Onward to Death Valley

April 12  - though am April 15
Death Valley

The feeling here is vastly different from the Grand Canyon. The pastels and depths of the Canyon draw you in, into the womb from where all life emerges. Here in this land of basin and range you are spit out whole, full grown, tough as the rock under your feet, yet a bit fragile like the blossoms beside your boot.

I spent three days exploring this landscape, sliding down sand dunes, running my hands over salt crystal formations and slinking up, over and around rock. With the days, hours and minutes my skin began to take on the colors of the hills. Skin and stone, flesh and matter, blending brown, somewhere below the level of the sea.

Astound, astonish or if forced to use a phrase, “take my breath away” would best describe my recent travels to Death Valley. I had no preconceived notion of this landscape with exception of sun baked. And yes it was a little bit warm, and sometimes a little bit chilly, but mostly it was just right.  Temperature was dictated by whether I was above or below sea level, enveloped within winding rock walls or negotiating high elevation scoliotic ridge tops.

Death Valley is big, varied and delightful.  Rock hard sienna, ochre, umber, white, black and brown splash bold in texture and wildness across a landscape steeped in a history of gold, copper, mineral salts, and the ability to amaze. My timing to the region was near perfect. This promises to be a good wildflower year and the blooms had just begun. There were fields of gold composites, mixed with miniature petals of blue, purple, pink, and white accenting hillsides and low lands. There was enough color to make you giddy, dance, sing and be grateful to be in this world.

I struck up a conversation with a custodian who had just finished his morning rounds of cleaning the toilet at the Gold Canyon trailhead. Frank Graves was one of those Park Service employees who had found a place he liked and stayed a long time. Frank had better stories and knowledge of Death Valley than many Park Ranger Interpreters that come and go with the season.  Frank took off his rubber gloves, tossed them aside and rustled around in his truck to find his park map. He enthusiastically showed me how to get to all the most remarkable places in his opinion.  Then Frank folded up his map and asked if I am a Star Wars fan?  "Uh, yeah."  I figured yes was answer Frank preferred to hear. Frank said, “Well then turn around and look over there”.  He pointed to the trailhead were I had began a hike some hours before.  He described a scene with Luke Skywalker and R2D2 that had been filmed at this very location and asked if I remembered it? I did not dare mention that I once sat through the second Star Wars film for the second time and only half way through realized that I had seen it a first time. Me and Frank, Luke and R2D2 traveling through time and space, rock and flowers.

Lake Mead
My nights in Death Valley were very comfortable and restful quite unlike my previous stop over at Lake Mead. Quiet hours in most campgrounds don’t start until 10:00 pm.  On most nights I have already gotten in a few hours of sleep before curfew, my night at Lake Mead was no exception.

The neighboring RV was already generating annoying sounds that for sanity's sake I thought best to imagine as a purring cat, a very large cat,  as I slipped into my tent for the evening. I read for a bit and then weary eyed I shut off the lantern and rolled over into dreamland.

I heard something rustling outside my tent. Groggy and semi torpid I forced myself to listen. Was I dreaming?  Whoever made the sound was small. I pondered my location. Maybe it is just a lizard?  After my less than complete inventory of  animals inhabiting Lake Mead I drifted back to sleep.  Minutes later I awoke to rustling. This lizard needs to find another campsite.

Becoming more alert I remembered the lizard that kerplunked from the window ledge onto my leg while asleep in my cabin at home. My body sprung alert like a bolt of lightening upon impact. I was not thinking lizard.  I  immediately recalled a co-worker’s story of a mouse falling through the lattillas of her ceiling. Flying mice are one of my secret animal fears.  My co-worker recounted how the mouse had landed on her head and tiny delicate feet scurried across her face. Gross! Somehow sleeping with a lizard trumps a mouse. Don’t ask me why? I have no rational explanation.  With the aid of a flashlight I frantically searched and swiftly grabbed the intruder and promptly put the offender outdoors. Eventually my heart rate returned to normal and I was able to return to sleep.

