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Thoughts From My Journal – Sonoran Desert 2

Robin — Wed, 19 Oct 2022 17:08:32 +0000

1-28: Last day here and I took off on a trail headed west out of the campground. It crossed three sizable washes, which for me are always evocative and for desert flora are like a magnet that draws them in to make relatively dense populations that follow its path. Walking through an area where the cactus and others are relatively scattered, I enter a space of close sharing. They stand all over the wash and so feel the flood surge by, gently as it arrives and later finishes but surely quite forcefully if rainfall has been abundant or fell heavily and quickly; they stand firmly waiting for its end and sucking up moisture. I notice no signs of uprooting or debris piled up against them, which is different from what I see after flash floods in less arid climes. I remember as a child spending summers with relatives in the Davis Mountains of Texas and standing by a dry wash, no rain falling, and in the distance seeing the front of a newly formed stream heading my way. It was, and I think still is somewhat, a magical feat for rain reported fallen miles away to gather itself together for a brief journey through; before long it was almost as if nothing had happened. There’s not a lot I remember from 65 years ago but these freshets I do. So, I sat for a while in each wash and paid respects to the residents. As I walked between them, the transit from abundance to scarcity allowed details to stand out. Mistletoe appears to enjoy the heat, growing prolifically on some afflicted palo verde and ironwood trees. Under a jumping cholla taller than I am I found a half dozen small pincushion cacti growing nicely in the shade along with several fallen cholla segments that had rooted and others that looked as if they were trying. I was also surprised by a fair amount of droppings at least the size of deer’s’ but I’ve never seen any in this area and believe they live in the Monument’s mountains, so I don’t know whose deposit these were. Whoever they may have come from, they were right beside a pile of dead cholla segments, so their source clearly wasn’t intimidated by the spines. In one place a pair of ironwood had made possible the growth of a little community between them: ocotillo, cholla and other cactus. Farther along I found a fifteen-foot saguaro that apparently had been windblown over and died. The tops of these guys must be different from the column below because this one’s had broken cleanly off and lay a foot beyond; yesterday I’d seen a standing saguaro who had mysteriously lost his top also.

Thoughts From My Journal – Sonoran Desert

Robin — Wed, 05 Oct 2022 13:00:50 +0000

1-27: I noted that the plants cactus seeds choose to settle next to are called nurse-plants, and I’m beginning to think this whole desert is my collective nurse biome. I just spent another couple hours on the ridge and the trails going to and from it. On the way up I felt a sensation that may have been attached to words or I may have added them automatically: “You will find it here.” I understood the meaning—I would find the Truth, or truths, here and, I add, wherever Nature is allowed to speak and I’m alert enough to hear. Truth is spiritual and mostly ineffable but in one of its aspects it speaks of my belonging, of the rightness of such places, of the oneness of basic reality. I usually sense all this when I hike these landscapes—it’s part of what draws me back—but I don’t often hear it spoken. I nodded and walked slowly on and a pair of Gambel quail trotted up the trail ahead of me, eventually diverting and moving into the brush and cactus. They probably start their family early in this desert so it may be only a couple months before I’d find them trailing a dozen chicks behind. Most of those won’t survive but enough will to carry on their presence here. At my home on the Pacific ocean they’re called California quail and we always have 2-3 families hanging around to take advantage of the bird seed and chicken feed Lynn hands out so liberally. They always murmur distinctively as they move through the bushes and as often as not are heard more than seen. They, a solitary raven or two, and several cactus wrens are about all I’ve seen of birds here; the wrens, too, are heard more than seen, although three came upon me exploring on a recent evening.

When I began hiking it was in East Texas forests about half my life ago. I spent at least the first year looking up reveling in the tall green of mostly pine but mixed with beech, oak, and a few other species, beginning my opening to Nature, enchanted by forest existence. In time, I happened to look around more closely, notice what had been background to forest exuberance, register some surprise—there seemed almost as many dead and fallen trees, but some still standing, as there were alive. Add the duff, inches thick cover of dead leaves and myriad other organic remains, and I saw that forest life was rooted in death. (I wasn’t aware at the time of all the fungi, microbes, insects, etc. that were hidden under the surface doing their parts along with what I saw.) Odd to acknowledge now but all this death stunned me initially. I’ve become more comfortable and knowledgeable about the balance and flow, the giving and taking, the mutualisms, and even come to believe in a sort of forest sentience and of communications passing between and among forest life. In short, I think I passed from being a visitor to sharing their home.

