Sunday afternoon, November 13, 2022, Sean and I continued our day in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. Time was growing short as the sun traced its short November path across the wide-open sky. Our next stop was Senita Basin for our second hike of the day. But to get there, we had to drive down and along the border, wedged between Wilderness and a wall.
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Established in 1937 by the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument protects over 330,000 acres of the Sonoran Desert. The southern edge of the Monument is the international border between Arizona and Sonora, Mexico. Its eastern edge borders the Tohono O’odham Reservation. Bounded on the west and northwest by Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, the Monument is important to the Pacific Flyway of migrating birds. It is the northern extent of the range of species of cactus, the Senita Cactus, that grows nowhere else in the contiguous United States. The Monument is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. Ninety-five percent of the Monument is federally designated Wilderness. It is fewer than fifty miles from the Gulf of California.
And it is beautiful.
On Sunday, November 13, 2022, it was where Sean and I were headed for the day.
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