The little urban park in Tucson where part of this episode takes place has always been nice renewal before hitting the road for the two hour trip home.
The rocky hillside described is in the Dragoon Mountains and is pretty good for renewal as well.
Shindaggers (Agave schottii) have yellow flowers on a four to five foot tall stalk. It’s quite striking. Oh, and I said that shindaggers sucker and that’s an understatement. Every fall for years I hunted and hiked the mesas at the base of the Galiuro Escarpment. Sometimes that involved navigating through stands of thousands of Agave schottii. Ay!
In the evening around a camp fire and with a beer or two my partner John Day and I designed shindagger snowshoes made of old carpeting. We roared with laughter when we thought, “Hey, we could just walk across the top of those two million shindaggers!” Maybe there was some pot involved too.
The photos are mine.
