AN UNLIKELY MARRIAGE IN THE ALTAR VALLEY

FORGIVE, FOR A MOMENT, A BIT OF PREACHINESS. But in our endless quest to claim the high ground, we frequently forsake the common ground. Maybe that's why I'm so impressed as I observe the Altar Valley Conservation Alliance's annual community meeting.

Don't know where the Altar Valley is? You're hardly alone. It's 20 miles southwest of Tucson, but in terms of modernity, it might as well be a century away. With 7,730-foot Baboquivari Peak towering along its western edge, the valley's watershed covers about 1,000 square miles as it stretches from State Route 86 to the Mexican border. If not pristine, it's authentic, a true Arizona landscape of working cattle ranches, mesquite stands and desert grasslands. It's a place wild enough for herds of Sonoran pronghorns and the occasional curious jaguar.

And, for the record, it's pronounced all-TAR, not ALL-ter.

As for the alliance, it was formed in 1995 to, among other goals, conserve the valley for future generations, bring people together and preserve this historic working landscape's way of life.

Mary Miller, the alliance's former executive director and a current member of the board of directors, says she often uses Tucson's Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum as a way to explain the Altar Valley to those unfamiliar with the area. She says, for example, that many of the museum's animals are native to the valley, while the natural dynamics that the museum interprets for visitors play out there every day not in a pure wilderness, but in a place where people live and work. Those residents help watch over, manage and steward this landscape while doing the equally hard work of earning a living as ranchers.

“There really aren't many places anywhere that are truly free of the touch of people,” says Miller, whose background is in natural resource management and environmental consulting. “We're trying to find ways to combine what we need to do as ranchers with what nature needs. Parks and public entities cannot own and manage everything that has to be cared for. Working landscapes are about those places where human work and economy can coexist in a positive way with wild spaces.” The community meeting is happening on King's Anvil Ranch, owned by Joe King's family; Joe's wife, Sarah, is the alliance's current executive director. Surrounded by a mesquite retaque fence, the main ranch compound is about a quarter-mile off the highway. Beneath an overhang where the Kings usually park trucks, the 55 participants are gathered around tables to hear presentations that will extend into the afternoon.

I'm standing in the shade of a tamarisk when Peggy, the Kings' ranch dog they adopted after she was found wandering along Old Nogales Highway, sidles up next to me. She kicks some dust onto my pants while digging into the dirt to create a comfortable bed on the cool soil just below the surface.

The participants run the gamut: locals, representatives of the Tohono O'odham Nation, members of the U.S. Border Patrol, University of Arizona researchers and an assortment of people from federal, state and county environmental and natural resource agencies. There are ranchers wearing straw cowboy hats and Wranglers, along with wildlife biologists in REI and Patagonia - a work wear kumbaya.

If not exactly the lion lying down with the lamb - or, in the case of the Altar Valley, the jaguar with the calf - this alliance among ranching, conservation and government interests would have been difficult to imagine not that long ago.

UA research anthropologist and professor emeritus Thomas Sheridan, an alliance board member, says the organization is part of a growing national effort known as the “collaborative conservation” movement. One inspiration was the Malpai Borderlands Group, founded in 1994 to protect the region where Southeastern Arizona and Southwestern New Mexico come together with Mexico. Sheridan moved to the Altar Valley in 1982 and watched as the relationship between the ranching and environmental communities evolved over the years. He says ranchers began to reach out to other interest groups to see if and where they could identify areas of agreement. Malpai rancher Bill McDonald had dubbed that precarious space “the radical center.” “In my opinion, the Altar Valley alliance has been incredibly successful,” says Sheridan, whose books include Arizona: A History and Stitching the West Back Together: Conservation of Working Landscapes. “Especially in

and surrounding mountains. In 1908, he bought the site of today's main ranch compound, which was owned by a blacksmith - giving King's Anvil Ranch its name.

Joe comes in, and the Kings show me family pictures Sarah scanned from an old family album. The ranch's history and the King family's lore are inseparable, and as Joe starts telling the story of an aunt (actually his father's cousin), Sarah suddenly interrupts."

It's raining!" she declares. "Kind of hard raining. Weird. Sorry, but that's what happens around here when it rains. We get totally derailed. Carry on with your story, Joe."

Joe resumes: "My aunt was 8 years old and told her dad, 'I am going to ride with the cowboys today. I'm not going to school. I'm done.' This old rancher looks at her and says, 'Little girls wear dresses!' But she put on a pair of pants and rode roundup that day. As far as feminism goes, that's 1940 Arizona! Some 8-year-old girl telling off her father and saying, 'This is what's going to happen."

We head out for a walk to Altar Wash and come upon a cow that's slowly recovering after it injured its leg delivering a calf that didn't survive. For a time, the cow couldn't even stand up, but the Kings are encouraged by its progress. "She stood more quickly than I ever anticipated," Joe says as the cow, sporting ear tag 353, looks at us with curious eyes. "She had no control over her back right leg. I couldn't tell if it was knocked out of joint or broken. Now she's walking with it, even though she's got a weak fetlock."

delivering a calf that didn't survive. For a time, the cow couldn't even stand up, but the Kings are encouraged by its progress. "She stood more quickly than I ever anticipated," Joe says as the cow, sporting ear tag 353, looks at us with curious eyes. "She had no control over her back right leg. I couldn't tell if it was knocked out of joint or broken. Now she's walking with it, even though she's got a weak fetlock."

"She bobbles every once in a while, but for a time, there was no improvement," Sarah adds. "Even if it's not great, but you're seeing an improvement, then that's OK. But she was really packing that thing around."

We reach the deeply cut wash, and the scale of the Altar Valley is almost overwhelming - a big country made brooding by the dark clouds massed over the Quinlan and Baboquivari mountains.

"People can have the feeling that when they first look at the desert, it's kind of gray-green and not very inter -esting," Miller says. "But the more they see it and know it and learn about it, the more hooked they become. The desert becomes a place they return to. The spaciousness and wildness are rejuvenating. It's empty, but full."

• For more information about the Altar Valley Conservation Alliance, visit altarvalleyconservation.org. AH