A Place to Contemplate

by

Bruce F. Barber

There are, within a one-hour drive of San Felipe, literally a hundred fantastic places for the desert devotee to enjoy. Extend that limit to two hours and add another hundred. Imagine waterfalls, pampas grass and cattails for a mental picture of the first hundred places. Think of hot springs, petroglyphs and fossils for an idea of the others.

Do you know what Apache Tears are? Little black pieces of obsidian (Nature's glass) about the size of the outer digit of your thumb. There's a place southwest of San Felipe-at the entrance to Crazy Horse Canyon-where nature has placed them by the millions. Of course, if you haven't been here for a while, you may not know there's a working gold mine forty miles north of San Felipe, too. When we learned they brought water (through thirty-odd miles of 8-inch pipe) and electricity (from twenty miles away) for daily necessities, we decided you don't spend that kind of money without the prospect of a handsome return.

Arroyo Grande, a few miles west of the gold mine, ranges to fifteen miles in width, thirty feet deep, and a hundred miles in length while Arroyo Tule, a half-mile farther west, is five miles long and a hundred yards wide with sixty foot sides. If I didn't know better, I'd think someone dug this vertical-sided ditch by machine.

Earlier this year, we took a group into Little Devil Canyon. It's a long walk through the desert and over the rocks, but when we got there the kids enjoyed one waterfall, one of three pouring over glass-like granite, like a ten foot water slide. In another canyon, ten miles south of Little Devil, there are no falls but there's a boulder with a hundred petroglyphs on it. There's another directly above this one with a dozen more drawings at least twice the lower drawings' age… judging by their desert varnish.

Drive another mile south, and one to the west, and you come to Oso Canyon where, a mile upstream, there is another Indian drawing site. But now we begin to see the problem-each of these beautiful sites is hidden: Too far for most and, unless you use maps and topos, they're bound to remain that way.

There is another place (within sight of San Felipe) that I call Hidden Valley but there's a problem here, as well. You see, there is no water in this eastern mountain range (the Sierra San Felipe) where, as with the sites mentioned above, the scenery is beyond compare. Seventeen miles long, Hidden Valley permits an interesting outing that includes features found nowhere else. Near the west end of the valley, for example, there are a dozen eroded formations I call the Cloisters. Opposite the Cloisters (to the south) there is a mile-long stretch of exposed Cretaceous seafloor… topped by a layer of brick-red lava… topped by an extra layer of sun-blackened lava.

A half-mile north of the Cloisters there are two significant riverbeds ending in twisting, winding, gorges: One with fifty foot sides standing over an eight-feet-wide floor. The other displays an array of desert plants, including the giant Cardón, to stagger the imagination. There are so many trees in this last one, it is the kind of place I plan a picnic for.

Nine miles south of San Felipe, in the lee of the Sierra Punta Estrella, there is a cactus garden you may have heard of. Called "Valley of the Giants," it was here that a forty-three foot Cardón was selected, excavated, wrapped (in steel), and shipped to the World's Fair in Spain. You see, Cardón is the king of all cactus… (including its little kissing cousins in Arizona).

Of course, there's always San Felipe. What was once a tiny village is rapidly becoming a modern desert community. With friendly folks surrounded by a wealth of incomparable drama, San Felipe is… A Fantastic Place To Contemplate.