A Chuckwalla

I was reading the guest book at Painted Rocks monument and a young boy had commented that he saw a chuckwalla! What a fun word to say, I practiced rolling it off my tongue for awhile before looking up what a chuckwalla was on my phone. It turn’s out that a chuckwalla is a large lizard that lives in the Sonora desert.

I hiked around the petroglyphs and found several drawings of a chuckwalla, he is a popular fellow to depict! This is what I thought the young man was writing about in the guest book. Then turning the corner I found several real ones posing in the sun! They aren’t skittish like the small lizards which zip around the desert in terror of  roadrunners or snakes. Being almost a foot long, this guy was quite confident he wasn’t going to be dinner! If Mr. Chuckwalla had only known that I was pondering what roasted lizard might taste like he might not have looked so smug.

A petroglyph of a Chuckwalla in the Gila style.

The site was really interesting and raised many different questions. When approaching it, the place looks like a large mound of dark rocks. I read from the information at the site that these rocks are covered with a volcanic varnish, if you chip the varnish away you uncover the real color of the rock below which is tan.  This makes it possible to scratch pictures in the rocks.

The information at the site also told me that the site is very old with styles from two different cultures. The older culture were hunters and gatherers that lived in this land from 7500 B.C. to AD 1. They had an abstract geometric style with elements of circles, zig zags and grids. The other group of people came later, from 300 BC to AD 1450. They were farmers whose style was known as the Gila style and they carved animals, insects, humans and plants.

Painted Rocks Site

What amazed me was that large rocks were covered with symbols, no space was empty. It made me wonder why this site was so special, there are rocks with varnish, suitable for carving, all over the desert here but the people came to this one spot to make their symbols. It’s fun to speculate but in the end we can never know the real meaning of these marks, we can only admire the images left behind.

Lots of creatures on these rocks, I think I see a mountain goat!

The grid on the large rock might be the Western Archaic style.

Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument

Before visiting Painted Rocks I camped for two weeks at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. This park is located right on the border between Arizona and Mexico and you have to pass through border patrol to get in. I was amazed at the amount of resources in the way of humans, vehicles, horses, dune buggies, dogs and even helicopters that are concentrated there. Going North one must pass through two additional federal checkpoints besides the one at the border. Since I am not familiar with border patrols  I wonder if this is just a particularly popular spot for people to try a cross illegally or if this is standard for all border crossings.

These exquisite blooms where on a very small cactus.

Everything was in bloom at Organ Pipe, it was a lush garden in the desert. The Palo Verde trees I spoke of in my last post where bursting with yellow flowers. The cactus had all begun blooming. My favorite was the ocotillo plant, at the end of each tall branch was a spray of bright red flowers that the hummingbirds loved. The flowers smelled so sweet they perfumed the evening air.

Organ Pipe Cactus have many different arms unlike a Saguaro Cactus.

The park is so named after the Organ Pipe cactus which only grows in this one spot in the United States. Unlike the Saguaro cactus which grow here as well, the Organ Pipe cactus can not take any freezing temperatures at night. The park is a large flat plain between two mountain ranges. One afternoon Maya and I took a ride through the mountains. Many, were ancient volcanic cones. The land is also carved out into washes, dry beds that water rages through during the wet season in August and September. I find it ironic that a place that has such little water is so dramatically affected by the water when it finally does come. I hope one day I can see one of these washes transformed during a heavy rain.

Maya seemed to be dragging a bit and I felt the warm temperatures were probably getting to her, it was in the high 90’s at Painted Rock. I am searching for a cooler campsite with possibly a lake so Maya can swim and I can Kayak. I will write again soon!

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