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We are always open to submissions of desert-related essays and poetry! |
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In 1966, Eliot Porter published The Place No One Knew, a photo book about Glen Canyon, the exquisitely beautiful and culturally rich section of the Colorado River that had been inundated by the waters of Lake Powell three years before. The thesis: one of Earth’s outstanding features had been destroyed because hardly anyone, not even the Sierra Club, knew or appreciated what was there.
Recently, I had the opportunity to visit another place no one knows, or at least few hikers and conservationists know: the Algodones Dunes in southeastern California (called Imperial Sand Dunes by the Bureau of Land Management). I accompanied a group from the Center for Biological Diversity on a backpack crossing of one of the temporary vehicle closures in the Algodones, and what we discovered was a desert world unlike any other in southern California. At 150,000 acres, the Algodones are the largest — by far — of the sand dune systems of the Southwest. With otherworldly beauty, several endemic and rare species, and unparalleled opportunities for solitude, the dunes clearly merit protection as a national monument or wilderness area. Between two and eight miles wide and fifty miles long, they offer ample space to lose yourself for a day, a weekend, or, given enough water, even longer.
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Political, & fr. Gk. Politiea, fr. Poilit†s citizen, fr. Polis city, state, akin to Skt. Pur rampart, Lith. Pilis castle. from Merriam Webster’s 10th Collegiate Dictionary.
The California Desert Tortoise, Gopherus aggassizii, makes its home in mid-size burrows, up to twenty feet deep depending on soil conditions, one to a tortoise, well away from any near (tortoise) neighbors. He or she will spend most of her life, up to 90% of it, just hanging out inside her burrow, waiting for the temperature to rise or the cactus to bloom, or for those occasional springtime urges. It is a solitary but not a lonely life. A tortoise has neighbors, relatives, rivals, and mates. A tortoise habitat is a quiet place, but the local population, while not overly demonstrative, is quite enough tortoises for the local available resources and the thing is, they don’t go far from their homes, so the population density of an area where tortoises live is the highest it can be for a tortoise, and for the land he or she lives upon. But not enough for us.
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The desert has held me captive since the first time I saw it from the back seat of dad’s ’37 Plymouth as we drove from Chicago to the west coast. The endless miles of Midwest farmed flatlands put me to sleep. The sight of snowy mountains got my nose to the window, but as we drove south and into the west from high pines and sandstone hills of Taos down toward the red mountains of Albuquerque, I had to be prodded to get me to stop staring and speak. Those red bluffs, stark against that New Mexico blue sky, shoulders clothed in mile high black and white cumulus, punctuated by afternoon dancing flashes of lightening, forever tied growing imagination to everything desert that comes to mind.
On the drive we often stopped to explore ancient Anazazi adobe villages – drove miles on unpaved road to visit Navajo pueblos, bought beautiful rugs and small curios, talked with artists about their crafts. More than once I overate my fill of blue corn tortillas, tasty tamales and spicy black beans. If asked, I would have said that I didn’t want to live in California. I'd yet to become mesmerized by the spectacular Colorado River, cutting its way through the mountains of Utah and Arizona and flowing into the shallow delta of the Sea of Cortez. I hadn’t seen the miles of giant soft-white rolling sand dunes for as far as eyes could see. It took an hour to drive through them as we followed the old wooden road out of the blowing sands toward EL Centro.
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Deserts change costumes
in their seasonal dance while
earth spins around sun.
Fall, in its style, quietly awaits
winter’s brisk winds and rains . . .
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