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One of the many things that I love about traveling is being a tourist. Not in the annoying, stereotypical American type of way but in the exploratory way. For better or worse, I was born with an insatiable curiosity (ask anyone who knew me as a child). Perhaps when I was small someone read me this Rudyard Kipling quote:

Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges. Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go.

Many times my urges to discover that which lies behind the bend have landed me in a bit of trouble and given my loved one fits (poor Lance). Other than a few mishaps I survived unscathed—looking back it is unfathomable that I have suffered nothing worse than a few cracked ribs!

Thankfully I have not yet outgrown the urge to investigate that which is unknown to me. I have however learned to maximize the knowledge of other people along the way. So when I discovered that Pima County Natural Resources, Parks and Recreation was offering a birding walk in nearby Honeybee Canyon I was excited. It would give me an opportunity to finally explore the area. Although the name might make you think otherwise it is not a ravine filled with small humming insects. The narrow valley was once the ancestral home of a sizable community of Hohokam that archaeologists named Honeybee Village. This site is of particular interest to me because I grew up within a few miles, yet never visited it.

As a kid I was constantly finding evidence of the people who had previously called the Sonoran Desert home. When my folks took me hiking in the mountains near our house—pottery shards and small flakes of stone seemed to litter the ground, once I learned how to look for them. I remember scrambling over hillsides looking for new and interesting petroglyphs, ancient messages pecked into boulders by long ago residents.

I grew up with an awareness of the Romero Ruins at Catalina State Park, which preserves the remains of pit houses and not one but two ball courts. Later during my college years I studied that same site as I pursued my degree in Archaeology. Yet I knew relatively little about two nearby, important sites: Sleeping Snake and Honeybee Village. The first was excavated in a hurry and now lies under a golf course, the latter was slated to suffer the same indignity before a group of concerned citizens stepped in. I remember that the effort to preserve the site was quite contentious during the 1990s.

Now, with help from the developer, the core of the settlement has been protected. A section of the site is slated to be interpreted for visitation and will be open to the public in the near future. In a related deal a portion of Honeybee Canyon was turned over to the town of Oro Valley for use as nature park. The small, linear park is along a wash that eventually feeds into the aptly named Cañada del Oro. What the park lacks in size it makes up for in beauty—it protects a riparian area, which is a rarity in the desert. The tall trees, cool sand, and occasional water have attracted humans and a wide range of wildlife for thousands of years, and they continue to do so today.

Enticed by the expert bird guide Lance and I met his parents (also fellow bird enthusiasts) at Honeybee Canyon on a cool and breezy January morning. Quite a few other folks showed up that morning. To be honest, between the size of our group and the breeze, birds were a bit hard to find. A couple notable exceptions were a male Phainopepla and a Northern Mockingbird that were engaged in a raucous fight over what must have been a particularly delicious tangle of mistletoe. Our guide explained that Phainopeplas mate early in the season and he might be trying to defend a feeding and nesting site. As we moved further downstream I wished the soon-to-be father good luck—he’d need it against the persistent and devilishly smart Mockingbird.

As we wandered down one side of the canyon and then back up the other I split my time between scanning the ground and the sky. It didn’t take long for me to discover small pottery shards that had washed down from who knows where. While many people walk right over them without noticing—the smoothness, the sheen, and the tiny reflective pieces of mica always catch my eye. I always feel compelled to pick them up and look at them a bit more closely. Mostly the broken pieces of pots are a plain orange-red, or so highly degraded that any coating or painting has long since disappeared. Every once in a while I’ll pluck a piece from the sand and flip it over to discover the faint impression of a thumb print or a faded design. In that second before I return the shard to its resting place, I feel a small connection to its maker, a Hohokam who lived here over 700 years ago.

Pottery wasn’t the only evidence the former residents of Honeybee Village left behind. In the middle of the wash was a large, flat-topped granite boulder pock-marked with several holes. After a few minutes of digging out sand I confirmed that it was a grinding slab. Long ago people had used the rock as a food processor. Unlike the long, shallow troughs used to grind grains (primarily corn) these holes more closely resembled a mortar that would have been used with a hammer stone (similar to a pestle). Archaeologists have determined that mortars like these were used to smash the seed pods from mesquite trees, which still grow in abundance nearby. Though the Hohokam had no written language, their story can still be pieced together.

As our group meandered back to the trailhead the sun finally removed the morning chill from the canyon. Apparently we weren’t the only ones delighted with the change in temperature—we caught sight of more birds in the last few minutes than we had in the previous two hours! Though our birds were all desert natives our guide explained that the canyon is quite popular with migrant species as they move north in the early spring. It sounds like we should revisit the canyon in a month or so to see who has just flown in. Next time we’ll be sure to go further upstream since I recently learned that there are some stunning petroglyphs up there…

Photos: View our photographs from Exploring Honeybee Canyon.

Dates: We hiked and birded HoneyBee Canyon on 01/09/10.