[ Lost in the Landscape ]

a little palm springs hike

The hol­i­day break begins with a quick trip to visit an old friend who’s vaca­tion­ing in Palm Springs. I seem to bring warm weather with me: the days are in the upper 70s and the air is desert-dry. The local weather report whines about only “par­tially sunny” con­di­tions, though the only clouds I see are thin white veils high in the atmos­phere. Good hik­ing weather, I think. My friend is just a lit­tle equiv­o­cal but he finally caves. “OK, but noth­ing too strenuous.”

The North Lykken Trail is picked for its easy prox­im­ity to where we’re stay­ing and its promise of nice aer­ial views of the Palm Springs and the rest of the Coachella Val­ley. The online writeup calls it “mod­er­ately stren­u­ous,” as does Philip Ferranti’s 140 Great Hikes in and Near Palm Springs. It seems doable and fun, so off we go.

Bloom­ing chu­parosa (Jus­ti­cia cal­i­for­nica, this first image) is every­where. And where there’s chu­parosa, there are hum­ming­birds and buzzing clouds of bees feed­ing on its nectar.

Plants of brit­tle­bush (Encelia fari­nosa) are every­where too, but most are just leaf­ing out from their long dry sum­mer­time coma. Soon they’ll be cov­ered in bright yel­low daisies. This plant usu­ally calls dryer areas home but can be found all the way to the coast, and it’s used a lot in land­scap­ing projects.

Here’s a bar­rel cac­tus (Fero­cac­tus cylin­draceus) with an awe­some view of the city.

Maybe we’re dis­tracted by the view or I’m too focused on the plantlife, but by about now we’re scram­bling over piles of rocks, in and out of drainages, look­ing for the trail. If we were deep some­where in the wilds with­out a map we might be get­ting con­cerned. But how can you say you’re lost when there’s a big city grid down below as a ref­er­ence point? Okay, we’re not really lost, but some of this is on the stren­u­ous side of “mod­er­ately stre­nous.” But not for too much longer. We find some other hik­ers off in the dis­tance and get back on the trail.

With the trail securely under­foot it’s eas­ier to take in the great rock for­ma­tions and enjoy more of the views.

It’s a bit away from peak bloom but there are a few other things to see. This is one of the desert plants I’ve always found pretty inter­est­ing, whether it’s in bloom or not. Desert trum­pet or pipe­weed (Eri­o­gonum infla­tum) is an unmis­tak­able buck­wheat that usu­ally has flow­er­ing stems with a fat trum­pet­ing pro­tu­ber­ance below the nodes of its bloom spikes. Often it’s a lot more pro­nounced than in these two photos.

Some­times, though, you find a plant that pro­duces stems that are wiry and del­i­cate, with none of the bulging that you see here. Some botanist had some fun nam­ing that one: Eri­o­gonum infla­tum var. defla­tum.

Look­ing at views and plants is hard work, so we take a num­ber of brief breaks, this one in Chino Canyon. (That’s me to the right, the slavedriver ready to move on to the next ridge.)

This is a hike that makes you hyper-aware of the edges where the desert ends and irri­gated human habi­ta­tion begins. Even though the plants used in this home’s land­scap­ing may say “desert” to you, you can see that the real desert here isn’t one that stays palm-tree-green year-round.

Even a col­lec­tion of dry­land plants can require water to keep look­ing good when they’re planted closer together than you’d find them in nature. Also, some of these plants–particularly the palms–would be only found in more ripar­ian desert habi­tats, not here where the home­owner wanted them. Check out the drip-irrigation octo­pus in the lower right corner.

But I sup­pose it’s hard to resist the temp­ta­tion to land­scape with the plant that’s in your city’s name. Now we’ll just have to work on the “springs” part to make sure all the palms have enough water to sur­vive this chal­leng­ing piece of desert.

So by now you’ve prob­a­bly guessed that at least one of us sur­vives the hike. We both do, actu­ally, but are a lit­tle sore the next morn­ing. That’s where the arti­fi­cial springs–the bur­bling hot tub, in this case, in the semi-shade of the palm trees–comes in handy.

And then my lib­eral guilt kicks in. As a tourist am I per­pet­u­at­ing a dou­ble stan­dard, expect­ing water and shade be pro­vided me, when I might expect the peo­ple liv­ing here to make do with less? Okay, if I had to choose, I really could do with­out the hot tub. But the hike was great.

December 21 2009 | Categories: landscape • places | Tags: desert plants • desert towns • hiking • native plants • Palm Springs | 8 Comments »

destination: yellowstone

At the risk of sound­ing too much like Chris­t­ian on Project Run­way, I’m about to embark on a lit­tle “vay-cay.” I leave San Diego on Wednes­day in my old Jeep Chero­kee for what could be its last major trip to the Amer­i­can West.

