WITHIN RANGE

BY CRAIG CHILDS X PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOEL HAZELTON

EDITOR'S NOTE: The Barry M. Goldwater Range, which covers more than 1 million acres in Southwestern Arizona, is one of the state's most remote and inhospitable places. Large parts of the range are not open to the public, and the areas that are accessible can be entered only with a permit that visitors must carry at all times, in addition to following a long list of other rules and regulations. Our photographer went through that process so you wouldn't have to, but if you still want more information on visiting the range, visit luke.isportsman.net.

THIRTY YEARS AGO, I'D COME TO THE BOMBING ranges of Southwestern Arizona as I tracked around the desert, looking for water. If I didn't want to be seen, this is where I'd walk: no hiking trails, no guidebooks, a gorgeous wasteland of hard Sonoran peaks between seas of scattered saguaros and ironwood trees. No one really wants you here. People die in this desert.

I pulled the distributor cap, drew an Army-surplus camouflage tarp over my truck and walked off for days.

Boundaries may have been hazier back then, as I roamed back and forth between Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge and the Barry M. Goldwater Range.

I know Goldwater only from its middle, hardly a glimpse, tail end of the Copper Mountains. At night I sat in a small camp with my stove and a pack, water bottles at my side, and watched jet fighters chase each other through the stars, engines roaring. Sonic booms are jarring to any living soul. Your body jerks to attention.

Bighorn sheep and endangered Sonoran pronghorns scatter. If it's close, half a mile away or less, you'll never forget the sensation of the entire atmoBighorn sheep and endangered Sonoran pronghorns scatter. If it's close, half a mile away or less, you'll never forget the sensation of the entire atmo-sphere around you bending and breaking like glass, a sound scratched into your bones.

You'll find places littered with brass flowers of 50 mm shells. It's not a total mess, but the human mark is felt. Shiny things glint in the distance.

Avoid them. If fighter pilots spot you out walking, they may decide to come PRECEDING PANEL: Rugged volcanic formations and sparse desert vegetation absorb the last light of sunset in the eastern portion of the Barry M. Goldwater Range.

The land is the mountains, which have water in their crevices, rainfall tinajas lasting for months.

The sea is the dry washes, saguaros and ocotillos sprung like bristles, a day or two's crossing by foot.

A tinaja, a surface pocket where water collects in the rock, mirrors a steep canyon wall lit by morning sun in the rugged mountains of the range's western section.

Up behind you at the speed of sound. I went for nameless punks of rock and ridges, cresting one, cresting another. I looked for flares on parachutes at night, signs of ground maneuvers 10 or 15 miles away, and headed the other direction. They have more restrictions these days, I hear. I wouldn't have wanted to be told where to go. That wasn't the point. You think like a mariner in this desert. The land is the mountains, which have water in their crevices, rainfall tinajas lasting for months. The sea is the dry washes, saguaros and ocotillos sprung like bristles, a day or two's crossing by foot. The amount of live ordnance on the range, half-buried objects with wires or warheads lost underfoot, is unknown and unmapped. I'd err on the side of caution and not go. At craters where it looks like planes crashed with incredible speed, nothing but drops of fused metal and rivets left in the dust, walk around them. Do not - no matter how long you've been traveling alone, your mind rolling off into the ether - come up to the tail fin of what looks like a crashed drone, but could be an unexploded missile, and shake it to see if it explodes. I haven't been down to the Goldwater Range in a while. I'm told the area has changed. Priuses are driving the Camino del Diablo, where I'd get my truck half-bogged down in sand and have to dig it out. The Border Patrol has stepped up: I run into them in ranges north of Interstate 8. Best to remember the Goldwater Range as it was and not go out there.