The Arizona Sycamore Is A Tree Worth Admiring. By Kevin Franklin EVERY NOOK OF the world has its favorite trees. The Lebanese have their cedars, the Canadians their maples. In the Pacific Northwest everyone raves about the redwoods, and rightly so. But nothing strikes me as so mystically beautiful as an Arizona sycamore. Standing 40 or 50 feet tall, with trunks as thick as a washing machine, the bleach-white sycamores are larger than any of their neighbors in the canyon bottoms. Cottonwoods may grow taller, but the crown of a sycamore radiates around the trunk, giving it a grandeur you don't see in other trees. Thick white branches arch as far out as the tree is tall, sometimes at seemingly impossible angles. They look more like giant marble arms than sinuous branches. Sycamores seem almost out of place next to the smaller junipers and mesquites. Which, in a sense is true. According to Janice Bowers' Shrubs and Trees of the Southwest Deserts, several million years ago sycamores blanketed Arizona's hillsides in a vast deciduous forest. As the climate became drier, the mild-climate trees couldn't find refuge in the high, cold altitudes as did the Douglas Firs. The sycamores retreated into the canyons--the only places with enough moisture and the right climate to support them. So here they are, the last vestiges of a once-proud empire. One of the best places for grand sycamores is the north fork of Horrell Creek, in the Superstition Mountains. Finding such fantastic trees here seems ironic. According to Arizona Names by Bryd Howell Granger, there are 74 locations named "Sycamore" something. So naturally one of the best locales for sycamores is named after Marion Horrell, who, along with his father and brother, ran cattle in the area. Hiking up Horrell Creek is like passing through a portrait gallery of sycamores: Here's fat stocky one; over there a tall wispy one. And stranger yet the one with a single branch, with the diameter of a manhole, running almost perfectly parallel to the ground for 30 feet. Half the length of the trail in Horrell Creek is the remains of an old road. After that it becomes more of a horse trail. We hike up a little more than a mile and find running water. A half-mile past that we find a corral. Beyond the corral the trail seems to peter out, and we eventually just bushwhack to the top of a hill and enjoy the view. I find out later that the trail does continue, to the right of the corral. We hike back to camp and begin preparing a hearty dinner, when up rides a lone horseman. Two dogs flank him and set up sentinel positions nearby. "Howdy, you folks camping for the night?" says the cowboy in the dark hat. I reply that we are and offer him a beer. After some conversation we learn this is Hugh McCall, ranch manager of the JH 6 Ranch that runs cattle on about 25,000 acres in these parts. "Saw your tracks up above," McCall says. For some reason I always find it unsettling when someone follows my tracks. I feel like I left these careless notes lying around informing the world of my every move. But for a professional rancher like McCall, it's how he keeps tabs on what's going on in his territory. McCall quit his well-paying job as a trucker to come back to ranching. He says he'd rather be out here riding all day than getting a bigger paycheck every other Friday. "I drove for 20 years," he says. "I like what I'm doing now a whole lot better." He rides an average of 20 to 25 miles a day, though today he's ridden 30 miles and still has a few to go before getting back to the ranch. We ask him to stay for dinner, but he has to head out. After finishing his beer, he and his two canine shadows quietly disappear into the black night, framed by the skeletal shimmer of a sycamore arching over the trail. Some might say Hugh was foolish to give up a big paycheck and a bucket seat for a saddle and a few sycamore trees. I wouldn't. Photo by Kevin Franklin

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