This long and broad valley where the Salt River and Tonto creek meet to form Roosevelt Lake is framed by some of the most daunting mountain ranges you can imagine. The Superstitions to the southeast and the Sierra Anchos and White Mountains to the northeast, with the Mogollon Rim looming due north, I have not yet seen more rugged, seemingly impossible ranges to cross. You can easily understand, once you are here in the mountains and the valley, how difficult it could be try to oust the local tribals, whether they be Salado Pueblos or Apaches. Knowing the mountains, the hidden springs that are more numerous than you might imagine, and the hidden crags and crevices could go a long way toward making this area not only defensible, but formidable.
One of our joys in spending so much time here is getting in Tank, our Jeep, and running back up the mountain roads until you either pop out someplace you can actually turn around or you just run out of runnable road. Today, the 10th of February, we did just that. We ventured up one of the Forest Service roads until it ended. Sometimes we were running in dry creek beds or washes, and sometimes we were climbing 25+degree boulder strewn jeep trails. It was perhaps an 8 to 10 mile trip one way but it took us a good hour to get to our destination...the ranch of Peter Bigfoot, better known as Reevis Mountain School of Self-Reliance.
Peter Bigfoot is a legend here among the locals. He came here in 1972-ish and somehow gained possession of a parcel of land that is magical if not downright ethereal. Peter Bigfoot is best known for his July 1976 solo trek across the Sonoran Desert. He brought no food or water and relied strictly on what he could forage. (sounds very Apache to me) 85 miles and 15 days later he reached his goal. The goal was transformational for him. He then formed the school that we drove to today.
Peter is the master craftsman behind the “education’ he entrusts to his disciples and students. Wilderness self-reliant healing, oriental acupressure, herbal pharmacology, wild, edible, medicinal and useful plants, off-grid homestead living, and stone masonry. Individuals come from all over the world to learn from Peter, to experience truly wild and wilderness living, and to totally, and I mean totally, get away from civilization.
When you gaze at the mountains from 188 AZ highway you are impressed with their beauty. When you get out and hike or four-wheel into them, you are impressed with the diversity of plant life, the absolute ruggedness of the range, and the fact that there is water up here. This place is almost always over 100 degrees hot during the June, July, and August months. How in the hell do these springs stay flowing year round? It’s beyond me, but they do. And, when it rains, these arroyos and dry washes erupt with flash floods. The evidence is everywhere. Last year they had severe wild fires up here and the vegetation is coming back. However, you see the scarred banks of the washes. You see old cattle pens crumpled and destroyed laying wasted among cottonwoods stream side. With the vegetation gone, the storms of December 2019 swept to waste what the fire didn’t get to. Still, the desert is coming back and it’s fabulous to see. California Poppies, richly golden against the Suguaros, are blooming already.
We drove up the washes and hills trying not to bottom out in our Jeep. We climbed from roughly 2400 feet of altitude to around 3600 feet of altitude. Hoodoos began to rise at our side as we drove on. Small canyons began to appear as we reached a little creek that was flowing fresh and pure from springs up the mountainside. On some of the surrounding hilltops the Salado left their ruins of their pueblos, perched so that they could signal other pueblos down the valley if intruders appeared. We splashed through the creek back and forth several times on our drive. Only a few inches deep in most places, it flowed steadily down from the craggy mountains until it finally disappears into the aquifer below the valley leaving the stream bed dry down below us.
Finally, the road ends and a spur of the Arizona Trail begins. This spur leads right past Peter Bigfoot’s compound. We turn right and begin to walk up a muddy path. The path is now part of the creek because during the flash flood of December the creek was altered as debris created a new bank that pushed the creek over to the path, the point of least resistance. Lush vegetation line the path and the steep valley wall we walking through. This is a little slice of Eden here in the desolate Superstitions. Sycamore, perhaps a half dozen or so, tower overhead. Giant Cottonwoods, ancient sentinels who have seen hundreds of years of history, appear to guard the fertile little valley. Here, a Walnut tree, there a Pomegranate tree, it’s as if we have been transported to another part of the country. As we walk on we notice a yurt come into view. Then, we see evidence of a burned out yurt, a victim of the wild fire. Soon enough, we are flush into Peter’s paradise. Not knowing what to expect really, we find a most amazing place.
This is not a compound of futuristic-looking buildings and neat and trim farmyards. This place is a scatter shot collection of life and subsistence. It’s more tribal than European in appearance and organization, which is probably why it works so well. A catch-dam backs up the creek into a small pond for water. Solar panels lie on most rooftops and and various outposts in the area. Two small windmills catch energy from the nearly constant cool breeze flowing through the canyon and down from the rocky peaks. Yurts and outhouses, efficiently yet attractively built, are tucked into the hillsides here and there. A very large garden is neatly labeled with every edible plant...effusive, bushy, green, overflowing, and abundant. Large chickens run amok everywhere. Turkeys cluck their warnings at us. Most of the trees are labeled with a number. I guess that they are numbered for the school so as to teach students about the variety of life-sustaining plants Peter has growing here. Everything here seems to have purpose and everything here seems to rely on everything else for its livelihood. Such is the divine reasoning for diversity I ponder.
Peter brings troubled youth and teenagers up here to teach them skills, give them release for their abundant energy, and inspire them to greater good. He puts them to work on various projects around the compound. Principally, he has them building a rock house meeting hall. It is half finished at this point. It’s going to be one grand hall when it’s done, though. We call out to Peter to see if he is about the area and a lone young woman answers appearing from the main cabin. Her name is Elicia (sp?) and she is from Germany. She’s about 20 years old, just two years out of high school. Peter is gone she tells us. He is visiting someone until he returns a few days from now. Elicia tells us she is here to get an education she cannot get in college. She hands us a little pamphlet that details the various classes available here with their schedules. Trusting and pleasant, she tells us go ahead and walk around the place if we want at which point she turns to shelling pecans under the shade of a eucalyptus tree.
I wish Peter had been there. I want to meet this man. His commitment to living naturally is inspiring. His compound equally so in all its funky utilitarianism. We’ll return. We’re determined to meet this man amidst his little kingdom here in the Superstitions.
As the sun scrapes the peaks to the west of us we need to start back down the mountain so we say so long to the little Eden. We pick our way back down the road towards Windy Hill, our campground below. Dusty tells us of a Salado site up here that I want to see if possible. So, we take a side road up to a ridge that is even more challenging than the main road. When we arrive a the top of a little peak we are greeted with a magnificent view of the entire valley beneath us. The site is not here, but the view and exhilaration more than compensate. It’s getting too late for us to search any more for the village site, but we will return here. It’s been a very good day.