All of which is prelude to saying that in the richness of this piece of the Sonora Desert, I notice again how enwrapped with death and dying the lives of ecosystems are, not to mention the same experience for individual plants. One organ pipe cactus had 8 dead or dying arms each 8-9’ long but surrounding one healthy 4’ arm and another of 2’. The cactus to most appearances was a goner but still had the energy and the urge to dance a little longer with life. And such seemingly contradictory behavior is not uncommon among their brethren. Life and death, coming and going, side by side: what’s a person to think? Is this what aging looks like in an OPC (Organ Pipe Cactus)? I even saw one arm, long dead with all the flesh falling from the woody core, surrounded by other dead arms, and somehow it shot out an armlet, which surely can’t live long but even so… Clearly the world of flora handles this life and death business differently than the world of fauna. The OPC will die completely in time (I assume, though nothing would surprise me) but on the way there he sometimes pauses to be sure, tries on a little more life, moves on, may pause again, then expires. Speaking as a member of the faunal kingdom, it seems a strange, but somehow fitting, way to go. I have to consider that what I notice with my own aging may be more similar to this “trajectory-defined-by-pauses, confront the loss and adjust, get back on the trajectory toward the future,” process than I’d imagined. Death becomes almost anticlimactic, the real action happens with aging and dying.

And then there’s the packrat and/or their rodent brethren who make their homes at the base of OPCs. I’d like to know what goes on under the surface and what the OPC makes of the activity of burrowing midst its roots, but the visible construction is remarkable enough. Materials vary from twigs and branches stacked a couple feet high, often mixed with cholla segments (I try to imagine the labor of a small creature finding, dragging home, and placing those thorny objects on his stack without dying of puncture wounds) and often they’re almost exclusively cholla. It seems impenetrable by even the wiliest or hardest-skinned snake imaginable. In fact, how does the rat get in? A hole somewhere? But there goes the impenetrability. I’ll see if I can find out. But everything else aside, he creates an astonishing structure that is a monument to his determination to protect hearth and home and to immense skill in handling lethal building materials. I wonder how many residents there are; such a big structure, so much work assembling it—a family, village, city?

Beauty, natural abundance, floral diversity, ingenuity, fecundity within the given limits, communal solidarity—what a fine place.

Thoughts From My Journal – Desert Seeds

Robin — Mon, 03 Oct 2022 13:00:37 +0000

1-26: I have discovered who initiates the intimacy of the close relations I have spoken of. Not surprisingly, it is the cactus; out of the millions of seeds cast to their fates every year only a small minority germinate and grow. Those with the good fortune to land adjacent to a bush, tree, or even tall grass ((called nurse-plants by the desert botanists) have a clear advantage over others: shade, disguise, and enriched soil. The cost is having to share rainwater as it becomes available, but seemingly the benefits are worth it. I don’t know what the established plant gets other than close companionship, although it is known that forest trees happily share resources and show other signs of community engagement, so who knows but what the Palo Verde that shelters the Saguaro is not pleased to be of service. As I walk about I’m sure I see more healthy co-mingled pairs than unhealthy ones so there’s plenty of evidence that the union works. I know I repeat myself, but I am touched by the relationships and would wish to share in them. Honoring will have to do.

