I’m still finding my footing with this recap series of posts about where we’ve been in the Airstream: which areas to cover, how much to repost and how much to summarize, whether to bother editing photos, that kind of thing. After the Everglades and southern Alberta, I figure it’s time for some desert, but there is so much desert out there, and so much of it I actually love.

This post covers boondocking we did right near the Arizona/Mexican border, south of Tucson, where I’m thinking not many people have gone (much less slept out on their own). There are other parts even of southern Arizona that I love, but putting all that in one post would be lots to cover and read, so here we go with just this one part. We were there in our second year on the road, Spring 2022.

Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge

Tracy and I were driving due south from Tucson to find a campsite on the border when I made a realization. We’ve been letting the idea of where we spend next winter percolate in our plans but—no dice. We have no idea where we’ll be next winter. Suddenly, on this drive I was sure of one thing: I don’t want to spend next winter in the desert. Please, no. We’ve been camping in the southwest since mid-October, and I’ve about had it with brown. And sharp. And, dry. Brown, Sharp, and Dry: I do not need to see any of you again for a good long while.

I think I said that same thing right before we camped at Joshua Tree, though. And maybe before Organ Pipe. Okay, and I said I was done with the desert right before we stopped in Ajo. You’d think Death Valley would have given me enough. But, each time we walk through a part of the southwest we haven’t been to before, I learn something new, and my brain … expands. I know, that’s the way learning works. But I’m still getting used to traveling-style learning. 

Where we found to camp is directly in a wildlife refuge, and it’s so much more than brown and sharp and dry. I know these photos don’t show that, but come along with me here. 

For one thing, it’s not dry. Wetlands that once were transformed for cattle and horse ranches are being restored—cienega is the Spanish word for the springs that surface here—and the restoration is recreating unique habitats for minnows, wetlands birds, and a special frog. 

We’ve been here only one full day and have simply walked around our campsite and driven to the visitors center, but we saw a huge herd of mule deer congregating at what remains of a small lake, then “stotting” across our hiking path to fields in the distance. That’s a real word: it’s how people describe deer springing above high grasses on all four legs at once so they can keep moving forward but also keep an eye on predators.

And that’s just mule deer that have me so excited. We saw three javelinas at another spring. And Tracy has his eyes peeled for the endangered masked bobwhite quail, which is the primary reason this refuge exists: to restore habitat for these birds. And for the desert pronghorn. And for several imperiled species of bats. Who’d have thunk.

Our Campsite

The refuge allows camping at specified, numbered sites along dirt roads that criss-cross the 118,000 acres here. We found one with a view of the volcanic-remnant mountain, Baboquivari, which looks so small in all my photos but truly dominates your vision here. 

It’s the pointy one you can see above Banjo’s ear.

Our area of this refuge has the feel of an orchard, which is very cool. Still leafless, but promising, mesquite trees must grow in a regular layout in the grasslands, and they’re punctuated with chain cholla, plus prickly pear cacti (that javelinas like to eat), and occasional barrel cacti. It’s basically what we’ve been seeing since October, but knowing that there’s water here, and that desert pronghorn might run in the grasslands below you anytime you look—and my interest in the desert is revived. 

Banjo is practically beside herself on walks, smelling jack rabbits and kit foxes and coyotes, and flushing out quail and generally getting sharp things stuck in her fur and lots of dirt in her nose. Aka, dog happiness.

I’m not saying, “bury me in the desert, oh my lord.” but I am reminded that travel surprises you.

Hiking in Arivaca

This was on my first serious hike since I was first sick with Covid, and it was splendid. We hiked all morning, first along a currently dry creek bed with large cottonwood trees in a long line through the desert, then we chose a trail that wound around and up a peak, about a 1,000-ft elevation gain. I lagged behind Tracy, but I made it to the peak and took this video for you.

I wish I could name those mountains as I show them, but we’ve had a hard time finding topo maps with mountain range names on them here. I know that to the west are the Quinlan Mountains with Kitt’s Peak (with a national observatory on top), as well as Baboquivari Peak, both which we can see from the campsite. To the east are the Cerro Colorado Mountains, and at north are Las Guijas Mountains. Due south we can see the border wall from one view (although I haven’t shown it here). 

What you can see in the video most clearly is the dark line of Cottonwood trees where we began the hike. 

Banjo also hadn’t hiked with us in a while, and she was excited enough to pull Tracy up the steep climbs on occasion. And she resigned herself to walking behind him on the way down: this kept her from pulling Tracy down and allowed her to still feel ahead of someone in the pack (me). Tracy and I both thought about just letting her off leash on the way down since we couldn’t see anyone for miles, but she wants so badly to follow animal tracks off the main trail that who knows where she could have ended up. So Good Girl Banjo (for the most part) stayed on leash and climbed the peak.

