Chasing thunder, finding bears

Summer (2014) was a very weird summer.  Normally (whatever that means), the Mexican Monsoon rolls in during late June or early July, bringing daily afternoon thunderstorms to the mountains, which sometimes make it to the valleys.  This year, it seemed like the monsoon never really got going, but rather, what few thunderstorms we had were the results of a long series of hurricanes that moved up the west coast of Mexico.  As a result, rains were spottier and more ferocious than “normal.”  I worked in the mountains near the US-Mexico border for many years, and learned to anticipate when the rain was about to start so I could run to my truck to avoid the worst of it.  The storms were usually brief, and as soon as they passed, I could get back to work.  Rarely were the storms bad enough to cause major flooding and or enough erosion to make travel in the mountains hazardous, although it did happen.

I was hoping to record some good thunder this summer, so I headed to my old stomping ground, the Huachucas (pronounced wa-choo-cuz, reportedly means “thunder mountains” in Apache or some other indigenous language).    I first went down on August 22; entering Fort Huachuca and driving up Garden Canyon.  I didn’t get very far, as the road was barricaded near the bottom of the canyon.  I parked near the barricade and started walking up the road.  I quickly saw the reason for the barricade – the normal trickle of water that crosses the road was over a foot deep and moving very fast.  I went around the water crossing, and took a game trail up the canyon until it intersected a dirt road.  Just as I started up the dirt road, it started to rain.  No thunder, just rain, and I didn’t have a rain cover for my microphones.  The clouds were sitting heavy on the mountains, and it just looked like it was going to be a soaking day.  Not a good day to record sounds, so I gave up and headed home.

I tried again on September 5th.  The barricade was still in place, but the water in the dip was shallow enough to walk though without getting too wet.  The canyon was green and lush and full of wildflowers.  I stopped repeatedly to photograph butterflies, then hiked up McClure Canyon.  Not too far up the canyon, I stopped and pulled out my recorder and microphones.  I set them up in an oak grove, attaching the mics to either side of a tree, and setting the recorder on the ground beneath them.  I then wandered up the canyon, around a corner and out of sight of the mics.  I found a nice big rock in the side of the road, sat down and ate my lunch.  I sat for awhile, swatting mosquitoes, watching the butterflies and a curious group of Mexican jays that came in to check me out.

After about 40 minutes, I got up and retrieved the mics, and headed up Garden Canyon.  The flood damage to the road was incredible.  In less than a mile up the canyon, the dirt road was washed out in 3 places; the last place I stopped was at a cement water crossing where the water had gouged out a ditched a several feet wide and deep.

And all of this damage occurred before the area was hit by the remnants of hurricanes Odile and Norbert in mid-September, bringing another several inches of rain.

Although it was cloudy and looked promising for thunderstorms, I heard no thunder.  After a couple of hours poking around looking for tracks and photographing bugs, I once again headed home disappointed.  But when I played back the recording from McClure Canyon, I got quite a surprise.  About 20 minutes into the recording, a large animal could be heard huffing by the mic.  I first thought it was a dog, which puzzled me, as I had seen no one else in the canyon.  Then I heard the unmistakable whining of bear cubs and realized I had just recorded a bear family moving by the mics.  I think the first huffing sounds were the momma bear being startled by the scent of the mics (most likely my scent).   When the bears moved by the mics, I had no idea they were in the area even though I wasn’t that far away.  And I saw no bear tracks on the road, although I did find some bear scat before I set up the mics.

The Huachucas are good bear habitat and I’ve seen lots of bears and even more sign.  In most of my encounters with bears in the Huachucas, the bears quickly fled or I was able to coax them into letting me by on a trail we happened to be sharing.   However, I always gave way to a momma with cubs.   I like knowing the bears are there, it makes the mountains feel more complete.  Like the mountain lions, bobcats, coatis, and other critters, it’s nice to know they are there, even if you seldom see them.  It’s unlikely the wolves and grizzlies that used to roams these mountains will ever return, but ocelots have, and jaguars are nearby.  It would be really cool to pick up a jaguar on one of my recordings…

Bear photo by Association PeupleLoup, via Flickr, under Creative Commons license.

Recorded with a Sony PCM-M10 and DIY Primo EM-172 mics set in tree ears array.