TUCSON — Cousins Tanisha Tucker Lohse and Maria Francisco set off from their desert camp around dawn on most early summer days, in search of ripe fruit from the towering saguaro cactus, an icon of the Southwest that is crucial to the Tohono O’odham Nation’s spirituality.
One plucks the small, thorn-covered fruits called bahidaj with a 10-foot-long stick made with a saguaro rib as the other catches them in a bucket. The harvest ritual is sacred to the O’odham, who have lived for thousands of years in what are now U.S.-Mexico borderlands, and it’s enjoying a renaissance as many seek to protect their traditional way of life.