Happy
1st day of Spring!! Woke up
to 60o and it only went up from there. Yesterday I sat out in the sun to soak up the
warmth against the breeze….today it was time to seek shade. But it feels good all the same.
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Yesterday’s journal entry was a struggle to
complete. My usual routine is to head
into the trailer after supper (too dark and sometimes chilly to sit outside after
7 p.m.) with the lawn chair. That’s the
time I sit down with the computer and run through the day in my head and write
in my journal. Using my notes and
pictures helps with that process. Last
night it wasn’t happening…every time I tried to go over the day, I dozed off. Sitting in the chair, computer on my lap...not
once, not twice, but three times I dozed off.
One time Kim popped his head in and asked how it was going…writer’s
block due to tiredness was my answer.
Even using notes/pictures didn’t help with recalling my thoughts of the
day. Bah! So today’s entry will include some of what I
was not coming up with last night because the day is new and the brain is
fresh!!
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12 noon Update on Hanna Hummingbird: Hannah hasn’t been seen yet today. Don’t know what to think of that…Is she
giving up on this nest or is she still recovering from torpor? I guess time
will tell. Hope to see some more Hannah
action later in the day.
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Found another painted rock sitting on
a post by the tent area. I saw it the
other day while talking to the Germans…they left this morning so I went over to
check it out. The location of this one
is reinforcing my guess as to who the leaver of the painted rocks was. I think it was the couple from Minnesota who
tented for a couple of days…the rocks coincided with their arrival and no
additional rocks appeared after they left.
And they left before I put out my note with the rocks.
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There is a significant amount of helicopter traffic in the area. It was a mystery as to why...until we rode
our bicycles far enough down the road to see that the Army has an aviation training area back
in the desert. Today it appeared that
the flights were for take-off and landing purposes. A copter would fly up, make a wide circle,
then come in for a slow set-down. Three
copters alternating taking off and landing.
At least the helicopter presence has been explained.
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| Petroglyphs |
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Petroglyph background from a U.S. National Park Service
Resource Brief on the Tucson Mountain District:
The Signal Hill
Petroglyph Site occupies a small but very distinct rocky hill that is about 200
feet in diameter at its base and is 40 feet high. The site consists of over 200
prehistoric Native American petroglyphs many of which can be viewed from the
visitor trail that ascends the hill.
There
are two principle categories of rock art, petroglyphs, which are carved
into the rock surface, and pictographs, which are painted onto the
surface. There are a few examples of pictographs at SNP but none are accessible
to the visitor. These pictographs tend to be small, painted in black or white
paint, and are eroded and difficult to see.
Petroglyphs
are images, geometric, anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and others
that defy
categorizing, produced by removing part of a rock’s darker surface patina or
desert varnish. Both representational and abstract designs can be seen in
Hohokam petroglyphs. Petroglyphs are created by one of four techniques.
They can be created with the use of a hammer stone, usually a fist sized
stone held in the hand, which is battered against the boulder or rock surface.
Petroglyphs can also be pecked out through indirect percussion, as a
second rock is used like a chisel between the hammer stone and the rock surface.
The third technique uses incision, or scratching, into the surface of
the stone with a piece of chipped stone or other material that can render a
fine line. Petroglyphs created in this way are fine lined, often not very
deeply incised and often difficult to see. The fourth technique is abrasion.
Much like the incision, or scratching technique, abrasion is where a hand-held
stone is rubbed against the rock surface to create the image. Most of the
prehistoric petroglyphs at Signal Hill seem to have been produced by pecking.
The
petroglyphs at Signal Hill were made by the Hohokam, a people who lived in
southern and south-central Arizona from about 450 to 1450 A.D. Direct dating of
petroglyphs is difficult.
What
an image appears to be on the surface though, may be very different from the
meaning it had for the person who pecked the image into the rock.
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4:30 p.m. Update on Hannah:
We arrived back in camp and I was excited to see movement near the
nest. Watched for a minute and saw that
Hannah was back in camp adding to her nest.
Happy..Happy..Joy..Joy!!
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| The view in my mirror....😊 |
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We rode to Coolidge to get my photos…Kim suggested we stop at Tag’s Café
to get supper. It was hot enough all day
that I had been sweating…and I was looking forward to going swimming. Came out of the restaurant and immediately
decided against the swimming idea. It wasn’t
cold…it was in the 70s still but the air conditioning in the restaurant had
given me a chill. Fortunately that was
temporary because when we got going on the bikes, the air was warm on my arms…except
along the green field areas. As
expected, there was a cool down in that area.
**Note to self: always, always carry a long sleeved shirt in
your saddlebags…even on hot days.
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Since the day had been hot and the evening was still warm, we went
scorpion hunting tonight. Didn’t see any
scorpions but we are not giving up…the long range forecast shows the temps
solidly in the 80s, up to the 90s some days.
We did scare a lot of nesting birds out of a row of dense bushes…and I
won’t lie, they scared me, too. Thing is
if they hadn’t started moving around in panic we never would have known they
were in there. What looks perfectly okay
and harmless during the day takes on an entirely different and almost sinister
feel in the dark.
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Yesterday, while still on reservation land
near Why, AZ, we passed a memorial that had an American flag and a small ‘End
of Watch’ marker for David Webb. I
found various sources online which more or less had this to say:
US Border Patrol Senior
Officer David N. Webb was on patrol along AZ 86, near Why, AZ, on November 3,
2006, when the right rear tire on his car blew, causing the vehicle to
eventually overturn. Although Agent Webb
was wearing a seat belt, he sustained fatal head injuries caused when the roof
of the vehicle collapsed.
Agent Webb was survived by
his wife and two sons.
A couple of years ago, we found a roadside
memorial for another Border Patrol officer, Roberto Duran. Both times, approaching the site, the 4’x6’
American flag standing guard is what signified that this probably wasn’t
marking the death of a member of the Tohono O’odham tribe. Those memorials typically don’t include the American
flag and if they do, it’s a little one.
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Kim is outside playing with his new laser ‘toy’ and waiting for the high
clouds to move on. I don’t pretend to
understand how the set up works but he inputs the coordinates or something like
that and the motorized mount seeks it out.
The laser guide is mounted on his scope and the green pointer is visible…so
not only can he check what it’s doing by watching the computer but he can see track
the laser right through the dark sky.
Checking alignment used to be time consuming but from what I can see, it
should become much easier now. As with
every new piece of equipment, it’s a matter of learning the best way to make
everything work together. He
demonstrated for me how it works by telling it to align with Sirius which is
bright and very discernible with the naked eye so I could see watch the
progress. I watched it on the computer
as it slewed right around to point at it.
Very cool. Again, I don’t pretend to understand it and I probably have
the terminology wrong, but I do know that it’s one more piece of equipment designed
to make imaging easier.
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Bicycle
miles today: 8.5
Bike
miles today: 42
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