[ Lost in the Landscape ]

desert plants… in the desert

Let me start with a piece of advice: New hik­ing boots plus old, thin socks can be a painful combination!

Yes­ter­day I tagged along with a group of hik­ers that I’d done a trip with a cou­ple years ago. The des­ti­na­tion this time was a clus­ter of four sur­vey bench­marks along the U.S.-Mexican bor­der. One of them appeared on the map as “Ben­nie.” The oth­ers quickly got tagged as “the Jets,” after the old Elton John song.

Some hik­ers pre­fer leisurely strolls over flat, care­fully main­tained paths. This group isn’t made up of any of that vari­ety. At one point on the hike, while we were cross­ing a broad, flat, sandy val­ley, one of the core mem­bers apol­o­gized to me. “Our hikes are are usu­ally a lot more uphill than this.”

That was what I rec­ol­lected from the last trip I’d taken with the group. But I’m not in the same con­di­tion that I was for that ear­lier hike. Yes­ter­day, thir­teen and a half miles of travel–which included climb­ing up the slick face of a dry water­fall, two stubbed toes and five blis­ters on my feet–was adven­ture enough for me!

Here are some of the hik­ers, includ­ing Para­sol Patsy, who set a high stan­dard of look­ing cool and casual in the wilds.

Say “desert” to any­one and they’ll prob­a­bly think of cac­tus. This is the Cal­i­for­nia bar­rel cac­tus, Fero­cac­tus cylin­draceus. It proved to be a com­mon pres­ence all along the trip when­ever we climbed above the dry stream beds.

The next image shows the hill­side ter­rain, com­plete with bar­rel cac­tus, cholla cac­tus (Cylin­drop­un­tia sp., in the cen­ter, front), and–most dra­matic to the left–ocotillo, Fouquieria splen­dens. Almost any­one who has hiked in these areas knows that a com­mon name for some cholla cac­tus species is “jump­ing cholla,” a piece of urban leg­end deriv­ing from the fact that the plants can break apart into lit­tle bits any­time any­one as much as touches the plant. The lit­tle barbs hold on to your cloth­ing or your skin and work them­selves into your clothes or your skin, tak­ing a piece of the plant with them. It only looks like they jump. (Any­one look­ing for an idea for a hor­ror movie?)

The ocotil­los were leaf­ing out, a sure sign that it’s rained in the area recently. The plants can grow and shed their leaves sev­eral times each year in response to rain­fall. Some were devel­op­ing buds at the ends of their stems in prepa­ra­tion for the out­ra­geous flow­er­ings of tubu­lar orange-red blooms that these plants are capa­ble of.

Another sure sign of recent rains was this mas­sive desert lake, in the heart of Davies Val­ley. Few plants grew in the imme­di­ate area, let­ting you know that these desert plants pre­fer occa­sional sprin­kles of water rather than wal­low­ing in it.

This being the desert, signs of lack of water were all around…

A trip to this area gives you the feel­ing that the bor­der between the U.S. and Mex­ico is a purely arbi­trary one. Gosh, there isn’t even a wel­come sign or a bor­der fence in these parts. How rude.

These are two views into Mex­ico from the promon­to­ries we climbed on the trip. Occa­sional pieces of dis­carded cloth­ing, aban­doned empty water bot­tles and–weirdly–a fry­ing pan let you know that this was an area that was used for bor­der cross­ings. On this late-December day tem­per­a­tures reached the mid-sixties, per­fect hik­ing weather. Bor­der cross­ings done at other times of the year, when the tem­per­a­tures would be over 110, would prove a lot more dangerous.

Any trip to the bor­der regions isn’t com­plete with­out an encounter with the U.S. Bor­der Patrol. This was out first con­tact, a fly­over by an agency heli­copter. Later, at the end of the hike, as we were pack­ing up our cars, we were vis­ited by agents in two SUVs. For offi­cers who don’t know what to do with the desert it must be a dusty, tedious job. I like to think that attend­ing to a group of tired hik­ers was a fun break in their routine.

The visit by the Bor­der Patrol was a fit­ting end to the trip. This only looked like a trek through unspoiled wilder­ness. The truth is that this is an area that’s com­plex with polit­i­cal intrigue and his­tory, and where the ten­sions of eco­nomic sur­vival coin­cide with issues of basic human endurance and survival.

I try hard to find land­scapes that to me feel pure and untouched by the ways of human­ity. But a trip like this tells you that such a place doesn’t exist.

December 30 2008 | Categories: landscape • places | Tags: cholla cactus • Cylindropuntia • desert plants • deserts • Ferocactus cylindraceus • Fouquieria splendens • hiking • immigration • native plants • ocotillos • politics • U.S.-Mexico border • water | 4 Comments »