Winter Wildlife Tracking

Feline tracks, probably Bobcat.

Canine Tracks, probably Coyote.

Human tracks, definitely Homo sapiens

How the Sonoran Desert says "Don't Touch"

[Ferocactus cylindraceus]

Riparian Restoration in the Southwest

"In the not too distant past, lower Rincon Creek (a portion of a small stream in the Sonoran Desert) was dominated by a riparian forest that in some areas extended more than half a kilometer from each side of the stream channel. The predominant woody vegetation was Arizona walnut (Juglans major), with some of the larger individuals exceeding 5m in circumference and towering close to 20m above the floodplain...

This riparian ecosystem no longer exists. During the past 60 years, the combined impacts of groundwater pumping, stream channelization, agriculture, livestock grazing, and, currently, urbanization have almost completely destroyed this area. Today, streamflow occurs only following heavy rains, and scattered remnants are all that remain of the once immense riparian forest.

Unfortunately, the devastation that befell the riparian ecosystem of lower Rincon Creek is not unique. Riparian ecosystems have disappeared at an alarming rate all across northern Mexico and the southwestern United States. Although the extent of the damage is still not well understood, most observers will agreee that the deterioration of riparian ecosystems in this part of the world has reached significant proportions."

Riparian Ecosystem Recovery in Arid Lands. Mark K. Briggs. 1996 University of Arizona Press.

This book is an introduction to restoration work in Arizona and New Mexico. The quote above, excerpted from the Preface, begins what could have been an authoritative account of the devastation of riparian ecosystems. Unfortunately the author proceeds to obfuscate his initially clarion message with euphemisms and understatements which could confuse anyone without field experience. For example, "improved grazing practices" almost invariably means 'get the cows outa there!' but you'd never know it from the text. While the true extent of riparian damage may be hard to describe in words, Briggs' buttoned-down rhetoric doesn't begin to do justice to the near-apocalyptic destruction common in the Southwest. The armchair reader would be hard-pressed to appreciate the scope and severity of the problem from this book.

That said, this book remains an impressive resource for the restoration professional, has an excellent bibliography, and marshals a considerable range of experience. Certainly not all of the language is obscure; the precise definitions develop a professional vocabulary. For example, the difference between rigorous terms like recovery, restoration, rehabiliation, and replacement vs. subjective terms like rewild, rebalance, regenerate, and revitalize will be important to improving communication in this field.

Also, while the text does feature a suite of case studies, it remains more theoretical than practical, advocating a philosophy of 'site-specific, whole watershed' analysis rather than listing specific techniques. (for specific evaluation techniques see "User's Guide for the Rapid Assessment of the Functional Condition of Stream-Riparian Ecosystems in the American Southwest." Stacey, Jones, Catlin, Duff, Stevens and Gourley. Wild Utah Project.

This is a conservative synopsis of where we find ourselves and perhaps implies something of the urgency of recovering what we have lost. For, as we transform this beautiful home into a wasteland, so too we transform the human heart. So little now remains of these shady glades and bubbling streams, the destruction is so complete and pervasive, that even the memory dries up and blows away, we forget that it was ever otherwise; general amnesia descends, fostering complacency and despair... The creek this author speaks about was one of many that once flowed into Tucson's perennial rivers. Tucson's rivers are dry and these ecosystems have evaporated and today it is a revolutionary act to demand that the rivers flow again. The work of restoration goes beyond ecosystems to involve the entire community. ...

Matthiessen's Wildlife in America

'And I brought you into a plentiful country, to eat the fruit thereof and the goodness thereof; but when ye entered ye defiled my land and made mine heritage an abomination.' Jeremiah 1:6

In some ways, Wildlife in America. (New York, Viking Press, 1959) by Peter Matthiessen appears to be an apology for human-caused extinction. But perhaps Matthiessen is simply being realistic when he questions whether all species really need to be protected. Should we ruin a ranching community trying to save a relictual species that only lives in one small pool in the desert, a species that would likely become extinct anyway? What about the ridiculous perfusion of species, such as the hundreds of varieties of freshwater clams the Tennessee Valley Authority spends millions of dollars protecting? What about species that, as Matthiessen puts it, have "become senile and over-specialized in their long period of isolation...unable to compete with the younger species..."? Despite the strange word choice, his point that some species fail to adapt to natural changes, is well-taken. When Panama rose out of the sea to connect North and South America many species became extinct because they could not competitively adapt to the wave of immigrants. Perhaps our rush to fight invasive species while protecting endemic species is ultimately as futile as trying to stop Panama from linking the two American continents?

(Ironically, we seem to have done precisely that with the Panama Canal, which prevents genetic exchange between many species with populations in North and South America, such as the Jaguar.)