These days I worry about gas prices, my car­bon foot­print, and the mechan­i­cal reli­a­bil­ity of my trusty vehic­u­lar com­pan­ion that I’ve had since it was a baby, back in 1993. My pre­ferred modes of trans­port the last seven years has been scoot­ers I’ve owned, the first a zippy lit­tle Aprilia Scarabeo 150, and now a big Buick of a scooter, a 582cc Honda Sil­ver Wing that weighs over 500 pounds. It has no style, but I got it for cheap. (For all its mas­sive­ness, it still gets almost 50 miles to the gal­lon.)

Above: the Shell sta­tion down the hill on April 30, before they raised their prices.

But the thought of strap­ping two cam­era bags with three cam­eras, two seri­ous tri­pos and a big steel box of film to the scooter sounds a lit­tle crazy. And that’s before you fac­tor in the camp­ing gear and mul­ti­ple changes of clothes to keep me look­ing semi-snazzy. Impor­tant things, you know. Besides, when I floated the idea with John–mostly in jest–his jaw dropped with concern.

“Yel­low­stone? On a scooter?”

Maybe I was cruel to even scare him like that, par­tic­u­larly after the episode six years ago when he spent seven weeks tak­ing care of me when I was piled into a wheel­chair after a lit­tle meet­ing of the body with hard pave­ment. But the Jeep it will be for this trip. And not only will the trip be in a car, I’ll at John’s urg­ing be pack­ing a cell phone, in case the Jeep breaks down.

That cell is a big move. Even though I’ve been doing email for over twenty years and have had my own web site for well over ten, I’ve been a total Lud­dite when it comes to cell phones. Yes, they’d be handy to have some­times, but I’m not will­ing to chance being turned into one of those people–You know the type: device planted firmly to ear, mut­ter­ing inanely about foot cream or last night’s pasta salad to who­ever will lis­ten, and often doing it in a mov­ing vehi­cle while dri­ving dis­tract­edly like a chauf­feur on a Quaalude jag. Pray for my soul, folks.

So, cell­phone in pocket, I’ll be head­ing north through Las Vegas into the Nevada out­back, through desert towns with great names like Elgin, Carp(?!), Ely, Pioche, Jack­pot and Caliente. (In nam­ing just six cities, I’ve named vir­tu­ally all the cities on the map on this route that cuts due north through the Great Basin, along the East­ern edge of Nevada.) The nom­i­nal des­ti­na­tion is Yel­low­stone, and I intend to get there. But who knows what else I’ll find. There might even be some cell­phone recep­tion along the way!

May 19 2008 | Categories: photography • places • rambles | Tags: carbon footprint • cell phones • desert towns • nevada • scooters • vacations | 1 Comment »

the mojave phonebooth: part 1, weird at first sight

I first ran across what later came to be known as the Mojave Phone Booth in Jan­u­ary of 1993 or 4. I’d been camp­ing that week­end in what was soon to become Mojave National Pre­serve, and one day was explor­ing some of the fea­tures on the north end of the park-to-be. There the park butts up against I-15 and the thriv­ing tourist waysta­tion of Baker, Cal­i­for­nia, touted on signs through­out town as “Gate­way to Death Val­ley.” Baker is home to what’s claimed as the “world’s largest ther­mome­ter,” 134 feet tall–a foot for every degree that made up the hottest tem­per­a­ture ever recorded at Bad­wa­ter in Death Val­ley. Baker is also known for the Mad Greek Restau­rant, a busy and basi­cally okay eatery that serves up Greek –Mexican-American cui­sine in por­tions that you might expect in a town that owes its suc­cess if not exis­tence to trav­el­ers head­ing for that shin­ing shrine of excess, Las Vegas, which at one point in my life was my all-time least favorite swath of soul­less human des­o­la­tion on earth. But enough Vegas-bashing and back to the Preserve…

The most dra­matic fea­tures on the land are a chain of mul­ti­col­ored vol­canic cin­der cones. I think of them as single-use vol­ca­noes: Unlike their big broth­ers that build to some size over long eras, cin­der cones mark a short period of erup­tions that builds them to a few hun­dred feet high. And then the erup­tions stop, the route to the magma below closes up, and when the ground’s finally ready to erupt again, a new crack opens up, away from the first cin­der cone, cre­at­ing another, sep­a­rate cone.

Here at the Mojave Pre­serve there are piles of them–some of them pris­tine in their per­fect pyra­mi­dal geom­e­try, oth­ers reshaped by min­ing operations–and they guard the west­ern edge of Cima Dome. Just a few miles south of the world’s largest ther­mome­ter, Cima Dome hosts the world’s dens­est pop­u­la­tion of joshua trees, and that’s what you notice first. But the fea­ture is called a dome and not a for­est, and as remark­able as the j-trees are, grow­ing denser and green as you get far­ther out on the dome, it’s the geol­ogy and not biol­ogy that makes this place so amazing.