I rolled onto by stomach and propped myself up on my elbows and listened. The sound came from my right.   Quickly, I lifted up clothes, books, and  my pillow. Nothing, I found nothing. Ugh, I am too tired for this nonsense. I considered going back to sleep. Yea right ! I imagined a herd of lizards or cockroaches marching across my face.

 Perhaps if opened the tent door whatever was plaguing my imagination would just get up and leave on its own accord.  I put on my headlamp, unzipped door and waited. I had to keep a sharp eye on the door to make certain no stealthy intruders would enter before my unwanted guest left. I waited and watched. This is ridiculous I could be sleeping...  just then a dark shape caught my attention as it climbed up and over the tent door. I swung my dimming light in the direction of my mystery guest just in time too see the back end of a mouse run full speed into the night. A mouse?! How could a mouse have gotten into my tent?  Ah, I remembered, in my haste, I accidentally left the tent door open when taking a walk earlier in the evening. With the mystery and problem solved I could rest. Comfy and cozy I drifted back to sleep.

A small sound woke me from my slumber. Maybe the mouse is hanging around the tent?  I listened. The sound was coming from inside. No way!  Again I opened the door and waited.  A shadowy figure slipped up, over and out the door. Another mouse! This seemed a bit ridiculous. But at least now it was over. It was time for sleep.

Again I awoke to rustling. Maybe I have been on the road too long and I  am imagining ghouls in the shape of mice? Maybe this is payback for all the mice I trapped in my cabin last fall. Again I opened the tent door and within moments watched a mouse scurry inches from my face, climb up, over and out the door. Please no more…. I drifted to sleep thinking about my friend Mike, a wildland firefighter, who upon breaking camp after ten days found a mouse squished under his sleeping pad. At the time I thought to myself only a boy would roll onto a mouse and sleep on it for a week. Tonight I feel rather uncertain about gender implication and question what I might find when breaking camp come morning. Ah sweet dreams, Theresa.

Canyons

4/3/10 – 4/11/10

It seems like forever since I left Tucson.  Yet it was   only week ago that I was hiking up Wasson Peak in Saguaro National Monument enjoying the profusion of California poppies blanketing the hillside.

After my trek up Wasson Peak, I joined Tina and her grandson Pancho for a walk around the Desert Museum. Pancho is a sweet, kind and inquisitive six year old. We had a great  time watching hummingbirds, snakes, bugs, bobcats, and mountain lions.  His joy in observing the animals was contagious. Thanks Pancho. That evening Tina cooked a wonderful meal. The next day I had to make an unanticipated trip back to Santa Fe to take care of some business.

 I made the best of my back track. A hike in the mountains and a soak at Ten Thousand Waves soothed the miles of travel.  The most amusing part of my journey home came when filling up my gas tank at a station along I25.   An Iowa farmer at the next pump sized up my Honda Fit and said, “I bet you get good gas mileage.” Yes, I do. And then without missing a beat he asked, “You a New Mexico kid?” I smiled wide and replied without missing a beat, “Yes.”  I guess he did not hear  “Bruce Sprinsteen” blaring from the satellite radio when I pulled up. New Mexico kid?  "Kid"?  Heck no, I am a “Jersey Girl”!!!

I have since submersed myself in canyons,  Canyon de Chelly and the Grand Canyon to be specific. Canyon de Chelly National Monument is located on the Navajo nation in northwest Arizona. It is a fairly unique Park Service unit in that some Navajo families still reside in the canyon grazing their sheep. In addition to Navajo culture, ancestral Pueblo people once made their homes in the cliffs and farmed the canyon bottom. The presence and history of native culture in a stunning landscape is what Canyon de Chelly is all about. On my walk to White House Ruins (Ancestral Pueblo cliff dwellings) I met a young Navajo artist who painted images on pieces of local sandstone. He told me his grandmother still lives in the canyon and runs a Tracking School. He told me people from all over, he specifically mentioned New York, sign up to attend classes and walk barefoot in the sandy washes throughout canyon bottom tracking animals. I asked if he had had learned this skill from his grandmother. He replied, “No, I don’t want to get thorns stuck in my feet.”  I suppose that pleasure is reserved for New Yorkers. I am glad I come from the other side of the river….