Unfortunately, by Peter Matthiessen is ultimately unsatisfying because Matthiessen never directly answers the question of why the extinction of species matters. Too busy telling a 'balanced story' to directly confront the value of non-human species, he leaves this task to later authors, notably Rachel Carson, who argued that all life is connected and that what we do to others we eventually do to ourselves. But perhaps Matthiessen is wise to leave that argument to specialists; indeed, much of the Deep Ecology movement is an attempt to explain how species that cannot argue their own case can have inherent worth.

But let there be no mistake -- Matthiesson's opinion of the extinction crisis is clear. He is unmistakable when he argues that "the concept of conservation is a far truer sign of civilization than that spoliation of a continent which we once confused with progress." Although he doesn't deign to list specific reasons, he is at his best intoning arguments that pull at the heart and echo the damnation of the apocalypse (CF. the quote from Jeremiah above, also featured at the beginning of Wildlife in America)

"Even today, despite protection, the scattered individuals of species too long persecuted are hovering at the abyss of extinction and will vanish in our lifetimes. The slaughter [for food] has subsided this century but the vertebrate animals as a group are obscured by man's dark shadow. Such protection as is extended them too rarely includes the natural habitats they require, and their remants skulk in a lean and shrinking wilderness.

The true wilderness -- the great woods and clear rivers, the wild swamps and grassy plains whcich once were the wonder of the world -- has been larely despoiled and today's voyagers, approaching our shores through the oiled waters of the coast, are greeted by smoke and the glint of industry on our fouled seaboard, and an inland prospect of second growth, scarred landscapes, and sterile, often stinking, rivers of pollution and raw mud, the whole bedecked with billboards, neon lights, and other decorative evidence of mankind's triumph over chaos.

In many regions the greenwood not converted to black stumps no longer breathes with sound and movement, but is become a cathedral of still trees; the plains are plowed under and the praires ravaged by overgrazing and the wind of drought. Where great, wild creatures ranged, the vermin prosper."

In Search of the Elusive Elephant Tree

The Elephant Tree (Bursera microphylla) is a rare member of the Sonoran scrub community, left behind in a few relictual populations after the ebbing of the last ice age. Our amateur expedition convened to verify its rumored existence with our own senses. Lacking professional expertise, we relied on a map of hearsay and riddles. Intoning these raw directions with varying emphasis, turning the map while squinting, convincing ourselves of our own speculation, falling back into self-doubt at the next turn in the road...by faith and blind reckoning we journeyed and when we couldn't drive any more we got out and walked.

The crunch of desert gravel, second-growth ironwoods twisted like deep time, patches of magically incongruous moss growing in the deep shadows, a butterfly (Hemiluca tricolor) warming to the January morning. It seemed nothing could hide in the glorious panopticon of brilliant Sonoran sunlight. But it was only the illusion of omniscience - we knew the elusive Elephant Tree lurked somewhere in the thick desert scrub, but we didn't know where.

We pushed on. Past abandoned mines, over barbed wire and barbed cacti. The steep and gutted tracks curved around a dry valley, attained the saddle, and continued up the south-facing slope of Mt. Silverbell. There, tucked in a cozy drainage of austere smooth rock waterfalls, clinging to unlikely toeholds on the sheer wall, were the Elephant Trees; the thick trunks peeling elegantly in the sparse shadows. Fragrant limbs and resinous (juniper-like) berries carried a pungent and uniquely fragrant odor, a benediction to the dry dust desert.

We watched the sun cross the sky from our perch among them, tucked away with them in cozy niches, waiting patiently or perhaps resigned to fate, relicts in a strange world. They are safe and comfortable raising small families in their isolated enclave. We thanked them for their time and magnanomous patience when posing for our photographs. None of us wanted to leave, but we have faith now that the elusive Elephant Trees can abide without us.

You remember the San Pedro

You remember driving up out of the Santa Cruz valley from Nogales through hills and then up over a wide country of wineries where you exclaim "oh I didn't know Arizona could be like this!" We hike along the Babocomari river under the trees and watch the Great Horned Owls. The Rincons, the Mustang and Whetstone, the Burro, the Huachuca, the Canelo hills, and the Santa Ritas and Empire Mountains are all arrayed round about; the town of Elgin, the sun and the full moon and the purple-tinged shadow of the Earth.

But what you don't know is that if you follow the river you meander around the Mustang mountains and leave them standing still behind you like some kind of massive eroded stonehenge....and then you enter a great valley with cities and people and mountains all around. This is one of the last great river-valleys before the continental divide, one of the last surviving Arizona rivers, the San Pedro.

But this green ribbon snaking through an ocean of desert scrub and cactus is already dead. The aquafer has been drained and it is only a matter of time before this valley, like its neighbors, becomes dust and bones. "Man's ego is going to fill his pockets, and the river be damned." (ibid)

For more information and maps (though not a solution to the problem) see the Upper San Pedro Partnership

Costa Rican Dry and Wet Rain Forest

Rosemont mine proposal in the scenic Santa Rita mountains

Usually I have no quarrel with how private individuals conduct their business, but when their business affects my health and well-being I must speak up. Even the most casual freeway observer cannot help but note the monumental destruction wrought by mining in Southern Arizona. For those who live here, that scenic desecration is compounded by polluted water and air. Arsenic groundwater contamination has ruined much of our already scarce aquifers. Every time the wind blows I can see billowing clouds coming off the Sierita Mountain mines and I can feel it in my lungs and eyes.

