It was a quiet time in the camp. The mountain ranges 30 miles to the south were pale grey ridges. An occasional bird fluttered high over our heads. Juanita's dog, resting with one eye open, shifted his position under the nearest tree. Nothing else moved. For a while, we just sat and listened.

Finally, we asked Juanita what she was cooking. It was syrup, she said, and she rose to go over to the kettle to get us a taste in a ladle. She brought it back, and in the other hand held a small cloth flour sack. It had sticks hemmed to the top edges of the opening to form handles. "A strainer," she told us, and made the motions for dipping it into an enormous cauldron.

"I am going to make jam," she added, "next week." She had also sent home to her village a large and a small box of fruit. These would be dried and kept through the year, and prepared when the stores of cooked fruit were depleted.

The last few buckets of fruit she and her son, Warren, would pick this season would be set aside for wine for the August rain dance. Each family contributed its share to the communal kettle.

The wine, made from saguaro fruit syrup by the men of the village, takes two days and two nights to ferment. "It is very strong," she told us.