The leader of the pack on Wednesday morning is Ed Harshbarger, self-described as "one of the only real cowboys in Tombstone," who periodically interrupts the silence with one of his stories of his experiences living in a cowboy town.

Ed's friend, a fellow cowboy who calls himself "Wyoming" is along for the ride and to fill in the blanks in Ed's stories. And with Ed, there are always blanks.

The ride begins with the tough task of getting up onto the horse, which Ed makes appear as routine as tying shoelaces. To newcomers, however, it's not quite that simple.

The San Pedro River's shield of retirees are known as the Friends of the San Pedro, a local non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and protection of the river.

On their free Mondays from January to July, Lewis and Leskiw lead bird-watching tours along the San Pedro River. Lewis, the founder of the tours, opens part of his land to lead the walk along the river where the public can take in the natural scenery and look for bird rarities passing through Southeastern Arizona. Leskiw is a writer and environmentalist.

During these morning walks, the two keep track of each bird they encounter to use in their writings. The woods along the river appear peaceful and uninhabited. But walk a little farther toward the tree–lined banks and the sounds of birdcalls and find a treasure trove of different bird species. The area is a temporary home to at least a half-million birds throughout the year as they embark on their migratory patterns.

Since the river flows from north to south, it is a perfect migration corridor, with an abundance of food, water and shelter, Lewis said.

A few minutes of walking along the path, a Great Horned Owl appears sitting within the treetops across the bank waiting for potential prey. The magnified view through the binoculars revealed its menacing yellow eyes and horned ears.

"It's like looking into the eyes of a criminal," Lewis said. According to Lewis, these particular owls are silent flyers that attack almost everything in sight.

As the tour continued and the temperature warmed, bird sightings became more frequent. Walking through the wooded area, Lewis and Leskiw tuned into the trill of the woodpecker, the beeping of the white-breasted nuthatch, the gobble of the wild turkey and the whiny mimicking of the starling.

"A lot of the birding you do is by ear," Lewis said. While many times you will not see the bird, you will hear its calls; to spot a bird, just listen and look, he said.

The best season for a birdwatcher in this area is spring when numerous types of birds come through, said Leskiw.

The area attracts many different breeds, making it an appealing place for bird watchers. Its trees border the river and mimic deciduous trees found mostly on the East Coast and therefore attract unusual birds that should normally be on the gulf coast, Leskiw said.

The land, focused by the San Pedro River area, was given the highest funding priority in the Forest Legacy Program in the 2010 federal budget.

At the same time every day Scott Parkinson walks out of his office at the San Pedro & Southwestern Railroad with an orange construction flag in an effort to keep people from running into his train when it’s crossing the road.

He walks on the sharp chunks of grey roadbed ballast to a railroad crossing just a few hundred feet away from his office. The crossing has those old white wooden railroad signs from back in the day. Next to them are modern stop signs planted near the roadway with metal posts.

“I have to help my guys out. People tend to drive past our stops signs at the railroad crossing,” said Parkinson, who is the general manager for the railroad.  “We don’t have a flashing crossing and the stop signs don’t seem to help.”

The San Pedro & Southwestern Railroad — located at 796 E. Country Club Drive in Benson — has been serving local businesses in Benson for decades, but it used to stretch those iron rails all the way to the Mexico border town of Douglas. Today the railroad has seven and a half miles of track that feed their main customer, Apache Nitrogen Products in Benson, Parkinson said. 

Purple Heart recipient Bruce Baze, 23, is one of many men and women who will be acknowledged Dec. 12 and 13 during Tombstone’s first-ever, Wild West Days.

The two-day event sponsored by the Wild West Detachment Marine Corps League of Tombstone will include street entertainment, a canteen dance, parade and military displays.

The event will salute the men and women of the armed forces and will raise money to be donated to the United Services Organization.

If you were looking up at 2 a.m. Tuesday, you might have wondered if the sky was falling. Turns out it was.

As the Earth passed through a debris field left behind long ago by the Tempel-Tuttle comet, those of us on the ground were treated to a late-night showing of the Leonid meteors, so named because their place of origin appears to be the constellation Leo the Lion. Fragments that slipped off as the sun melted the frozen comet fell into the Earth’s atmosphere streaking white and green across the moonless sky.

Of course it’s likely that you weren’t standing in the cold with your head cocked to the east, hours before sunrise, but Morg Staley most certainly was—and he just might be willing to tell you about it.

Tall black socks, baseball caps, tight jeans, cargo shorts, embroidered hoodies, skate shoes and flip flops — the local kids in Tombstone are a stark comparison to the boots with spurs, trench coats, lace garters, leather chaps and cowboy hats donned by actors up and down Allen Street.

One hundred and twenty-eight years have come and gone since the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, but Tombstone’s lifeline clings to a rugged past that draws thousands of tourists and guns to the town every year.

Catering to tourism and revenue, Tombstone’s kids are left in the dust. In a world where grown men dress up and gunfights are daily, youngsters in the town are searching for their place in the modern-1880s.

It’s a gathering that’s been happening for more than 30 years in the Dragoon Mountains. It’s a messy tradition, but it’s all in the spirit of climbing in the Southwest.

The bi-annual Beanfest, happened on Nov. 7 and has been gathering thrill-seeking outdoor adventurists since the 1980s. The event is one of the ways rock climbers in Southern Arizona meet up for one weekend in the fall and one weekend in the spring for outdoor adventure, climbing, food and games.

It’s difficult to defend one’s actions when the whole town is against them. But at the end of the day when no one is around to disclose the truth, a video camera can quickly become an ally.

Verbal and physical scuffles on the street between Tombstone businessmen and the justice-providing lawmen are all ingredients for a tasty recipe of amateur YouTube filmmakers with scandalous evidence.

In less than a year, several videos have been posted on the popular social networking site involving the drama that continuously occurs between Marshal Larry Talvy and Mike Carrafa, the owner of Six Gun City Bar and Restaurant.