Winter Takes a Break in Lawyer Canyon

The sun has burned away the fog and the Canyon is taking a break from winter. The streams are full and fuming, and the Canyon has seen three to four hours of sunshine the past couple days. The deer are elated with the sun. Joe and I counted over forty mule deer the other afternoon on a sunny hillside.

Even the Grass is Greening

Suzie Creek

Having a first of February spring experience has been refreshing. I don't know if there are any groundhogs in the Canyon. I'll have to ask Joseph, but I'm sure this spring experience won't last.  

I received an e-mail from a man who is planning a March trip into the Superstition Wilderness to visit Circlestone.  His polite comment about my Circlestone GIS Mapping Project website was, "It appears that your Circlestone content is excellent, but your web site is non-performing."  I decided it was time I updated the site, especially since it reflects on our Mesa Community College Undergraduate Research Program.  The 2006 MCLI Learning Grant funded Circlestone Expedition was the first major Undergraduate Research Project at the Red Mountain Campus.

The Mysterious Circlestone Ruin of the Superstition Mountains

I haven't had any students with the web-design skills necessary, and interest in participating in the project, to do anything with the site since the original project team created it in 2006. I took a break from writing about Lawyer Canyon this week, and I spent the past few days reworking the Circlestone site.  It looks better now.  I still have a couple expedition reports to put up, and hundreds of photographs to upload when I get back to civilization and powerful upload speeds, but I could use some volunteer editors.  If interested in assisting with the project, visit the site at http://www.mesacc.edu/~bruwn09481/circlestone/.  Send me an email with mistakes, errors or anything that needs to be changed on the Home, Map Collection and Expeditions pages.  The Photographs and GIS Data pages will have to wait for my return to the city this summer.  The bandwith required for those uploads is not for satellite connections.  Also, if anyone plans to hike out to the remote site, please contact me ahead of time.  Much of the data collected for the project has come from hikers interested in the site.

Although dissimilar PLACES, Circlestone and Lawyer Canyon, hold special places in my heart.  The idea of "Place" captured my interest many years ago as a youth exploring the "Great Northern Swamp" of the George Washington State Forest  in Minnesota.   To this day, the aroma of skunk transports me back to my family's northern Minnesota lake cabin in an instant, no matter where I am when the stripped critter reveals its scent.  Places have power over us human animals.  I am intrigued with the identity of places, how they acquire their personality, their spirit.  The natural environment of places captures me.  Place names: what they say and how they influence places, appeals to my imagination.  Our individual identities are wrapped up with the identities of the places we have visited, lived in and loved.

Archeologists Brian Herbal and Candace Warner. 
Candice is standing in  an ancient fire pit.

My first encounter with Lawyer Canyon was vicarious.  I found the place while conducting the literature review for my undergraduate Honors thesis, "Words of Prophecy in the Story of the Nez Perce."   Chief Lawyer's brand of Christianity played a central role in my paper, and many of the events I wrote about occurred in this Canyon.  And even though I visited the reservation in 1993, I had never seen the Canyon until conducting the research for my first Master's thesis, Dancing in the Shadowlands with Coyote, in 1995.  But even then, I only visited for a few hours.  I didn't become enamored with the Canyon until 1999, when I had the opportunity to represent the Flying B Ranch, during the University of Idaho's Kittle Rock Shelter archeological dig.  Joseph had gone to work for the Ranch as a hunting guide in 1995 giving me the opportunity to meet Bob Burlinggame, owner of the Flying B Ranch.  Bob kindly gave me a summer project to research the Ranch's history and participate in the archeological dig, which the Ranch financed.  Brian Herbal's U of Idaho thesis concerning the Kittle Rockshelter reports a 10,000 year use of the site.  I will be discussing Brian's analysis in the book I am writing.  The cave is also rich in rock art. Ms. Merrill's map below is excellent.

The Flying B Ranch is a testimony to sustainable private land management.  The 5000 acre ranch covers six miles of Lawyer's Canyon.  When Bob purchased the property in 1982, the Ranch had a local reputation as a Star Thistle factory.  The invasive weed is common to open areas like roadsides, rangeland, wildlands, hay fields and pastures.  Areas disturbed by cultivation, poorly-timed mowing, road building and maintenance, and overgrazing are the weed's favorite haunts.  The canyon had fallen victim to all these practices.  The thorny weed rapidly colonizes once it is introduced creating dense infestations which rapidly deplete the soil of moisture.   The weed makes establishing other species extremely difficult.  It is also poisonous to horses.  The Flying B ranch has worked diligently to heal the Canyon.

Thirty years later, the Ranch has been restored to a natural habitat.  Native grasses and trees cover her hills and ravines.  Food plots and habitat for game birds, deer, bobcats, lions and many other native fauna abound.  Lawyer Creek meanders across natural meadows again; the flats are no longer grazed or mowed for hay. The ranch works with Idaho Fish and Game and the US Forest Service to promote healthy populations of native fish and animals, both on the Ranch and in the Nez Perce and Clearwater National Forests. 

Teddy Roosevelt, John Muir, Aldo Leopold were right; there are places so magical, so mysterious, so inspiring and so historic, they need to be protected and preserved.  The Flying B Ranch and the hunters and fisherman who support it have been excellent stewards of one of my favorite places.  I pray my book will serve the Canyon as well.

Real Spring Looks Like This in the Canyon

The Lower Flat