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  • Sonoran Adventure:A 1981 Journey
  • Bernard L. Fontana (bio)

Reading one’s field diary that is more than thirty years old is inevitably a great source of embarrassment.

This journal of a three-day trip, one that was neither my first nor last adventure in the same area, is a reminder of how events become conflated and exaggerated in memory with each telling. I have entertained friends with unintentionally embroidered stories about the wonders of this part of northern Sonora on many occasions. Even now I am (successfully) fighting the temptation to add a few recollections absent from the version seen below, one that was typed originally between February 12 and 13 and on February 15, 1982, itself an elaboration of a handwritten text compiled on May 3–4, 1981 from memory and from sketchy notes taken on the trip several days earlier.

This final account, that of February 1982, includes input from recall of the trip by traveling companion Father Kieran McCarty. It also enjoys the advantage of perusal of photographs taken on the trip but not yet developed when the handwritten manuscript was created. Our fellow traveler, Nat Owings, died in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1984 at the age of 81, and he was not consulted, although he received a copy of the manuscript and accompanying photographs before he died.

The Sonora River Valley, the principal focus of this diary, was perhaps first brought to the widespread attention of English readers by Paul Roca’s 1967 volume Paths of the Padres through Sonora: An Illustrated History & Guide to Its Spanish Churches (Tucson: Arizona Pioneers’ Historical Society). The Spanish-period missions of the Sonora River Valley are prominently featured in this book, which also describes both large and small settlements where the churches were, and are, located, with information on road conditions, accommodations, and the people for whom these places are home. [End Page 183]

Father Kieran McCarty, or “Kiro,” died in Tucson in December 2008 at the age of 83, still at home in his beloved Sonoran Desert.

The field diary refers briefly to conservationist Margaret Owings, Nat Owings’s wife. She and their daughter were heavily involved in efforts to preserve the balance of sea life on the California coast, especially the sea otters being threatened by overfishing of abalones on which otters depend for their survival. The Owings lived in a house, Sea Bird, overlooking the pounding surf at Big Sur, California. Their campaign was a successful one, and sea otter numbers rebounded.

In a very small way, the 1982 account published here is a further contribution to our understanding of this part of the Mexican state of Sonora, a snapshot in time to add to a continuum that has since brought new roads; paved highways; hotel and bed-and-breakfast accommodations with Wi-Fi; the legalization (with proper permits) of locally produced bacanora, a mescal distilled from agave plants; and other modern amenities. These are now touted on worldwide websites, in newspaper travel sections, and in magazines. One can only wonder what the next thirty years will bring.

Field Diary

April 28, 1981 (Tuesday)

Warm, clear morning. Leave home at 7710 S. Mission Road, Tucson, Arizona, at 8:15 a.m. in our 1978 Volkswagen van. Nathaniel Alexander Owings, the “Owings” in the architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, is a passenger. He flew into Tucson the day before and has spent the night with us in our home.

We drive to Mission San Xavier del Bac to pick up Father Kieran R. McCarty, O.F.M., who is a friend and a Spanish-speaking priest who will accompany us on the trip to Sonora.

Father Kieran is in the mission’s Bonaventure Oblasser Library when we arrive. Nat has a brief look at the library, and we drive from the mission down Interstate 19 toward Nogales. En route to Nogales we stop at the Food Giant grocery store in Rio Rico where we buy (Nat pays) soda pop, uncarbonated fruit drinks, a can of peanuts, and a bag of ice. [End Page 184]

We cross into Nogales, Sonora, and quickly check through customs without any problems. Kieran gives a dollar to the...

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