BTW, I forgot to add that Sycamore, Pina Blanca, Madera, Garden and Sawmill Canyon's especially are also well known for all the migratory species of lepidoptera they get from the south (species that don't reside in the US). Lots of Mexican species, but also species from Central and South America have made it to them.

I've spent many days and nights in all of these places over the years, often 1-2 weeks at a time. They were mostly a blacklight all night and do field collecting all day affair with sleep when you get home. So I really know the areas species, etc and can help if anyone wants to visit any of them.

L.

Oh, now I really have to win the lottery! Forget travelling the world. I could just spend my life exploring the hidden treasures of the US. Thanks Larry, I will put it on my list of "if I have money someday".

I have been thinking about how you mention 100's of butterflies. I am lucky to see five at a time this year in Ohio. I was reading a biography of Mark Twain that talked about the frontier edge of Mississippi. It talked about how the trails were so loaded with wild berries they ran red when the horses hooves crushed them. I want to find some old naturalists journals and read about what they experienced before we wiped everything out. I can only imagine what they saw. People have gotten so used to seeing a lack of nature, I want to remind them in my talks of what they lost. Can you imagine what the Monarchs migration must have been like? Or clouds of cloudless sulphurs? Sigh...
-Elisabeth

Elisabeth, I get dreamy whenever I read William Bartram - Travels and Other Writings. It's published by Literary Classics of the United States, one of those blue books that you've undoubtedly seen before. Bartram traveled the Southeastern U.S., so it was of particular interest to me - he discussed and drew pictures, which are in the book, of much of the native wildlife, wildflowers, trees, shrubs, etc., and he discussed the native Americans at great length. He took these travels about the time of the Revolutionary War, so much of the western part of the territory he traveled was still Indian territory.
There were still ivory-billed woodpeckers, Carolina parakeets, and passenger pigeons back then - it makes me sick, too, that we've lost so many of these treasures. I can't imagine having to live in a big city - to me, that would be h--l on earth!
Larry, I'd love to see the butterflies in the area you mentioned, but the temps sound unbearable - I don't know how adult butterflies and their larvae could stand it, but obviously they can.
Sherry

Ladies,

Luckily I learned at a young age to pay myself first and did so my entire life.

The bugs are still there in high numbers in some places just like 100 years ago, but with a few exceptions you have to do some work to get to them now. The harder they are to get to (and so the least influenced by mankind) the better generally. Why I climbed so many very tall mountains (to 18,000') and hiked miles for weeks into so many wilderness areas.

As for the desert temps, yes it can be real serious. But it is also doable with some preparation and common sense when there. We are the real wimps of the natural world, not the leps.

Growing up on a working ranch had me head over heels into what made all living things tick from a very early age. But there were other influences as well, including many great writings. A watcher at the Pond (Franklin Russell) is one that got to me for sure many times in my pre teens, so was the adventures and writings of John Wesley Powell during his explorations and expeditions in the Rockies and down the Green and Colorado rivers where I lived. But I still have my first editions of what was probably the most influential to me from the late 50's on, and what took me head on into Marine Biology. Rachel Carson's four books naturally. I had only been to the ocean a couple of times on family vacations before I moved to California right after high school graduation, but had read and reread her four books dozens of times during around a ten year period before then. While about all natural things and what man is doing to them the marine flora and fauna parts simply captivated me as new and unexplored species I just had to get my hands on. So I did. :)

Larry