A Day in the Desert

Your watch tells you it's 8:00 p.m. and you doze off. Those little rock rats move in. They gnaw through your pack and your plastic baggies. They fill up on your food supply and dash away. One makes it back to his underground cave. The other is nabbed by a hungry owl who has been watching patiently from the saguaro not too far away.

You are awakened by the gila woodpecker. You notice the hole in your pack and start to holler. Then you realize that you were within the boundaries of some other creature's habitat, and that during the night you became, if ever so slightly, part of the never-ending food chain.

You and your family are becoming increasingly aware of the fact that nature is an incredibly complex system of unending interdependencies involving more factors than man can account for. All living things depend on their habitat — soil, water, climate, air, and other animals — to sustain their life cycles. If something disrupts the cycles in this habitat for very long, the life within it dies. The cycle of life and death perpetuates the earth's ability to replenish life-giving substances from the substances released in death. You begin to put into perspective man's attempt to change and control the forces of nature and realize why so many control campaigns have backfired.

You return to camp and discuss the next day's hike back to Peralta Campground by way of the Needle Trail. After the discussion, everyone sacks out and you decide to record the day's adventures in your journal. It has been a day you want to remember.