It seems several of you don't realize that at least a third of Arizona is forested and that only a third of our state's terrain is "desert."
The elevation at our cabin is 8,900 feet, and the nearest cactus is at least a 2 1/2-hour drive south. Our cabin is on two acres surrounded on two sides by the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. Our land has maybe 200 aspens, 100 big ponderosas, and a half dozen firs and two or three blue spruce.
In many ways, our high country is a lot like Colorado's. Temps may reach 70 degrees during the hottest summer days; summer nights will range from about 35 to no more than about 45 degrees. After about September 15, it will freeze every night. I have seen it snow briefly in July. We will have nine feet of it in an average winter.
Flies at our elevation aren't a problem, nor is water. The Little Colorado River is about 250 yards away, and there are at least 30 trout-stocked lakes within a 45-minute drive on the A-S national forest and the White Mountain Apache Reservation. A year-around creek runs through our place, and there is no shortage of green, riparian growth.
About 30 elk cows and calves walk across our two acre parcel at dark thirty, following the stream, to reach a 25-acre meadow across the road in front of our place. (The bulls won't begin to appear until mid August.) The herd heads back to heavy timber about 1/2 mile up the canyon above us before first light, again crossing our place.
I hope to get a few elk addicted to bait so we can see them regularly in daylight. If they hit the bait only after dark, I'll put the bait where we can see it from inside and put up a motion-sensor light.
Bill Quimby
