Another Trickster Story

Hiking alongside the deep arroyo on Tortugas Mountain's west side

When Becca and I got out of the car at the trailhead this morning we immediately heard what sounded like dogs howling fairly close by.  As we walked in the direction of the noise we encountered four people:  two women, a boy and a man.  The man and boy had been running to catch up with the others, the man with a German Shepherd puppy on a lead.  He stopped and told me they were running away from coyotes who had been fighting with three other dogs.  The man was concerned that his puppy would be hurt if attacked, but suggested Becca would be able to defend herself against the coyotes, which were headed our way.  I thanked him for the heads-up, and Becca and I continued on our way up alongside the arroyo.  We did hear coyotes soon afterward, but I doubted whether we'd see them.  I also wondered about the man's story because it seemed slightly unlikely for three dogs to be fighting with coyotes in the desert west of the mountain.  I'm not saying it was impossible, but we saw no evidence of stray dogs, and the coyotes never made themselves visible to us.  We never heard them again on our long hike.

Last night, just before midnight, we had a brief, but intense, downpour that really delivered a lot of rain; it lasted about twenty minutes.  Directly after that a lightning storm began, flashes strobing every window in the house for about thirty minutes.  Evidence of the storm this morning:  dirt washed across the roads in the neighborhoods, deep gullies cut into the desert around Tortugas Mountain, and high humidity.  It felt pretty awful hiking today.

Headed for the foothills

Up on the high foothills trail

Back down in the lower desert

Break!

Angling back toward the mountain

We still have a long way to go