I have pondered our visit to Ruby, Arizona for more than a week now. I found it when I was searching for, places with the name Ruby, in our state. It was just another ghost town, and considered the most preserved in our state, so we went. Leslie, the caretaker who lives on the premises, shared the fascinating history, answered our questions, and sent us on our way with a detailed map of the grounds.

Today? I will try to make sense of the Mineral Lake area. I am awestruck. It is a desert oasis in it’s truest sense. Pristine, with a stillness that didn’t mimic what we found.

There was evidence of wildlife visits, in the sand.

Roadrunners.

Muddy prints showed us where they stopped for refreshment.

Raccoons, birds, mountain lions, and a cub. Maybe a skunk, or a badger.

Eerily enough, not all the prints headed to the water, and I knew better than to proceed, especially since we saw cub prints.

But what has me ponder is the discovery of human prints. A line of them coming from the broken fence line to a point we couldn’t see. And then I remembered, we are three miles from the border town of Nogales. Leslie lives this life daily, and sadly, the migrants are dropped a mile from here by coyotes (smugglers) and told Tucson is 3 miles along the fence line.

In reality it is 70 miles.*

Wind Kisses, Donna

*this is merely an observation….

Inspired by: RDP/sand