It began as a desert jungle; a hot wind blowing in from the Sea of Cortez, mesquite and organ pipes and saguaros backlit lime green, lizards darting and the constant chippaw and ka-kow and hoot-hoot-hoot of birds and rodents in the brush. Soon, we were challenging steep rock alongside pinnacles and red-brown cliff-faces. The Ajo heights were almost grassy plateaus. The rocks were covered bluish-lime in lichen. "The color of margaritas," I said. "I could use a margarita," Hans said, and fell asleep on a ledge overlooking a hundred miles of basin and range, basin and range, basin and range.
On the descent, we ran into a wily-eyed German, the only person we had seen in Ajo, and told him where to go and what to do in Southern Arizona. Back in the desert jungle, we left the trail and followed the light of sunset along the cliff-sides. When I stuck my face up against a cholla, I jumped - a giant beetle. I had been jumping all day, thinking this stick and that root was a snake, or this rock or that was a scorpion.
Back at the truck, we opened beers, played Paul Simon's African music, and watched the bats whooping down into the valley in their evening hunt. We drove the rocky road in the dark; saguaros were silhouetted, and Hans was giving them personalities, "Most of them look like questioning students, raising their hands." And when we passed a shrugging saguaro, "that one is a Seinfeld Cactus, 'Why don't they just put mayonnaise in the tunafish? You gotta mix it up anyway!'"
