On the Hovatter Road: A Kofa Wilderness Odyssey

_

This a tale long past telling.  It was 11 years ago that I first visited the Kofa Mountains in the western desert; most popularly known for Palm Canyon, the only place in Arizona with wild and native palm trees.  One of the first features on my old website were photos of that adventure I had taken with an old camping buddy.  It generated a small number of emails over the months, including one asking me about some graves near the Hovatter Mines.  It was from a fellow backroad enthusiast, Steve, who had seen my picture of the water tower and mentioned he had found the graves of Ray Hovatter and perhaps a daughter nearby and asked if I knew anything about it.  I didn't but it sounded intriguing and we kept in touch.

Steve was very resourceful...he got in touch with a Col. Hovatter, then on assignment in Kosovo/Bosnia.  The Colonel was a member of the Yuma clan of Hovatters and had met the family out in the Kofas many times, but made it clear they were not closely related.  This correspondence would lead Steve and I on a camping trip to the Kofas to meet one of the sisters who lived out there with her family.

I actually have two tales in this story.

Interstate 10 in Arizona.  Exit 53.  Hovatter Road.  The epitome of the middle of nowhere.  It's the the 1960s and the interstate is under construction.  A young engineer on the project spends some of his free time exploring the backroads crossed by this lonely stretch of highway.  On one trip, he meets and befriends a family living out there, then falling in love with and marrying one of the daughters.  And that's how the road got its name.

The rest is the story of the graves and that, unfortunately, is far more tragic.

Ray Hovatter was a WWII veteran who served under Patton in North Africa.  He may have learned of the Kofas during training for desert warfare.  After the war he moved to the area and started mining for copper.  His wife, Barbara, did scientific illustrations for the University of Arizona, mostly arachnids.  She would keep gallon-jar terrariums of scorpions on the kitchen table.  They had three girls; Sandra, Lindsay, and Jeanette, who kept a menagerie of rabbits, chickens and other animals; carrying wooden ax handles to kill any snakes that tried to go after them.  Their homestead consisted of two trailers and several connected sheds, a water pump, and a rock and cactus garden that Barbara created and took care of.  Everyone referred to it simply as "Camp."

One night in the early 1970s, Ray was working with one of the girls on a leaking propane tank.  Another of the girls came out to help carrying a lantern, but the flame of the lantern ignited the propane and a harrowing fire ensued which destroyed most of the homestead.  Barbara and Jeanette were unhurt.  Ray was burned a little but Lindsay and Sandra were burned very badly.  Lindsay died a month later and was buried on the property (after a long battle with the funeral lobby).  Barbara moved to Phoenix with Sandra for the medical care she would need.  Ray stayed on the homestead and was found dead (from natural causes) several years later.  I'm not sure if anybody asked this time when they buried him next to Lindsay.

Looking back to Coyote Peak from the Yuma / La Paz county line.  Interstate 10 is an equal distance beyond.  You better be well-prepared because it could be days before you see another vehicle on this road.

Just south of the county line, the Hovatter girls called this little canyon "Boulder Wash."  The low hills are part of the Little Horn Mountains, spilling out the northeast side of the Kofa Wildlife Refuge.

This is about as bad as the road gets; it's narrow and you'll get plenty of "Arizona pin-striping" on your paintjob, but almost any car could drive it in good weather.  That basically means, I would have done it in my old 1979 Corolla...your mileage may vary.

Sandra Hovatter shows us around Camp, where her mother's cactus garden still remains.  Then she summons us down the old runway to surprise us with largest ocotillo I have ever seen!

Palm Canyon splits the western face of the Kofa Mountains.  The palm trees (Washingtonian fan palm) are located in a cleft on the north side of the canyon and are in sunlight for only a couple of hours each day.  Despite appearances, the trees can be reached by clamboring up a steep rocky chute contained by a separated slab of cliff face on the right side of the cleft.

If you exit the Kofa Wildlife Refuge to the southeast, you may find yourself having made an inadvertent crossing of the Yuma Proving Grounds.  Oops.

_

Special Dedications

Welcome to KECK radio!

This is a post I've been composing for a while; coming back to it today lets me bury that last post and think about something else for a little while.  Pretty simple idea, a list of a dozen songs with some special dedications.  Each of the titles link to a streaming version of the song over at Free Napster...I was pretty amazed to find all of them in one place.  Then I was not so amazed to realize that Free Napster only gives you 25 free streams a month.  So, you can only play each song twice.  Got that?  Then let's go...


