE CONSERVANCY — RALPH WALDO EMERSON Celebrating 50 Years in Arizona Hart Prairie Preserve, Northern Arizona “Nature always wears the spirit.” of the colors always “Nature PLUS THE NATURAL WONDER OF WILD HORSES CRESTED CARACARAS SAVING OUR NATIONAL FORESTS NAVAJO NATIONAL MONUMENT JACKS CANYON Grand Canyon National Park Navajo National Monument Flagstaff Sedona Cottonwood Payson Lower Salt River PHOENIX April 2016 Aravaipa Canyon Tucson 2 EDITOR’S LETTER POINTS OF INTEREST IN THIS ISSUE 3 CONTRIBUTORS 4 LETTERS 5 THE JOURNAL People, places and things from around ◗ A young Arizona treefrog, still sport- the state, including a look back at iconic ing its tadpole tail, rests on floating photographer Barry Goldwater; Navajo vegetation in a Flagstaff backyard. National Monument; crested caracaras; The species is the official state and the history of St. Mary’s, the state’s amphibian. John Sherman oldest hospital. NIKON D7200, 1/500 SEC, F/10, ISO 500, 280 MM LENS FRONT COVER: The sun sets on the 16 WHERE NATURE lush vegetation of Hart Prairie MEETS NURTURE Preserve near Flagstaff. The preserve is one of The Nature Conservancy’s /azhighways In 1966, The Nature Conservancy made its GET MORE Arizona projects. Claire Curran first purchase in Arizona when it acquired @azhighways ONLINE CANON EOS 5D MARK III, 0.3 SEC, the Patagonia-Sonoita Creek Preserve. @arizonahighways F/22, ISO 400, 45 MM LENS Although its mission has evolved and www.arizonahighways.com BACK COVER: The flowers of an expanded over the past 50 years, the ancient saguaro bloom beneath organization is still working to protect the a night sky at Sonoran Desert state’s most threatened landscapes. National Monument southwest By Kathy Montgomery of Phoenix. Jack Dykinga NIKON D4S, 25 SEC, F/5, 26 THIS IS DIFFERENT ISO 2500, 24 MM LENS In the interest of full disclosure, we aren’t 46 WILD sure how many saguaro photos we’ve pub- An essay about horses, human nature and lished over the past 91 years. We do know, the struggle for balance. however, that we’ve never seen anything By Kelly Vaughn quite like this. A Portfolio by Jack Dykinga 52 SCENIC DRIVE Forest Road 618: Ancient cliff dwellings, 34 CUTTING IT DOWN TO SIZE petroglyphs, one-lane bridges and rolling Arizona is home to the largest stand of hills are just some of what you’ll see along ponderosa pines in the world. Its size is this scenic drive in the Verde Valley. impressive. Its health is not — the woods By Noah Austin are too dense. Thus, the Four Forest Resto- Photographs by Nick Berezenko ration Initiative, an unprecedented, ambi- tious and controversial effort to thin and 54 HIKE OF THE MONTH restore 2.4 million acres on four national forests in the state. The timeline is Jacks Canyon Trail: Of all the scenic 20 years. Time will tell. canyons in Red Rock Country, Jacks Canyon is perhaps the most obscure. And By Terry Greene Sterling so is the trail that cuts through it. It’s quiet, Photographs by Tom Bean but that’s just another selling point. By Robert Stieve Photograph by Shane McDermott 56 WHERE IS THIS? 2 OCTOBER 2015 PHOTOGRAPHIC PRINTS AVAILABLE Prints of some photographs in this issue are available for purchase. To view options, visit www.arizona highwaysprints.com. For more information, call 866-962-1191. www.arizonahighways.com 1 editor’s LETTER CONTRIBUTORS CLAIRE CURRAN called a feller buncher, and she saw firsthand Claire Curran is a corporate and editorial pho- what can happen when an overgrown forest goes APRIL 2016 VOL. 92, NO. 4 tographer, but she says landscape photography up in flames. “is a time for me to let my vision soar.” That It was five years ago next month that the Wal- 800-543-5432 happened on this month’s cover photo, which www.arizonahighways.com low Fire — the worst in state history — was Curran made at Hart Prairie, the site of a Nature ignited by a careless backpacker. Eventually, the Conservancy project near Flagstaff (seeWhere PUBLISHER Win Holden fire consumed 538,000 acres of alpine forest in Nature Meets Nurture, page 16). “Hart Prairie is a EDITOR Robert Stieve spent about a year the White Mountains of Arizona. I wrote a blog wonderful destination for photographers,” she ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER, in Aravaipa Canyon. post during the fire. It was published by The DIRECTOR OF says. “Every time I go, the scouting I do turns up SALES & MARKETING Kelly Mero EDWARD ABBEY “[It’s the] longest I’ve Nature Conservancy. something new. Summer is a great time to photograph it, because from May to Septem- MANAGING EDITOR Kelly Vaughn held a steady job since ... I was drummed out ... Time will tell what’s left of the woods when the ber, something is in bloom. The 360-degree view is made for monsoon