Systems | Camino Bay Books

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 – 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 – Mutual Benefits

Dr. Brestrup — Tue, 01 Mar 2022 20:24:48 +0000

06-28-21 – I read a book a few months ago called Entangled Life. It describes the astonishing activity beneath my feet, especially when those feet carry me through a forest, a place where fungi and roots commingle with lubricious-level abandon, and microbes, invertebrates, and insects join as well in their different ways. Where there’s life there will be competition, but the overwhelming picture is coordination for mutual benefit. When a tree falls in the forest it is heard and felt by a multitude of commensals, its friends, relatives, and associates, symbionts, and mutualists, all of whom feel the loss. These notions of relationship and sentience are, I believe, becoming harder to reject by the mechanists and anthropocentrists of the botanical and zoological research worlds. What I read here is consistent with what’s described in the book I mentioned a few days ago, The Hidden Life of Trees, a book I know has received criticism for making assertions without sufficient empirical basis—not that the author is necessarily wrong, but his notions need more research support. I’ve also begun a new book called Finding the Mother Tree, which comes to many of the same conclusions about entanglement. I find all of this pleasing and reassuring, confirming what I have sensed and known but not based on scientific experiment and observation.

Photo by Jordan Madrid on Unsplash