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by
David Coyote
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.
We settled in San Diego. Every chance I got, I camped out in the enormous tan boulder-piled desert mountains, hiked hours of palm canyon creeks, and slept on my back beneath starlit arched space that’s only seen in the silence of these deserts. It taught me how to survive sudden changing weather as many creatures there have, to be patient, to listen. Everything was teaching me to pay better attention. The kangaroo mice that scratched around my bedroll at night, the spotted skunks looking for leftovers in the circle around the fire, the owls and sidewinders hunting night critters, the mule deer coming down to the tiny streams to drink. A cougar’s scream made me sit up more than once, but I only saw a couple of those beautiful big cats in all the years that I made those cactus canyons a second weekend home.
I wasn’t the only one who’d lived there. House-large boulders near seasonal streams evidenced the comings and goings of native peoples long ago – matate holes worn deep into hard granite over the years by women sitting in communal circles, grinding pinon nuts and sharing news. If I closed my eyes, I could see them. I saw cactus bloom like florist shops, saw desert wild flowers magically burst from rocky sand in the spring.
Then came the automobile tracks – cars carving roads into the hills and across storm cut arroyos –people who didn’t want to walk these places – wanted all the comforts that could be lugged along in the back of their cars. The down side – they left all their garbage behind. They were despoiling the beauty of nature. I might not have minded had they come and gone, taking their refuse along. Most of them didn’t.
I saw it coming – the advent of the off-road interests – I understood their need to recreate but I loathed their disrespect of nature. I wanted to save the deserts from people who ‘didn’t care’, who saw it only as a place to test machines and to party. Compounding the threat, developers recognizing the waiting market, purchased tracts of land to turn into playgrounds for those with the money. It seemed just another barbed-wire kind of division of nature. I understood the American sanctity of private land, but too many people were abusing public trust for their amusement with little or no regard for others who saw the irreplaceable beauty and wanted to save a piece of unspoiled nature for future generations. It was too large for me, or anyone, to save alone.
There were a few wise legislators who set aside public lands for State and National Parks. Nevertheless, and because rangers can’t supervise all open space, people who just ‘wanted to get there’ forged Illegal roads into the parks. They crushed all life that their wheels ran over. It’s all about respect and the lack of it.
The image of the old chief on his horse comes to mind, a tear on his cheek as he overlooks our waste. I try my best to clean up every time I go there – some friends laugh and call me ‘the desert janitor’ because I carry a big black garbage bag on my hikes. There was hardly a hike that I didn’t bring a bag back full.
I can’t hike as well as I used to, and don’t get out there as much. Friends tell me that more people are lending a hand to keep things from being completely destroyed by the marriage of technology and motorized thrill seekers. I hope so. I'm glad to hear that. What greater thrill awaits one than those that captured my childhood heart?
www.dcoyote.com |
