Kofa Mountains

Sit in the remote desert and wait for the sun to rise or fall. Be enveloped in the silence. Watch the shifting colors. Feel the age of the place, the rocks, the mountains, the cactus. Cares recede and calm settles in its place. Mystery unfolds in the wildest of wilderness. The sublime and the supreme alien beauty.

The ancient soil underpins a matrix of stones too heavy for the wind to blow and the rains to wash away. It shelters, like everything in the desert seems to. The cottontail under the brittlebush, the small barrel cactus under the boulder, the pool under an overhanging stone, the owls in the saguaro, the packrat in its nest, the badger in a den, the lizard under a rock.

This disarrayed rock paving that presumes to be untrod to maintain its form. Until the land bends to where the water has rendered it and drawn the soil and the rocks down a sandy arroyo lined with thirsty ironwood, palo verde, mesquite. Here on this smooth sandy bottom are the nocturnal evidence of the presence of these animals shielded under a star-speckled sky, hiding in the dark from the snake, the owl, the cat and the coyote.

The rugged line of mountains draws one's attention and plays out its different moods under the shifting light of passing days. It is not easy to take one's eyes from it and yet, for all the contemplation, one cannot comprehend what the mountains are meant to resemble.

Hike some random canyon and you may find yourself in the land of smoke trees and desert lavender, like the desert a hundred miles west. Here the Sonoran Desert Saguaro have reasserted themselves over the Mojave Desert but the Mojave has not surrendered completely.

To the south sit a similarly intriguing set of mountains called the Castle Dome Mountains. They too want attention in the shifting light of day.

Night falls and you cast your consciousness, perhaps towards Jupiter and its string-of-pearl moons, accompanying Orion who in turn taunts Taurus, the Pleiades sparkling cold and bright in the deep velvet night. Perhaps you cast it to the ancient stones and Saguaro, those archaic witnesses to 100,000 sunsets and sunrises. The lone coyote yips and sings its strange sad song of the desert, a comfort for some.

A breeze stirs the trees and brush as it carries itself across the valley floor to some place it is beckoned towards, in its wake that profound silence. Maybe you cast your mindfulness upon the soft chill air, dry and full of potency. The ether of life, bearer of color and light during the day it seeps into all the voids and fills the night.

Kofa

The Kofa Mountains get their name not from some Indian word or some obscure surname like many places in the West. It actually stands for King of Arizona, a mine located in said mountains. They lie southwest of Phoenix and north of Yuma adjacent to the Yuma Proving Grounds where the Army carries out testing and training. 

The mountains themselves are a striking jumble of domes, spires and summits. The geology is tertiary volcanic it consists of three layers of basalt and tuff or compressed volcanic ash. Much of the geology feels like limestone but is in fact tuff which is likewise porous. 

The mine operated successfully from 1896 until 1910 when the ore was no longer profitable. The mine produced $3,500,000 in gold and silver before it closed in 1910. The nearby North Star mine produced an additional $1,000,000 in gold and silver.

We were there for the warm winter sun and isolation and for the most part that was a success. The roads in this area are not well maintained which suited us. Once we left the highway and climbed over a short range of hills the RVs dotting the landscape immediately tapered off, either because the cell phone coverage died or a sense of security of being in sight of the highway dissipated. 

The only things that offered any disturbance were the very occasional side-by-sides and 4x4s and the crump of artillery from the Proving Grounds. 

This being a National Wildlife Refuge means that there is very little accommodation for camping. No water, toilets, or campgrounds. Only dispersed camping and none of it allowed far from the roads. We find an area nestled in a wash bottom, shelter from any wind. 

The mornings I find my old friend perched on the prominence above camp with coffee and join him to watch the sun rise and color the sky and trace its etched shadow forms onto the Kofas. Every day the same, and new, and nothing old except the landscape. We sit in silence or speak in hushed tones of the beauty of the moment, plans for the day or old stories of our bound pasts. The light passes and the sequence begins anew the next day. We find ourselves where we began.

Sit in the remote desert and wait for the sun to rise or fall. Be enveloped in the silence. Watch the shifting colors. Feel the age of the place, the rocks, the mountains, the cactus...