Hello My Baby  by Ladysmith Black Mambazo

Kirsteen and I used this song for our wedding recessional...it was quite a hit.  We knew LBM only from their work on Paul Simon's Graceland and "discovered" them at a live concert soon after we met.  For you, my baby!


Bravado  by Rush

If I am forced to choose just one favorite Rush song, this is it.  Though not directly spoken of in the lyrics, it speaks to me of a dignified and bittersweet acceptance of death...that love and the spirit are tangible things one can hold onto forever.  Something like that anyway.  For Onyx.


Where the Streets Have No Name  by U2

Joshua Tree, probably more than any other, is my coming-of-age album...very popular during my first years in Tucson.  The songs remind of those times when I was both as free as I have ever been and yet the never so unsure of where I was going.  For Chuck, who could sing it like Bono.


Wish You Were Here  by Pink Floyd

The whole album.  No other piece of music is attached to so many memories...mostly of past friends:  Listening to it all day while floating down the Bow River; making love to the one I had to let go; singing it with Angie in the prep fridge at work.  For Mark


You Can Go Your Own Way  by Fleetwood Mac

Having to let go of love can be the hardest thing in the world.  An old friend wrote this line in a card to me at a time when I needed to be reminded of it.  For Kim


If I Had a Million Dollars  by Barenaked Ladies

This is the coolest song ever...great to sing on road trips!  For your love.


Breathless  by The Corrs

Woohoo...this is the hottest song ever!  Sing it for me, Andrea!!


Sorry Seems To Be the Hardest Word  by Elton John

For the one who wouldn't be wooed.


A Spaceman Came Traveling  by Chris de Burgh

Listening to this song, especially around Christmas time, is one of those "ooo...wow...deep" moments of contemplation.  To give it away, de Burgh writes the traditional story of Jesus' birth, with the twist that the angel is an alien visitor...the Star is his spacecraft.  Quite moving...not kooky at all.  For a baby's cry.


Dancing in the Dark  by Bruce Springsteen

I really do hate Bruce Springsteen...except maybe three or four songs.  This is one of them.  For Angie.


Paradise By the Dashboard Lights  by Meat Loaf

Kirsteen thinks I hate Meat Loaf.  I don't really, but I was surprised to learn she is a fan...and here I thought she was a good girl.  I think this song had meaning for every teenager of my generation.  For Roxanna


"40"  by U2

80,000 people sang this song in Sun Devil Stadium at the close of the Rattle and Hum tour.  I dunno, maybe you had to be there.  (Turns out, Kirsteen and I were both there...years before we met.)  For Ever.

Yuck

I'm going to need surgery.  I've got a bunch of fluid in my chest again.  This time it's all in the plural cavity around my left lung, and it indicates the cancer is getting more active.  They've drained such fluid twice before by sticking a big needle through my back.  This time they want to go in there, get all the fluid out, see if they can reinflate the lower lobe of the lung, and then use a (talc?) treatment that would cause inflammation of the plural lining and get it to stick to the lung, thereby not allowing any space for fluid to build up in the future.  Something like that anyway...I should be talking to the surgeon early this week.

The rest of the cancer weather-report:  The tumor/activity in my femur remained unchanged. (Stable is not bad news.)  I've a teeny one in my right lung...unchanged.  The one inside my left lung has shrunk a bit in size but has increased in activity.  Two pre-bronchial lymph nodes are unchanged but there is a "hot area" in the soft tissue nearby.  The left plural cavity itself seems to be the site of the most activity right now.

I've been feeling weak and more out of breath on this new chemo and figured it was mostly to blame.  For the weakness, yes...but the other was my old nemesis coming back.  Wonderful.  Anyway, the surgery should make me feel a whole lot better...as they did for me when I was initially hospitalized.  Won't do anything for my cancer though, and we still have to consider where we go with chemo when I recover.

DVD Reviews

Watchmen

I was hesitant about this purchase.  Many comic fans say this is an awesome movie while the consensus at Rotten Tomatoes is it won't appeal to folks, like me, who are not familiar with the graphic novel.  I might tend to agree with that but it's not a bad movie...just different (and a bit gory).  The style is much like a film-noir detective story.  You'd expect it to be 1935 only its the 1980s.  Nixon is still president and facing a Cold War showdown with the Soviet Union.  The Watchmen are a small group of mostly-retired superheroes, cynical about helping a world intent on destroying itself.  But when one of them is murdered, it leads to a plot that will unleash World War III.  I could go either way on this one...it's a well-done movie for what it is, but it wouldn't have been a tragedy if I'd never seen it.