Photo by Allison Astorga on Unsplash

Thoughts From My Journal – Organ Pipe National Monument

Dr. Brestrup — Sat, 01 Oct 2022 13:00:12 +0000

*1-22: [Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument] I just returned from over an hour’s walk around a lovely trail, one I know I’ve mentioned on earlier visits, the one I always walk several times depending on how long I’m here. I recently downloaded a short essay from close to twenty years ago by an art historian named Jennifer Roberts called “The Power of Patience.” It is built around a teaching technique of hers in which students are told to pick any picture on display in an area museum (she taught at Harvard [and maybe still does] so there are plenty available) and observe it for three hours, apparently in one sitting, and to write what they learn about the painting and, presumably, about the experience of patiently being present with it for so long. I was drawn to the idea as I always am to the idea of attentiveness and patience, knowing my deficiencies while intuitively knowing what I miss because of them. When I reached the ridge at the top of the valley I had walked through I sat for a time (I didn’t check it on my watch but I presume between a quarter and a half hour) looking out at the valley to the west and the rich texture of rock and flora all around. I am going to return and extend the time. Even my brief period felt cleansing and a movement toward immersion that I want to accentuate while here. Can I sit there for three hours? What will I learn as I try? I won’t make a contest out of it, but the effort is definitely worth making for I know that depth exposure to Nature (or a person or art work or many other encounters) is what feeds soul. What I saw today reminded me how responsive to local conditions Nature can be, how determined she is to engender life fit for the circumstances, how innate beauty appears wherever she works, how she outdid herself in this part of the Sonora Desert environment. Except for a desert wren atop a saguaro the animals were quiet.
… I am here and feel at home while admiring how the plants and animals here exceed me in their fit and their resourcefulness in an environment with narrow margins. The view across the valley extends about three quarters of a mile; it’s not a deep valley and the ridge on the other side undulates north/south and rises in its middle to low mountains before descending to the Rio Grande and Mexico beyond. The same rich floral coverage all the way across, although I notice on the adjacent hillside directly to my north that the organ pipes have proliferated; the hill faces south so the organ pipes must enjoy the sun. (I read on the Monument map when I return this: “A glutton for heat and light, it [organ pipe cactus] grows on warmer slopes where it can absorb the most sun.” Seemingly, it impudently takes necessity and runs with it to these slopes, but it knows what it’s doing since, as I read further, it is also vulnerable to frosts so the summer’s high heat turns into the winter’s resilience.) I am here not to think but for perception, and to receive what it offers. The longer I sit the more I feel the spirit of the place. Within my arc are many of the primary denizens of this part of the Sonora: creosote, ocotillo, palo verde, organ pipe cactus, fishhook cactus (which is rare and very attracting), cholla, and saguaro; also limber bush and the ubiquitous unknown bush from the campground (whose identification I hope to track down tomorrow). Palo verde seems in a way out of place—green over its entire body (trunk, branch, limb, twig, seed) except where dead and turned brown. So verdant it almost seems tropical, but it can hardly be said to have leaves, which gives away its desert provenance; instead its tiny twigs, many bearing seeds, are so prolific as to give it a rich green density. And it seems especially drawn to affectionate alliances, growing up enmeshed with saguaro, organ pipe, and one I saw completely enwrapped by ocotillo. They are promiscuous, with no apparent favorites. I have to ask why this abundance. I don’t know the geologic history of this place; it has surely, over the eons, traveled around the globe on its underlying plate; still, for a long time it has been here in this latitude and became desert. It must once have been more or less barren or perhaps transitional but it surely did not have all these cacti and their associates that I so love. They evolved, and not just one hardy colonist but an array of different species with different looks but obviously drawn together in compatibility. Why do they all have thorns? Tough armor for a tough environment? Protect what you have because replacements are hard to come by? And why does the fishhook cactus turn his hooks inward—what kind of protection can that be? The diversity shows wisdom—the local plant kingdom is more hardy that way, and it also entrances people like me, not that it cares. It magnifies beauty, the sort that arises from harmonization among diverse elements: collectively and individually, it works and they glow. And I leave for the day, walking down the trail in slow composed silence.

Photo by David Sola on Unsplash

Thoughts From My Journal – Tuolumne Meadows

Dr. Brestrup — Sun, 24 Jul 2022 13:30:55 +0000

*1-16: [In Death Valley] I felt crotchety with age and ill-humor this morning when I left to hike. But I left and climbed steadily my favorite near-by mountain, which at about 500 feet is sufficiently strenuous to ascend and rewards the effort with a splendid view of the Valley. As I walked I began remembering with sadness all the places I’d been, the hikes I’d taken, the pleasures of Nature and of Annie my dog, and was well prepared to lament that they’re mostly out of reach now and feel sorry for myself. But then I switched into recollecting the satisfactions and memories and felt glad and grateful that they were there and helped shape me, nostalgia of the highest caliber. If I wore out my legs in the process, then so be it. What better use did I have for them? I somehow feel that it was then, in 1988, when I left the agency, loaded my new camper with books and gear, and came west to Yosemite that my “true” life began. Not to depreciate what came before, but the memories and the sense of what I still feel fully connected to begin when I arrived in Tuolumne Meadows. Or maybe a little earlier as I prepared to write the dissertation and spent so much time with Muir and Dillard, Krutch and Abbey, and all the rest. My being as a person had found home in the Sierra Nevada, my sense of the essential sacredness and spirituality of existence gestated, hatched, and took form: in Nature, first, and its western expression a close second. Unconsciously, I think I became a merger of Muir and Thoreau—a poor version but cast in the shadow of their ways. (Thoreau never got further west than Minnesota and that briefly and was content around Concord, but it doesn’t matter to my identification with him as he walked the land and was fulfilled by it.)