I don't usually object to other people's business, but when that business gums up my vision and chokes my breath, I must speak up. The owners of the proposed Rosemont mine promise that their business will be different, that it will not have such ill effects, but the evidence of history speaks otherwise. Let's see the mining companies fix the mess they've already made before we even consider letting them make another one.

Fate of the Borderlands in the Global Economy

Just back from Mexico, an exotic frontier somewhere near these borderlands. All the maps are jumbled (and all the people ask, "what, really, is a border?") and (I don't know if you've heard of this) even the GPS systems are confused here, the systems based on NAD 1927 are off by a couple hundred meters from the revised 1983 version, the earth's bulge having migrated in that time, or the poles shifting, a gentle shrugging action that stretches the wasteline/equator and dragged mountains hiccuping across the corpulence. But things stick and the motion is not always fluid, so you get what we have here, impossibly arbitrary borders that people will die to (double?) cross. Constant movement without change.

I don't know how much it is in the Mass (catholic?) mediums, but southern Arizona is in a state of simmering chaos. Some accounts have the drug lords outpacing total Mexican federal spending. They reutinely kidnap Mexican police officers, and there have been firefights between the U.S. border patrol and defiant thugs. They retaliate with terrorism; recently, all of the police officers from a border village were killed (about 30), and the Mexican army was only able to regain apparent control at the expense of heavy casualties on both sides. Because law here is based here totally on force, with no shred of social contract, this can be a very lawless place, with only the sheen of daytime normality, the bright truth of the desert sun, to obscure the midnight drama. In places along the border there are so many abandonded backpacks that you cannot walk without stepping on them...every one of these backpacks is a new American. The border patrol is fighting a hit-and-run game of interdiction, but are, if anything, in retreat, having mainly fallen back behind the 32nd parallel.

Much of the action of Hemingway's "A farewell to arms" derives from his character's intimate knowledge of italian geography, as e.g. he floats down a river after mutineering. To know a landscape well enough to navigate totally 'blind' (without the aid of cars and roads, technology, internet information) is my goal here. Like the back of my own hand, like a lover. This is a years-long courtship, She is so Vast; not that a one-night stand would be insulting, but I always want more, to see the next curve around a canyon, the way her leaves change in different places, at different times. The native fish swimming in moist places, the howls and stars at night.

Globalization has always existed, but now it is so fast -- before anything can exist for itself it is pasted in front of a million backgrounds, nothing connected by anything but convenience, constantly swirling connections, getting nowhere. The nightmare of too-drunk total vertiginous movement while lying afraid to move on a bed of surround-sound. But according to economists, the speed of dollar turnaround, the mobility of capital, is what creates wealth. The faster we spend it the more we have, and nobody can devalue the American dollar if we keep consuming, which we couldn't do if they stopped buying imaginary dollars. They believe in the imaginary dollars because we look wealthy because we spend them so fast: constant movement without change.

Meanwhile, I've been learning the art and science of tracking at a Mexican ranch. Now the dirt speaks and I cannot help listening, and we following where it leads...Jaguars live here. What strange power these dark creatures hold over us, that even in the caccoonish confines of our surround-sound media center we are moved by their perfect power?! They also want to cross the border into america, the wonderful wilderness santuaries we have built of their historical (100, 150 years ago) habitat, but the Wall might be more of a problem for them than for "coyotes". When the bright-eyed beast circles in Your dreams, embrace it, it will make you stronger.

What we love we shall grow to resemble. -Bernard of Clairvaux.
-with apologies to Nona, who will Understand.

Autumnal Bucolic Zephyr

November-hot Tucson sun
oasis in the desert
date palms and pomegranates
laundry detergent and fried food
stars, lapping waves of high cirrus clouds

It was a good time of year and I came down out of the hills and lived in the city, going for walks along concrete roads, drinking beer, in the pool, fruit juice at my writing desk, watching. Friday night at the edge of the universe...front row seats.

Planning my next voyage -- through the mountain passes South of the Whetstones and Dragoons, North along the Chiricahua towards Wilcox and their fresh fruit stands. Then West to the secret Nature Conservancy hotsprings on the south of the Galiuro mountains. Then...back to Tucson? Its almost too warm in the city; I ride in shirtsleeves, warm, through the night. I confuse this place with Jerusalem, within this light I go about my daily business, smoking, turning wide circles. Diving in aquamarine waters; the gym, sunbathing, wine and cheese and fresh fruit in this desert city, white like icecream.

Wide Arizona beckons.