Seven Pounds

Deep, emotional, and more than a bit morbid.  It's difficult to say much about the movie without spoiling it; this is one that dares not to insult the intelligence of the viewer as it peels back the layers of one man's guilt and his need for ultimate redemption.  Did I say too much already?

Okay, be warned, here are the spoilers, because the subject matter in this movie is one that I have contemplated.  Not the need for redemption, but in knowing that my time is coming, what could I leave behind (property or money) to better the life of another person?  If my organs are viable, what if I could choose the people that would receive them?  These are the choices that Ben Thomas gives to himself; to change the lives of seven people by sacrificing his own.  The conflict begins when he meets the woman he's chosen to give his heart.  Yeah, obvious metaphor there but it works.  Well cast, well acted and very powerful.  Thumbs up.  (Looks like the folks at Rotten Tomatoes disagree with me...oh well.)


The Bucket List

Okay, yeah, I had to see this one...just took me a while to get around to it.  Bottom line:  I liked it.  For anyone who doesn't know, it's about two terminal cancer patients (played by Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman) who embark on a worldwide adventure to fulfill a "bucket list" of things to do before they die.  I didn't find their portrayal of chemotherapy to be very realistic but, hey, that's Hollywood...and it's not really the point anyway.  Using it for a bit of comic relief seemed acceptable if not predictable.  The relationship between the two men is the heart of the story and that part works.  I suggest everyone think about their own bucket list, and keep adding to it all the time.


District 9

This was easily the most entertaining of the four movies here, though I had been hesitant about it also; worried that it would be blatent take on South African Apartheid.  Well, maybe it is and maybe it isn't...but if you don't think about that too much, it's a facinating and somewhat original take on the aliens-come-to-Earth premise.  These insectoid-aliens arrive in squalor, over a million weak and starving, aboard a derilict ship that parks itself over Johannesburg.  They clearly aren't going anywhere...so the government builds a township for them, District 9,  and dumps them all there.  The story picks up twenty-some years later when conditions in the district have become so bad that it has been decided to evict all the aliens and move them to District 10.  That doesn't go so well.  I had to chuckle at one of the alien weapons--a gravity gun used in a popular video game.  Looks like fun!! (The fictional technology may also be the basis for the alien's propulsion system.)  Anyway, this movie too has its share of gore and squimish moments...consider that before viewing.  It's also begging for a sequel, so put that one on your bucket lists.

Flying Time

*click the title for my ubiquitously-overflowing high-resolution gallery*

Surely, one of my unanswered callings in life was to be a pilot.  I love flying!  Airports, not so much, though I've never had the thrill beyond the window seat of commercial flights (except for an initiation to skydiving).  Kirsteen has long been bewildered by my ability to recognize what we are flying over..."Hey, honey, there's that 4-wheel drive road we took out of Perkinsville last year!"

She's like, "How do you do that?"  It seems to be a bit of sixth sense, but I do better flying over places I have been to on the ground.  Back in the day, I tracked a few flights with my GPS unit and would later check topographic software to confirm features in my window-seat photos.  Then one day I got a polite request not to engage in that activity (messes with the communications, ya know).  Luckily, Google Earth has proven to be an adequate substitute for figuring out our ground-track.  Nobody has bugged me about the camera yet, but I wonder if the paranoia will catch up with that someday?

I would have loved to learn to fly a small open aircraft like Adriel Heisey does.  He makes his living both as a pilot and a photographer, having built his airplane that puts his own body at the nose.  It must be an incredible sensation of flight.

Here's a selection of images from the gallery...

Papago and Camelback Mountains area, Phoenix.

The Verde River meets the Salt...both meet the canals of the Salt River Project.

Saguaro Lake, Arizona.

Parker Canyon in the Sierra Anchas, Arizona.

(That's Route 288, the road to Young.)

Rio Grande, New Mexico.  Albuquerque is at upper-right.

Florida cloudscape.

A staggered panorama of the St. Johns River, Florida.

Jacksonville, Florida.

Cloudbank over St. Catherine's Island, Georgia.

Carolina cloudstreets.

South Philadelphia

Philadelphia...the old and the new.

Philadelphia stadiums and arenas.

Water storage tanks near Village Green, Pennsylvania.

Ohio River; West Virginia is on the left.

Texline, Texas

White Mesa, New Mexico

Interstates 10 and 17 meet in Phoenix.

Northeast Tucson.

Staggered panorama of the Santa Catalina Mountains, Arizona.

Gila River and small rugged mountains northeast of Florence, Arizona.

32 Ave. and Barlow Trail.  Calgary, Alberta.

Nanton, Alberta.

Fall color on Glenwood Mountain, Utah.

Bryce Canyon, Utah.