cloud displays. ASSOCIATE EDITOR Noah Austin of the Army in ’47,” he wrote. He’d been hired Wallow Fire has finally finished burning, but this much And the San Francisco Peaks complete the photographic gem.” Curran scouted this EDITORIAL ADMINISTRATOR Nikki Kimbel in 1972 to manage a newly established pre- we know: One of the most beautiful places in the world, location during the day and thought she’d shoot it at sunset. “Luck was with me, as the PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR Jeff Kida serve there. Mostly, he monitored the wildlife, one of my favorite places in Arizona, is being destroyed, sun set in line with the rosebush,” she says. “The warm backlight on the rosebush and the CREATIVE DIRECTOR Barbara Glynn Denney patrolled the canyon and tried to keep the hunt- and it’ll never be the same. Not in my lifetime, not in lupines, for me, makes the photo.” Curran is a longtime Arizona Highways contributor. ART DIRECTOR Keith Whitney ers out. In his spare time, he went skinny-dipping in the creek and wrote the your lifetime, and not in the lifetime of the perpetrator MAP DESIGNER Kevin Kibsey final chapters of his defining novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang. who ignited this mess. ... PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Michael Bianchi Turns out, he also wrote inflammatory letters to the editor, which didn’t Whether a catastrophic fire is started by BRUCE D. TAUBERT sit well with the local community of conservative ranchers. Whether it was human negligence or Mother Nature, the effects WEBMASTER Victoria J. Snow Bruce D. Taubert is among many photographers who con- the letters or the skinny-dipping, Mr. Abbey was eventually fired by Defend- are the same, and that’s what the Four Forest CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Nicole Bowman tributed to this month’s essay on the Salt River horses (see ers of Wildlife, which had partnered with The Nature Conservancy in 1970 Restoration Initiative is attempting to prevent. FINANCE DIRECTOR Bob Allen Wild, page 46). Before heading out recently to photograph to create the Aravaipa Canyon Preserve. It was TNC’s third acquisition in Time will tell. Meanwhile, there’s at least one OPERATIONS/IT MANAGER Cindy Bormanis the horses, Taubert’s only knowledge of them came from Arizona. The first, in 1966, was a 309-acre stretch of Sonoita Creek near Pata- forest in Arizona that seems to be thriving. the newspaper or the nightly news. So when he spotted a gonia, which later became known as the Patagonia-Sonoita Creek Preserve. In Saguaro National Park’s Tucson Mountain CORPORATE OR TRADE SALES 602-712-2019 group of 12 horses leaving the river on his first morning of A few years later, that site was designated a National Natural Landmark. District, the number of saguaros has increased SPONSORSHIP SALES shooting, he thought the assignment would be easy. “What REPRESENTATION On Media Publications There are several reasons the area draws so much attention. The main rea- by nearly 70 percent since 1990. Concerns about Lesley Bennett I didn’t know was that in the winter, the horses spend very son is the streamside habitat, which is one of the state’s best examples of declining numbers led the park to institute a 602-445-7160 little time near the water,” he says. “I trekked around the a Fremont cottonwood-Goodding willow riparian forest. Some of the cot- saguaro census back in 1930, and the decline per- desert with the horses, but if I was doing images about tonwoods down there are more than 100 feet tall and 130 years old, ranking sisted through the 1960s. However, if the current LETTERS TO THE EDITOR [email protected] horses and the Salt River, I thought I should have at least a 2039 W. Lewis Avenue them among the largest and oldest in the country. trend continues, scientists believe the forest will Phoenix, AZ 85009 few images of them in the river.” Taubert consulted with story author Kelly Vaughn, who As I write this, The Nature Conservancy is just weeks away from a party rebound to historical levels. That’s good news for told him about a spot where he might be able to find the animals in the water. “Over the in Patagonia to celebrate the chapter’s 50th anniversary in Arizona — the landscape photographers. And it’s good for us, too. GOVERNOR Douglas A. Ducey next week, I spent about 20 hours at the river’s edge before I spotted a band in the river,” organization was founded nationally in 1951. Although TNC’s mission is still I have no idea how many saguaro photos we’ve Taubert says. “As usual, luck and some genetic stubbornness paid off.” Taubert’s current DIRECTOR, DEPARTMENT based on conserving land and water, its approach has evolved over the years.