I met many other interesting people while exploring. Most notable was Gilbert Jumbo, a local Navajo man, who invited himself into my campsite to take pictures of trees. Gilbert is a painter who attended art school in Santa Fe. He uses the pictures he takes at the canyon for inspiration for his work. I was not sure what was different about "my trees" compared to all the other cottonwoods in the campground but my trees led Gilbert to me. We spoke for quite some time. Gilbert told me that he taught at a private school in Maryland for six months. I asked how he liked that? He replied, “The food is so different out there.” “They eat so much sea food.”  He had a relative send him out some green chili stew and fry bread mix. Who could blame him?

After explorations and contemplations in Canyon de Chelly I made my way west through the Navajo and Hopi Reservations to the Grand Canyon. Like Canyon De Chelly the Grand Canyon also has a rich cultural history. But the experience of place is vastly different.  The Grand Canyon draws you seductively to her edge and beckons you to look at her beauty and when you do, something happens. For a moment you feel strange and then you realize you are looking into the soul of all humanity, all that ever was and all that will ever be. You try to grasp what is happening. You can’t. You take a photograph and exclaim of beauty and then you step back forever changed. That my friend, is the Grand Canyon.

I have spent the past several days hiking in the Canyon. Today I saw California Condors flying above the rim as I began my hike on the Bright Angel. Three condors soaring on the thermals with ease. Magnificent. If only I could hike the depths of this canyon with such ease. The people most graced with ease while hiking in the Grand Canyon were the children. They have no preconceived notion of what the hike will be like. They are not worried about whether it will be too steep, too long, too difficult or too anything that removes them from the present. Nor are the children trying to prove anything. The kids, alert to their surroundings, are experiencing the joy in nature.

While walking up the trail I passed a father holding his young son’s hand, slowly leading him up the switchbacks. God bless the father for his patience, and cheers to the boy who did not complain about  the steepness or heat. Ahead on the trail I came upon the boy’s older sister who was maybe seven. She was waving a stick in her hand like a magic wand commanding all the rock to turn to candy.  Rock candy, how marvelous, enough to satisfy the biggest sweet tooth!  And marvel I did at all the sweetness around me exhibited in the song of a bird, the wisp of a cloud, the color of stone, and in the delight of hikers. This is place of old stone, a deep gash into the heart of earth, immense in size, the envy of every artist’s palette,  it is a place for all humanity to open their hearts to the wonder of all that is, while experiencing all the grace that there could ever be.  It is a grand canyon.

Lions and Tigers and Bears. Oh My! 3/29 - 4/2

Big Bend National Park  March 29, 2010 – April 2, 2010

My good friend Tina invited me to tag along on an outing to Big Bend National Park.  This was an offer hard to refuse. Tina escaped to Big Bend as a young woman fleeing a relationship gone awry, married and started a family in the Park. She knew the place well and I could not ask for a better tour guide.

I had been to Big Bend as a young woman. I was living in New Jersey at the time and was anxious to explore and experience everything life had to offer. After a trip to Brazil fell through I convinced my boss that my already scheduled six-week leave of absence would be well spent exploring National Wildlife Refuges and National Parks in this country. The workload at the Environmental Education was admittedly heavy in spring with a multitude of scheduled classes for kiddos and adults, but I suggested that experiencing nature first hand could only make me a better Naturalist. I even persuaded Ross that my best bud and fellow staff member should come along.

So off we went to far-flung places hiking, birding and completely immersing ourselves in nature. Big Bend and was one of those places. My memory recalled an arid, vast landscape of rugged mountains, grasslands and desert. I promised myself that I one day would return. It proved to be a promise worthy of keeping.