Vermillion Cliffs, Arizona.

Grand Canyon, Arizona.

A "glory" is visible on the cloud deck.

Book Reviews

Here's a list of a dozen of my all-time favorite books.  I started it many years ago so it doesn't include anything recent.  I'll save those for the next review.  As you'll see, I tend toward science fiction...or at least I used to; seems harder to find good authors these days.


The Stand  by Stephen King

My favorite book ever.  Basically, superflu wipes out 99.9% of the population by the second act.  Forces of good and evil brew in the aftermath until a final confrontation ensues.  The interesting characters will draw you in for the long haul of 1,200 pages in the extended version...much of the time you are following them on journeys across the country.

Favorite character:  Tom Cullen.  "M-O-O-N, that spells moon!"


Lucifer's Hammer  by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

A cloud of broken comet scattershots a hemisphere of the Earth from the Mediterranean to the California coast, in nearly 100 pages of morbidly adventurous detail...and that's just the second act!!  The afterstory follows characters in California, where the San Joaquin Valley is now a flooded inland sea.  In the mix with our astronomer hero (go nerds!) are a persistant postman and Soviet cosmonauts.

Favorite scene:  The surfer.


Of Mice and Men  by John Steinbeck

Powerful stuff.  I'm not saying anything...you just have to read it.
Favorite character:  Lenny


Inferno  by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

This sci-fi spin on Dante's Inferno is a good weekend read.  The fast-paced action takes you on a guided journey through Hell, visiting upon the sinners and having to endure or escape their punishments, as something of an environmental road hazard.

Favorite level of Hell:  The Fifth, the lake of boiling blood.


Midnight at the Well of Souls  by Jack Chalker

Chalker does an excellent job of blending hard sci-fi and fantasy into a rich tapestry of future history in this first novel of a long series...though this story is complete and quite satisfying.  The heart of this universe is the awesomely conceived Well World, an artificial planet covered with some 1500 biozones, each with their own climate and intelligent lifeform...into which our characters are randomly transported (and transformed!) when they stumble through an ancient gateway.  The quest is nothing less than the answer to life, the universe and everything.

Favorite character:  Nathan Brazil


Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy  by Douglas Adams

The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything is found!!  Problem is, nobody knows what the actual question is...and so goes the quest for the question!  Place your beliefs in farcical suspension all the way to The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, where you will dine in book two of the original trilogy, which is the required portion of the reading assignment.  The series definitely wanes in later installments though most fans will stick with it to the end.

Favorite character:  Marvin, the Paranoid Android.


The Chrysalids  by John Windham

A classic novel of life after a nuclear holocaust, it follows a group of special teens in a fundamentalist agrarian society that shuns all mutations. This is easily the coolest book I was ever assigned to read in school.


Flowers for Algernon  by Daniel Keyes

The heart-wrenching story of "Charly," a retarded man given the gift of genius.


The Mote in God's Eye  by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

First contact is a bit more bizarre than we anticipated.  Niven and Pournelle (can you tell I like these guys?) create a truely alien and enigmatic species for us to explore and slowly discover the darker side of.  The title is a reference to the setting...on the farside of the Coal Sack nebula, from where it resembles a large cloaked head, with a lone red giant star and its yellow dwarf companion set against it.

Favorite scene:  the starship diving toward the sun and rescuing the alien light-sail probe.


Jurassic Park  by Michael Crichton

Rich eccentric recreates dinosaurs from DNA preserved in amber.  Builds theme park.  Shit hits the fan.  Simply the best story in the genre...the movie wasn't bad either.  I had nightmares after reading this one. *shudder*

Favorite dinos:  Velociraptors


Q Squared (Star Trek: The Next Generation)  by Peter David

Remember Trelane, from the original Star Trek episode, Squire of Gothos?  Turns out he is Q's godson...who knew?  And Trelane is being a very naughty boy!!  I think this is simply the best Star Trek story ever told...if not a bit confusing on first read.  The action plays out in a multiverse of alternate dimensions; one 'normal,' one with Picard as first officer to Captain Jack Crusher (Dr. Crusher's undead and now ex-husband), and one in which Data is human.  An E-ticket ride all the way!


Ringworld  and  Protector  by Larry Niven

The two best books of the Known Space series, a future-history in which Niven has woven dozens of stories, both short and novel-length.  He won a Hugo Award for Ringworld, which is one of the most fantastic settings I've had the priviledge to peruse.  Protector takes you to a much earlier time in Known Space and sets the stage for many other stories in this well-crafted universe.

Nothing in My Brain

Good news...there's nothing in my brain!!
(In the way of metastases, that is.)