Photo by Isaac Garcia on Unsplash

Thoughts From My Journal – Stillwater II

Dr. Brestrup — Fri, 22 Jul 2022 13:30:04 +0000

11-17: Yesterday Twig and I walked what’s called the Canyon Trail (at StillWater Cove) along the creek eastward to its terminus at private property. (The distinction between a canyon and a valley is, even in dictionaries, very loose, which allows plenty of room for privately tinged definitions. I tend to think of canyons as rougher kinds of land and generally larger or deeper than valleys, so Grand Canyon fits very well whereas Grand Valley wouldn’t do. Yosemite Valley could easily have been Yosemite Canyon owing to its depth and vertical walls, but its softness [smooth granite, abundance of tall trees] makes valley fitting; habituation to the name surely plays a part as well. As often with language, I also trust my senses, particularly ear and eye, and some “elongate depressions of the earth” just feel/look/sound like a canyon or valley. This “Canyon” feels far more like a valley to me, but in deference to tradition I will grudgingly accept canyon.) I estimate the vertical drop from rim to creek as close to 200’ and most of the redwood at 100’ or so tall; it’s also a rather narrow canyon although it opens some as it moves away from its mouth into the sea, its sides clothed in downed trees, bushes, a few lower story trees, and dense fern. Our first day here the atmosphere was thick fog but yesterday had turned to bright sun. In both cases it was dark with shade along the trail and throughout. As second growth the trees are about the same height with little to obstruct the view through the forest except boles as the canyon widens. Its feel is of both mystery and foreboding, and its aura dramatically beautiful—I cannot imagine any way the space of this place could be more so, nothing could embellish, no improvement possible. I imagine the land, the trees and the ferns, happy in their life here with much comingling of roots with each other and with fungi, moist even during dry times, soil rich with fallen matter and indigenous creatures of all sorts, mostly unseen. It’s quiet, no more sound than a couple of woodpeckers and creek gurgling as it flows toward reunion with ocean mother a half mile downstream. For a century or more the canyon seems to have been left undisturbed; I hope it remains that way for as long as it can be. Its happiness depends on it.
No, I have no problem calling it a happy landscape. I’ve been in unhappy ones and the difference is unmistakable.

Photo from Unsplash

Thoughts From My Journal – Stillwater Cove

Dr. Brestrup — Wed, 20 Jul 2022 13:30:49 +0000

11-15: I walk the trail out of the campground [on the Pacific coast now at Still Water Cove a hundred miles north of San Francisco] and can make a left when I reach the valley bottom and find myself in a small cove a quarter mile to the west. A right takes me along a creek into redwood forest and fern-covered slopes to the top. I always want to speak of the beauty of such places but realize there’s a quality that precedes and encompasses beauty—what I can only call presence. In this case it’s an especially powerful presence owing to its comprehensive and coherent unity, the creek running with water from recent rains and lined with great second growth redwood and fir and the ubiquitous fern. In one remarkable spot there’s what looks like the ancient stump of a truly giant redwood out of which a half dozen or more hundred-foot progeny reach skyward. Part of presence is autonomy: This is an area that takes care of itself, that knows what’s needed and what belongs and that restored itself after the logging from the 19th or early 20th century. With all of this, how can there not also be great beauty of the sort that stops me in my tracks when I enter the trail and then proceed slowly downward to the creek. If there were sun it would still be darkly shaded and with today’s heavy fog it feels somewhere between foreboding and enticingly mysterious in its green-gray obscurity. The kind of place that evokes meditation and gratitude.

Photo by Matthew Jackson on Unsplash