On a New Year's day hike to the June Wash/Sandstone Cyn divide we were eating our lunches at the top of the divide when we noticed a blob of green off to the west in an otherwise uniform desert grayish-green landscape. A look with binoculars identified it as an ironwood tree on the rocky bajada extending downward from the base of Whale Peak. It was the only tree of any kind visible to us in miles of desert terrain. There are several ironwoods down in June Wash but none up there, on the arid bajada, save for this lone stalwart. Possibly the toughest tree in Anza-Borrego.

If you know precisely where to look you can spot this little dark dot from Canebrake or on a Google Earth photo.

Fast forward to today, Tuesday, 01/29/08. The morning dawned sunny, the forecast was for calm wind, and I'm just whacky enough to want to hike 3 1/2 miles of steep, rocky/sandy, wash and cross the bajada, to see and touch that tree. The day was one of those absolutely perfect and beautiful desert days, that I hate to see end with a sunset.

Following a branch of upper June wash got me to within sight of the tree and then a short hike across the bajada. The bajada there is a desert garden of ocotillo so numerous you have to pick your way between them, and of course the spaces between them are filled with many barrels, hedgehogs, and two varieties of cholla cactus, as well as numerous small bushes. The area looks to be more rock than soil and is a steep gradient that would quickly shed rain water. To see a lone tree there is absolutely amazing. I'll not complain again about watching rain fall along the base of Whale Peak, while Canebrake gets nothing. I know now what that rain is nurturing.

I actually thought I might be the first person to visit this tree since the last Indian may have ventured up here to gather its seed for food (they taste like raw green peas). It was not as big as we had thought when we viewed it from the June/Sandstone Divide. It is between 10 and 12 feet high, about the same as the smaller of the two ironwoods in my front yard in Canebrake. Considering the growing conditions, it is probably well over 100 years old.

Standing at the tree and looking out at Canebrake in the far distance, and 1000 feet below, I thought, this tree is like a sentinel overlooking Canebrake. Our twinkling lights and the sky full of stars would be the only thing visible here at night. Therefore, I came up with my personal name for this tree: The Sentinel Ironwood.

There was what might be a large animal bed beside the tree. It may have just been old dead grass that the weather had flattened but it could also have been the lion whose track we had seen on our New Year's hike, about two miles down the wash. A big horn sheep would not have bedded down here because they sleep in wide open places with good visibility in all directions. Maybe the mountain lion had found the only shade within miles and spent a warm afternoon here, snoozing and dreaming of a tasty mutton dinner that night.

As I turned to leave the tree I thought I probably won't be back here again - but then knowing me, I probably will be back.

When I got back to my truck, parked along side the road that leads into "False June Wash", I could just barely make out that tiny dark dot, in the late afternoon sun, on the bajada below Whale Peak. I had a cold beer in the truck so I drank a toast to the lone ironwood - the Sentinel Ironwood - toughest tree in Anza-Borrego.

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