Organ Pipe Cactus NM, Arizona - January 14, 2007

Hi, everyone! Well, it's been an interesting few weeks. I did a day hike a couple weekends ago with Luther (a volunteer here), Ben (one of my coworkers), and Kelly and Jackie (fellow SCA's who live next door). We found a dead skunk and hawk in a pool of water beneath a juniper bush - I was imagining all kinds of crazy Aesop scenarios to account for their deaths, but apparently that particular pool is well known as a wildlife-killer, because the sides are so smooth. Even the oases are carnivorous here. On Friday, I took the day off to go hiking with Kelly in Pinacate (Organ Pipe's sister park in Mexico). The craters there are amazing. I saw a pelican.

The Secretary of the Interior, Dirk Kempthorne, came to visit the park last week. I didn't actually see him, but apparently the visitor's center was filled with people in civilian clothes with sidearms. The A-10's did loop-de-loops overhead.

Luther and his wife Bev were going into Tucson, so they offered me a ride there, to get new boots (the bottoms fell off the ones I had, which was kind of annoying, with all the cacti around). I did a bunch of grocery shopping while I was in town.

The big news here, though, has to do with my new housemate, Mark, a seasonal for Interp. Things went something like this:

Sunday, January 7th, 12:30 PM - Mark arrives. He's excited to be here. He just drove from Florida, where he's hoping to get a job in the state parks, after getting his foot in the door at Organ Pipe. I help him carry some heavy boxes inside, and he quizzes me on the local plant names.

1:00 PM - Tony stops by to water his cacti (being stored at my house). They chat. Mark's read everything there is to read about Organ Pipe: he could give an interpretative talk like that (he snaps) if he had to.

1:30 PM - Mark goes on a van tour led by Kelly. When he returns, he says that he had a great time, and that it was really interesting.

5:00 PM - I take Mark to Happy Hour, where he meets several of the volunteers. He tells them all how much he loves Arizona, and how much he's looking forward to starting work on Tuesday.

6:00 PM - I leave Happy Hour, with Mark still chatting eagerly with the volunteers.

7:30 PM - Mark returns from Happy Hour. He's just heard about the run-in I had with an illegal a few weeks back. He's thrilled. His job here is going to be such an adventure - much better than painting and putting up wallpaper in Florida.

10:00 PM - I go to bed. Mark is still awake, reading the volunteer handouts he picked up that afternoon.

Monday, January 8th, 5:30 AM - I wake up and do my morning Pilates.

6:00 AM - I leave to jogging. As I go out the door, I hear Mark moving around in his room.

6:30 AM - I return from my jog. Mark, and all his belongings, have completely vanished. At first, when I got back from jogging, and saw his key in the lock, I thought it was a bit strange, but I figured he'd just left to have a smoke. I walked to my room, still wondering why he hadn't taken the key with him, when I saw, on my desk, his volunteer handbook, with a small note 'Please return to the Visitor's Center - Mark.' 'Well, that's strange,' I thought. 'Why would he ask me to drop that off at the visitor's center, when he'll be going there anyway at 7:30? Unless...' I looked in his room. Empty. I looked in the driveway. Empty. I looked in his refrigerator. Empty. I looked in the living room. House TV and DVD player still there (whew). At 7:15, I walked over to the Admin building. "Hi. I was just wondering if you'd gotten any kind of message from Mark?" "No, I was just working on his paperwork now... ... why?" At 7:30, I walked over to the Visitor's Center. They, also, had not received any kind of message from Mark. 3 days later, they were still waiting.

When opening all the windows to get the smell of cigarette smoke out of the house, I saw my first scorpion, about an inch long and colored pink. It was cool. I tried to catch it in a jar, but it got away.

Al, another volunteer, who works in the Grand Canyon during the summer, apparently knows Mark's brother (who also works there); he said he'd write to try to find out what happened. I've tried to assure everyone that I didn't have anything to do with his disappearance. ('Man, I hope it wasn't something I said... Maybe he didn't like the dessert I made...") The only thing that I could think of was that - he's an insomniac - maybe he'd spent all night thinking over the situation here, and decided that it wasn't for him. Still, it's weird that he didn't leave more of a note.

Ernie the Eagle Scout, my new housemate, is scheduled to arrive on Monday. Let's see if we can keep this one a little longer than 18 hours.

4 days after Mark's disappearance, I finally heard an explanation. According to Andy Fisher, the chief of Interp, who finally managed to get ahold of him, just after I left to go jogging, he got an urgent phone call from his sick mother in Florida. He threw everything in his car and drove back to Florida. Hm.

Quote of the week: Luther to Mary (the head of the Natural Resources Division): "Frankly, this work's about as useless as an ashtray on a motorcycle!"

Mary: "Well, if the motorcycle were stopped..."

I hope you're all doing well,
Nathan