On a topo map you can eas­ily make out the uni­form con­cen­tric rings of the dome as it rises over 1500 feet from the lower points around it. In real life it’s a lot more sub­tle. You look at the ground as it rises, grad­u­ally, per­fectly, and you get a torqued sen­sa­tion that some­thing is hap­pen­ing, but you’re not quite sure what. You stare and it looks like you see the cur­va­ture of the earth, though instead of fly­ing high over it, you’re stand­ing right on it. Space seems to dis­tort as what you expect to be flat bulges up. Queasi­ness sets in. Wel­come to Cima Dome.

The place has this amaz­ing power and force that the touted 1960s and 1970s earth­works can’t begin to approach. In terms of spa­tial power, as inter­est­ing as they are, Robert Smithson’s Spi­ral Jetty, Michael Heizer’s var­i­ous con­struc­tions, and James Turrell’s Roden Crater can’t hold a can­dle to it. Sorry guys!

So there I was, jeep­ing through the j-trees and the spa­tial queasi­ness, when I encounter a fence, a cat­tle guard, a power line and a pow­er­line road cross­ing the jeep track. And next to the road, next to one of the power poles is a phone booth. A phone booth? A dozen miles from any­thing? A freak­ing phone booth? But out in the desert you see a lot of…unusual…things. And I stuck the phone booth as another entry in my brain’s cat­a­loging of desert sights and sight­ings. Lit­tle did I know what I’d just seen.

[ go to part 2, i told you it was weird ]

January 06 2008 | Categories: places • rambles | Tags: baker california • cima dome • cinder cones • desert towns • joshua trees • las vegas • mojave national preserve • mojave phone booth • mojave phonebooth • oddities | 1 Comment »

when landscaping fails

Desert Cen­ter, Cal­i­for­nia lies about halfway between Indio and the Col­orado River, halfway between a hot, flat desert town and the Ari­zona bor­der. Unless you need to stop for gas, you pass by it on I-10 at wide-open high­way speeds. It’d be a blur like any other anony­mous desert town if it weren’t for the palm trees.

The huge date palms there grow single-file in for­ma­tions that describe wide cir­cles, V-shapes, or a tri­an­gle that’s many acres across. Trans­planted there by Stan­ley Rags­dale in the early 1990s, most of the trees now have seen bet­ter days. Even for drought-tolerant date palms, irri­ga­tion is essen­tial here in the low desert. The water­ing proved inad­e­quate and many of them died. In their cur­rent state of falling into ruins the trees are visu­ally amaz­ing, the veg­etable equiv­a­lent of the Acropolis.

James SOE NYUN: Palms I, Desert Cen­ter, California

I first went to pho­to­graph the town and its trees in 2003 on a hot, breezy day in April. It was approach­ing noon, and there was no shade other than what a min­i­mal palm trunk could pro­vide. It’s not the sort of light­ing sit­u­a­tion that a lot of pho­tog­ra­phers con­sider accept­able, but for this body of work it was per­fect. Besides, so many of the well-known 19th cen­tury expe­di­tionary pho­tographs of the Amer­i­can West were taken in harsh con­di­tions sim­i­lar to what I encoun­tered. Palms I, above, and Palms II, below form a dip­tych: Imag­ine Palms I on the left and Palms II on the right.

James SOE NYUN: Palms II, Desert Cen­ter, California

There weren’t many struc­tures there next to the inter­state, not much beyond the oblig­a­tory cafe and gas sta­tion. The big sur­prise, though, was an aban­doned school, com­pact, con­structed of brick, and mod­ern in its archi­tec­ture. It had almost no win­dows in the class­rooms except for high cleresto­ries place beneath broad, shel­ter­ing eaves. Not that dif­fer­ent from the schools I attended up in the Los Ange­les area, I thought. In photography–and in paint­ing for cen­turies before it–ruins are often a bit of a cliche, but name me a land­scape pho­tog­ra­pher who hasn’t shot some at some point. I couldn’t resist:

James SOE NYUN: Breeze­way, Aban­doned School, Desert Cen­ter, California

Both the palm trees and the town clearly had seen bet­ter days. Stephen A. Rags­dale, the man who founded the town in 1921, died in 1971. Stan­ley Rags­dale, the one who directed the plant­ing of the trees, died in 1999. With­out their ener­gies, this area of the city fal­tered, and the palms began to fail. The town and these land­scapes shot there func­tion for me like North­ern Euro­pean van­i­tas paint­ings, reminders of life’s strug­gles, its short­ness, and the cer­tainty of entropy. Again, those aren’t tran­scen­den­tally fresh ideas, but to see them par­tic­u­lar­ized in a place that’s strug­gling though still very much alive fas­ci­nates me. Judg­ing by the num­ber of peo­ple who leave the high­way, gas up, then drive slowly towards the palm for­ma­tions, I’m not the only one who’s fascinated.

For more infor­ma­tion on Desert Cen­ter see: Wikipedia / The Cen­ter for Land Use Inter­pre­ta­tion.

For more infor­ma­tion on the large series this images are a part of see: James SOE NYUN: Blue Day­light Project.

November 30 2007 | Categories: art • landscape • landscape design • photography | Tags: desert center • desert towns • James SOE NYUN • palm trees | No Comments »