Bears and Coatis of the Blue

We're riding high above the Blue Range and the Blue River country now — some of the wildest, least-roaded land left in the whole American Southwest — and it is alive with animals, including a couple you might not expect. Black bears are common in these forests; you may well catch one shuffling across a clearing, so keep your distance and never feed one. And watch the sunny, rocky slopes for one of the Southwest's most delightful oddities: the coatimundi, or coati — a long-snouted, ring-tailed cousin of the raccoon that roams in noisy bands, tails held straight up like little flagpoles, snuffling through the brush for grubs and fruit. These mountains sit right at the northern edge of the coati's entire range; this is one of the very few places in the United States you'll ever lay eyes on one. And somewhere out in that blue distance still roams the rarest of all — the Mexican gray wolf, the lobo you heard about, back from the very brink. Keep your eyes on the wild edges up here; in the Blue, you never quite know what's watching back.