[Huh. I thought when I was compiling these posts that I’d written around here about the border agents who flew down the dirt road we were staying on in their trucks with their immigrant hotboxes in the back, coming close to running me over many times. About them flying over us in their helicopters so often that we only halfway joked that we should get a QR code printed and mounted to the Airstream roof with our passports on it so they’d leave us the heck alone. That must’ve been in a different part of the desert.]

The Ghost Town of Ruby

Ruby, Arizona, used to be a mining town, built after the first strike to its ore in the 1870s.  Along with a shaft mine—that produced gold, silver, and then lead and zinc—came the company town, including a handful of houses, two barracks, a nine-bed hospital, a cement jail, a school for up to 150 children, a mercantile that made and sold ice cream (in southern Arizona!), two cemeteries, and “snob hill” where the general manager lived.  

Work at the mine paused during the Depression, then restarted, and finally shut down in 1940.  After the mine and the town and the surrounding land had been bought and sold a good number of times, it was purchased by several partners, the recent being a couple of wildlife biologists. 

They arranged with the AZ Dept of Fish and Wildlife to begin the progress of protecting and restoring the land from damage due to mining and to cattle grazing. They’re also interested in cultural preservation of the buildings and the history of the people who lived and worked here, and they open the area to U of Arizona archeology students for special retreats.

These new owners bring in cash with a limited amount of tourism on their land via day permits—tourists walk around the old town carrying a photocopied map with descriptions written by a 90-year-old local, and they picnic around two ponds and the large flats of tailings that look like a sand dune.  

The owners also sell one or two camping permits, limited to one night only, beside one of the ponds here in the center of the old town.  Last night we were the only RV here; a father and son camped in tents on the other side of the pond.  

We first spent the day wandering among the derelict buildings and peering at the mine shaft and walking over the sand field of tailings.  It’s a cool place. 

What I’ve been thinking about regarding the history here is the relations among the incoming White people, the Indigenous Americans, and the Mexicans, especially seeing as how Arizona didn’t become a state until 1912 (the last of the contiguous states). Even then, this far south—this far away from any other town—the land and people were very much wild. For instance, when there was no more room in the concrete jail, prisoners were tied to mesquite trees.

During colonization, Buffalo Soldiers were brought in to negotiate with natives because natives considered them more trustworthy, but people killed each other anyway, and eventually we settlers took all the land. And we built mines and mining towns, and we provided fancy homes for White administrators, cookie-cutter homes (as we saw in Ajo) and barracks (here) for Mexican laborers, and nothing but the finger to Native Americans who also worked the mines.

And here’s where history and the present meet. The town’s caretaker, Leslie, told us a few stories from her years of living and working alone here, just four miles from a well-known border crossing.  Here’s who she’s met in that time, over and over. 

Teenagers, having fled attempted recruitment by drug cartels in Mexico, showing up at her door barefoot, thirsty, having been robbed and abandoned in the mountains by Coyotes. Abused women, alone and desperate and crying.  Groups of scared people, left by their guides, lost and looking for water.  

When she first moved here, Leslie offered help outside her house (of course, it’s illegal to allow anyone in because that’s harboring). She gave them what she could: water, socks, first aid (she’s been both a firefighter and a nurse). 

But, 1) word got out among migrants that she was a reliable source of relief, so they started looking for her in increasing numbers, and 2) wildlife cameras revealed way more migrants around her house than anyone had expected. So, her position as caretaker of this ghost town (and as an unharrassed person with border patrol) became dangerous, and she had to start saying, “No, I don’t have any water.  No, I can’t help you with your bleeding feet.”  She still helps people on the road though, and she told us about several relief groups whom she welcomes on the land who search for and help people they find.

I won’t go into detail about the men whom she locks the gate against, the ones who show up in camo, toting sniper rifles and wearing MAGA hats, who cuss at her and wave their weapons and say they want to do “what the border patrol men won’t.” [This was during Trump’s first presidency, clearly.] If they won’t leave their weapons off the property, she won’t let them on it, and they call her a commie for that. I originally wrote a long-winded rant about men like this, but I deleted it. You know how I feel. 

While we were digesting these stories before we turned in at sunset, Leslie came by the campsite and treated us to her lovely guitar-playing and a few more stories, and we became friends. She’s an amazingly optimistic person, living alone out here in what’s still the Wild West.

Later, we walked Banjo up to the bat lookout bench near a mineshaft opening.  It was a beautiful evening with coots splashing in the pond, doves calling to each other, a vermillion flycatcher flitting over the water, and white-tailed deer bedding down in the tall grasses.  

The next morning we walked a mile through the hills to the old cemetery, and along the way we saw water bottles and clothes left by migrants passing through.  

Seems like we had the entire town of Ruby to ourselves that night and early morning, but I do know there was one Good Samaritan up in the caretakers’ house—and maybe several people in need of care sleeping in the abandoned mine entrances, being as quiet as ghosts.