PARADISE �” Here on the east side of the Chiricahua Mountains, about 50 miles north of Mexico, smoke rose lazily from the Horseshoe Fire in June.

Photo by Dick Kamp Turkey Creek in Paradise, a migrant highway.

Chiricahua residents blamed the fire on illegal immigrants. The U.S. Forest Service hasn’t found a culprit.

But the fire is only another cause for locals’ concern over intruders into their wooded Paradise �” or Portal or Whitetail Canyon.

Border Patrol agents confirm that Horseshoe Canyon has been a staging area for migrants and narcotics dealers. They probably started the fire, agents assume. At least three people say someone listening to a scanner heard a comment in Spanish that “we started the fire,” but nobody can confirm who heard it or provide a motive other than carelessness.

The nearby South Fork Fire, which burned several hundred acres during late spring, was declared “human-caused” and was sparked immediately after the Border Patrol broke up an encampment of suspected drug-carrying “mules.”

Other fires since 2007 �” in Pothole Canyon, Buckhorn Saddle, Sulphur Draw and the Mayday fire �” were “human-caused,” said Heidi Schewel, spokeswoman for Coronado National Forest. Locals blame those blazes on drug-runners.

“The drug-runners watch from high up on the ridges with infrared night goggles to see where the Border Patrol is,” says Paradise resident Jackie Lewis, a volunteer firefighter who owns George Walker House Bed and Breakfast. “They have radio communications, and they’re well-equipped. If a fire starts while the narcos move their cargo, why should they care?”

Full disclosure

Someone burgled my cabin in Paradise in late April, stealing food, sleeping bags, a stove and lanterns. After that incident, I not only installed secure window covers, but also began to take notes on my part-time neighbors’ comments regarding illegal immigrants and drugs within their ’hood in the wild, beautiful mountains.

I lived in Paradise 25 years ago with my young children. Today, I like my young and old children to be able to take refuge there.

From the mid-1970s to early 1990s, I lived mostly in Bisbee Junction, about three miles from the border. Migrants’ daily movement past our front door was joined in the early ’90s by passage of violent drug thugs, who pistol-whipped older people. They were believed to be “madrinas” �” the mafia “godmothers” who until 1992 were paid by the Mexican government for law enforcement. It was a frightening time, especially for people accustomed to leaving their doors unlocked �” in spite of or because of the cross-border traffic.

But my neighbors aren’t as affected as ranchers farther south. Border ranchers saw the March murder of rancher Rob Krentz as a cry to arms, or at least to better self-defense. Those ranchers I’ve known over the past 30 years avoided drug traffickers by establishing zones they didn’t use near their fences.

My Chiricahua neighbors moved to this beautiful sky-island range, never dreaming it would become the northern tip of drug battles 50 miles from the border. The climate is moderate, and the terrain is so rugged that mules are preferable to horses. Trees and sometimes water are part of the landscape, which was home to the Chiricahua Apache. These mountains have more diverse birds than anywhere but San Padre Island, Texas. But now they have more problems than many other places, too.

Other races

Jerry Kammer, who writes for the conservative Center for Immigration Reform, recently returned from a tour of border ranches with an odd image from historian David Roberts regarding an 1871 meeting between Chief Cochise and Gen. Gordon Granger.

As he rejected a proposed move to a reservation in Tularosa, N.M., Cochise said: “When I was young, I walked all over this country, east and west, and saw no other people than the Apaches. After many summers, I walked again and found another race of people had come to take it.”

That ‘other race’ of Cochise’s largely white usurpers, my neighbors, feel some version of that same alien image that he did over their presence 140 years ago. Beyond their anger, they voice more than media sound-bites. They share the frustration, fear and outrage of dealing with vicious Mexican drug cartels and night goggles, rather than permanent neighbors: mountain lions, coatimundi and bear.

Wayne Morrow, nearly 80, is an ex-lawman and mining engineer whose father moved to Paradise as a child in 1903, not long after the Chiricahua Apache left.

“Before we have immigration reform, you need to secure the border �” all 2,000 miles �” and not by putting up fences that only ever worked minimally,” says Morrow, my neighbor. “Like the Gulf disaster, first you plug the leak, then you go after British Petroleum.

“We have a fairly steady amount of traffic through Paradise, but generally there are little problems with illegal migrants. They do go through here; I ran into 20 going through my property dressed in black with packs on. I told the Border Patrol about 10 minutes later. They (agents) got here two hours later, and the guy says he needs backup, and Lordsburg (N.M.) tells him it’s out of their jurisdiction.

“There’s always been migrants running through here,” Morrow continues, “but the drug trade is serious and violent, and I always bring up legalization of pot. You’d stop 95 percent of the traffic; a lot of people are making too much money on our side of the line and especially on their side of the line. It’s absurd not to legalize pot, and as a health hazard it certainly is no worse than cigarettes. And we could tax it.

“You have to sell people on both enforcement and legalization. I don’t think the average person has any say, and if Dems are kicked out of the White House and Congress and Republicans get in, it won’t make a damn bit of difference. I think quite a bit of (Arizona Gov.) Jan Brewer; she’s no dummy. Whether (SB 1070) does any good or not, it basically has brought immigration to the forefront.

“Legal immigration is a must,” Morrow says. “We should go on developing a program. Meantime, I disagree with giving amnesty to illegal citizens, and we’re not talking about just Mexicans. We have a hell of a lot of people from every country, and not all have our good intentions at heart. My idea would be put a good paved highway on the border, restricted to law enforcement where practical, and put outposts, checkpoints and garrisons and 20,000 Border Patrol �” if needed �” on the line and make sure nobody is in the country illegally.

“Then we need old veterans on horseback going after these drug runners, and not a bunch of kids in trucks.

“People who are given permits to legally be in the country for any reason and who could rightfully apply to be citizens should have the chance to be citizens,” Morrow opines. “There’s hardly an old family on this border who doesn’t have a lot of ancestors from Mexico, including the Morrow family. My mother-in-law was born in old Mexico.

“I can remember Douglas as a boy, and there were signs on the highway saying, ‘Chinaman don’t let the sun go down on you in this town.’ We don’t want that type of thinking today any more than we did then,” Morrow says. “In Mexico and elsewhere, they have a miserable situation in their country.”

‘Look out for burlap’

Toward sunset, I follow neighbor Harold Bradford along a trail south toward Silver Peak, through arroyos, small springs, long-abandoned homesteads and a 110-year-old sawmill.

Bradford saw new footprints a week or so ago, but they’re covered now by tire tracks from four-wheel-drive trucks. About a half-mile in, we find Mexican canned good labels �” bleached and at least months old.

The route would lead migrants to Turkey Creek Road just above Paradise, where they could walk through the tiny town perhaps two miles to Morrow’s driveway or another area for pickup. During the spring, a couple of residents said they saw a few people regularly “walking down the main street” at sunset. Others saw nothing but Border Patrol agents.

As the years have passed, residents of Pardise say they have begun seeing more evidence of the drug smuggling. Hear what these residents have to say next week in the Douglas Dispatch.

Dick Kamp is an award-winning journalist who lives in Santa Fe and has reported on the environment, water and border issues since 1983.