My first trip to Texas included not only Big Bend but also wildlife refuges near McAllen and Brownsville, where the Texas air is so humid that lying in a sleeping bag could be considered a form of torture. That spring I remember witnessing droves of families descending into a state park to picnic on Easter Sunday and promptly disappearing at sunset. Why did they all leave so fast? What did they know that we did not? Was camping for the foolhardy? My discovery and subsequent insight is that scorpions have little respect for otherwise occupied shower stalls. There is something very disconcerting about a rapidly approaching scorpion when you are naked and blind. "Oh my God I think there is something crawling towards me! Where are my glasses?" Who was going to answer and fetch my glasses lacked reason.  Blind and vulnerable I was left to the only sensible behavior I could think of… shriek and run.  So much for decorum…

Well things are different now. I have been living in the West more than twenty years and I have spent much professional and recreational time living in a tent. This trip to Texas would be a piece of cake. I would not even be in a tent. Nope, no tent. Instead Tina and I would spend our first night in Marfa, Texas in the magnificent Riata Motel. We were given the handicapped room. I guess the gent at the desk was not expecting any more travelers for the evening. Hot tip - don’t take the handicapped room at a cheap motel. The ridiculously large bathroom was like an echo chamber. It made chatting with the bathroom door open an interesting experience. Okay, I am just kidding about magnificent. The Riata is not exactly a five star kind of place nor is Marfa a five star kind of town.

I am not suggesting Marfa does not have culture. It does. Right here in Marfa, population a bit over 2000, (I am not sticking around long enough to find out what the 2010 census determines) there is art. No I am not just referring to the roadside exhibit of the Prada shoe and handbag collection (see FB picture -yep, Prada, Martha, Texas). I am referring to the real deal. Minimalist sculptor, Donald Judd, tired of his chaotic life in NYC, stumbled onto Martha way back when, bought a house and with him brought art to Martha. Judd died in 1994 but much of his art is still in Martha. Who knew, Martha right behind New City and Santa Fe for art and culture?  Makes me feel right at home.

Dining in Martha was a bit of a challenge. The highly recommended Pizza Foundation closed early the evening Tina and I were in town leaving us to rummage through our own food bags for sustenance. Once we settled into our deluxe room, quesadillas were served fresh and hot out of the microwave and washed down with wine served in paper cups.  "Would you prefer white or red?" "Gee Tina I don’t know? What goes well with paper?" Ah, I just love a love gourmet meal.  After a few glasses, I mean cups, I was beginning to like Marfa. In addition to the art scene Marfa is also famous for mystery lights that appear to hover the size of basketballs on the horizon. I did not check out how many bars there are in Marfa but something tells me quite a few. The only round orb I saw on the horizon was a full and beautiful moon. Good night man in the moon. Goodnight Marfa.

It did not break my heart to leave Marfa early the next morning and head to our real digs for the week in Terlingua. I can only describe Terlingua as an outpost for people who have dropped out. It was perfect, dusty, hot, plunked down in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by a big Texan sky.  Our lodging for the week was roughly a  300 sq foot rustic room/cabin with a couple of beds, stove and refrigerator and bathroom over yonder. Aside from walking over to the bathroom at night, when the rattlers would be out, the place was down right rough around the edges, perfect, and all ours.

We only had a few days to experience the Park, we wasted no time in getting out and hitting the trail. We explored Santa Elena Canyon, Dugout Wells, Cattail Falls, Pine Ridge, the Chisos Basin and historic ranch sites, I marveled at the shear cliffs of Santa Elena Canyon, one wall Mexican and the other American, separated by flowing molecules of hydrogen and oxygen, the Rio Grande, a river of politics. In the canyon black phoebes flitted from shrub to shrub as canyon wrens sang and my heart delighted. In the hot sun and cooling breeze I felt present, content and very much alive.

There is a lot to be said for being present. A spiritual seeker would say there is nothing but the present, the Now. As a naturalist being present connects me to the Now. Each sound uttered from the throat of wren is processed by my nervous system and transformed by my brain into the song and joy that is life. All I have to do is listen. All I have to do is be aware, to be with, the magic of life, in all its perfection.

