Yaqui Well — The Desert Spring

Here it is — Yaqui Well. Stand a second and just look at what water does. All around us, the desert is spare and pale and thorned. But right here, where a hidden seep pushes groundwater up to the surface, the ground explodes into life — a dense thicket of honey mesquite, dark and shady and alive with sound. Listen. That's the whole point of this place. This is one of the finest birding spots in the park: glossy black phainopeplas with their little crests, perched up top eating mistletoe berries; tiny gray verdins flitting the branches; hummingbirds working the blooms. Look at the soft ground near the water and you'll often read the night's visitors written in tracks — coyote, and sometimes the cloven prints of bighorn sheep that come down out of the rocks to drink, because in this desert, every living thing eventually has to come to water. And not far from here, in a warm shallow pool, the desert pupfish hangs on — a little silver fish barely three inches long, a survivor straight out of those ancient inland seas, the same wetter world that left the mammoth bones in the badlands. That's the thread of this whole desert, right here in one green tangle: water is life, and life crowds in wherever the water shows itself. Sit a while in the shade. Then we'll head back.