Tanque Verde Ridge Trail

Author's Comments

The Tanque Verde climbs out of the desert the way a question expands the longer you sit with it. You start in saguaro and creosote at the trailhead, and if you commit to the full eighteen miles you end the day in pine forest at over eight thousand feet, having moved through what amounts to several thousand miles of latitude in a single morning. Most people will not do the full distance. I have not done it in a single push myself. But the first three miles are some of the best desert walking I know in the Tucson basin, and they ask very little of you in exchange. Go in November. Start in the dark and be on the ridge as the sun comes up behind the Rincons, which means the light arrives at your back and pushes west across the basin in a long slow wash. The saguaros in the foreground go from silhouette to detail in about fifteen minutes, and there is a window in there where the city below is still in shadow and the arms of the cactus are catching the first warm light directly. That is the photograph. A wide lens, a low angle, the basin opening out behind. The trail is quiet. I have walked the lower sections on Saturday mornings and seen four people in three hours. The Rincon district gets a fraction of the visitors that the Tucson Mountain side gets, and you feel it. Bring more water than you think you need. The desert here is generous with light and stingy with shade, and by ten in the morning the day has already decided what it will be.

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