We had lots of time while driving and hiking to spill our guts about our secret animal fears.  Most of us have some creature that we fear, or should I say have a healthy dose of respect. Tina seems to have a great deal of “respect” for bears. Black bears were extirpated in this region by 1940s. By the 1980s black bears began repopulating Big Bend. The bears wander up from Mexico. Whether or not the Mexican bears need to apply for citizenship before making their home in the Chiso Mountains is something that I don’t know?  Since we are not camping, hence no food laying around, I am not really concerned about a few black bears. Admittedly, walking in grizzly bear country makes me a bit on edge but that is a different story for another day. Just for the record I also have great respect for moose.

Besides bear, Big Bend is home to another sizable mammal, the mountain lion. In my opinion any animal that can run fast, jump far, sports long claws, sharp teeth and likes to consume flesh commands respect. Tina told me a remarkable story from her years past in Big Bend. It occurred on a trail in the Basin meadows area. Tina would take me there.

We walked up to a beautiful place just begging for a picnic. When Tina’s children were just mere tots, the youngest just 18 months, her husband somehow managed to coax two little girls and a boy to this very spot for a picnic on bit of a rainy day. While the family enjoyed their food after their arduous climb, perhaps more arduous for Dad as he must have carried each child at some point along the trail, a mountain lion appeared from the vegetation. The cat was big, lithe and beautiful. They watched. The cat approached and did not stop until within a foot of little John Thomas. Dad scooped up the child and began to shoo the cat away. "Was your husband crazy? What was he thinking? He let a child-eating predator within a foot of an 18-month of toddler?!"  I could not believe this. Tina said according to her husband it had all happened so fast. Yea, and it would have been a quick and easy snack for the cat! The family had been mesmerized by the beauty of the animal, each of them present, each in the moment. I remarked to Tina that it was an incredible story. I  would relish the opportunity to see a cat. Even though there are lots of mountain lions living where I work and live, I have never seen anything but their tracks in Bandelier National Monument.

We began to head back down the trail towards the Lodge. "Hey, this is a great place for a picture." We stopped. I dug out my camera, took a photo as Tina admired the view. We heard a deer snort from somewhere nearby in the forest. Tina quipped, “The mountain lion is right behind it.” I smiled.  I stepped from the clearing back onto the trail to take another picture. Snapped the shot and looked up and there it was, not thirty feet away walking across the trail. "Tina, Tina," I could barely get her name out or my mouth. Yea, right…her expression gave away her thoughts. "No, really a mountain lion just walked by."  Life is filled with magic.

An hour or so later Tina and I sat on the Lodge patio each sipping a beer as we watched the sun slip low towards the horizon.  A man came running up, “there is a mountain lion on a rock come see.” Up slope a cat rested under a tree, stretched on a rock, watching us and  the three hapless javelinas munching their dinner beside us. A park ranger showed up and mentioned that a lion had not been spotted in this area in the past nine months. I sipped the last of my beer and thought about the power of words.

Before returning to Tucson we slipped over the border to Ojinaga, Mexico where Tina’s bother Mickey and sister-in-law Vicky live. Mickey and Vicky treated us to an excursion to the tiny village of San Carlos. The four of us piled into Mickey’s 1971 VW camper with our picnic lunch and off we went . San Carlos was about an hour away. The wind howled and whipped up dirt from all creation. The wind pushed the van every which way. One moment the van edged ever so close to oncoming traffic, the next puff brought the wheels near the embankment. Did I mention the fumes from the fuel and whining sound of the engine? Finally we came to a halt and I eagerly stepped into the blazing sun. We were at some sort of recreation site.

We strolled up a beautiful canyon, hopping from rock to rock, crisscrossing a river, until finally I felt no need for rock bridges. My sandaled feet carried me happily across the warm water.  Later we picnicked on homemade burritos, avocado and fresh cheese made in Ojinaga by Mennonites. Mennonites? Did I hear Tina correctly? I guess I should have asked more questions. It was a grand day and a grand trip. 

Our trip to Big Bend flourished rich with experience of landscape and friendship. The poison oak I brushed against seems to be flourishing also.  Adios for now.