The eternal desert

This is a picture of a can lying on the rocks of the desert floor high on the Colorado Plateau. Cans were first widely used for food preservation in the late 1800s. The first automated can making machinery was introduced in the 1880s and 1890s. The above can is not likely a beverage can because the top has been completely removed. Even though the can is probably mostly or all steel, it has very little evidence of deterioration due to the super dry environment. From the seam and the type of can, this one has probably been up there in the desert for more than fifty years. Undisturbed, that can will probably still be evident for another fifty or so years.

We used to shoot at cans, throw rocks at cans and generally kick them and throw them around the countryside. There was little or no concern for the "environment." The environment included rusty old cans. If we used a can out in the desert, we would squash it flat and put it under a rock. We figured that it would rust away eventually and it was only iron anyway. It wasn't until aluminum cans came on the scene that we realized that these things would probably last forever in the desert and we started packing everything out that we could carry. 

Notice that the can is almost the same color as the rocks. There is a reason. The rocks contain iron oxide or rust. So it is only natural that they would be the same color.

In balance

I spend a lot of time wondering how the process of erosion alone can create some of the extraordinary rock formations visible in Arizona and Southern Utah. This pair of rocks is fantastic example. I have no way of measuring the weight of the rock on top, but it is larger than a large room of a house. The smaller of the two rocks is about the size of a mini-van. All of the weight of the larger rock is resting on the two small points of the smaller rock. I suppose you could get a little nervous walking around this formation had it not been there for a very long time.

Puzzle pieces of the pines

The bark of the Ponderosa pine is not only fire resistant but beautiful. Younger trees are dark brown to black, but as the trees age their bark turns a gorgeous reddish brown. The bark forms intricate puzzle pieces that overlap and can flake off individually. This picture shows a mature Ponderosa pine with its extremely variegated patterns. Here is its classification from Wikipedia:
Kingdom: Plantae

Division: Pinophyta
Class: Pinopsida
Order: Pinales
Family: Pinaceae
Genus: Pinus
Subgenus: Pinus
Species: P. ponderosa

Fall comes to the high country

School always started later in Phoenix than it did in the high country of Arizona. The last few weeks of summer, I would watch my friends go back to school and know that that fate would soon come my way. Staying summers way up on the Plateau while living in the low desert in the winter was always a disconnect. As the Fall came, I could watch the beginnings of leaves turning and feel the coolness in the breeze, only to return to the Valley and find temperatures still over 100 degrees and no sign of anything cooler than the ice in the refrigerator. In the Valley, we would wait until Christmas to see some of the leaves change and the old leaves would only fall off as the new ones came on. 

Every year the newspapers in the Valley would report the various locations throughout the state where the leaves might be seen changing colors. Rather than being a natural event of the change of seasons, it was a tourist promotion. Living in a land that has only two seasons, hot and warm, does have its advantages however. If you choose the right kind of trees, you never have to rake the leaves.

Forms and patterns of the high country

I love the details of the world around me. Rocks and sand, trees and grass, each adds its special note to the grand symphony of life. The music and poetry of the natural forms are augmented and not diminished by knowing about the history and composition of the natural objects. But sometimes it is best just to enjoy the color and texture of the scene and not get wrapped up in details.

Fire friend or foe?

It is nearly universally believed that a wildfire is the enemy to be fought with every resource imaginable. The budget for fighting fires in the west is in the millions of dollars every year. Fires, like the one above on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, appear to destroy the forest for a hundred years. But look, what is wrong with this picture? First of all, the trees have all burned, clear to the top. All of the trees are dead. But what is more important, the trees are very closely spaced and all about the same age. There are almost no older trees in this picture. This is a classic view of the end product of a hundred years of fire suppression. 

What would happen if the naturally caused fires, those that did not threaten any human structures, were allowed to burn whenever and where ever they started? As is stated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, "Decades of fire suppression are resulting in more catastrophic wild fires." Obviously, the solution is not as simple as letting fires burn, but the impact of many of the more damaging fires, like the one above, can be substantially lessened through more modern fire suppression attitudes. 

Listen to the wind

This is not the scenic part of the Colorado Plateau. This is not the Grand Canyon. This is not any of the parts of the Plateau celebrated in song and story. This is the Colorado Plateau that I have known for nearly all of the my life (Since I am not dead, it hasn't been my whole life yet). This is the part of the Plateau that is ruled by extremes and one of those is the wind. We have seen winds over 100 mph tear down a reinforced shed, although high winds are not too common. The wind blows so much, that when it stops, it feels like something is wrong.

The trees, mainly junipers, are rounded and so strong they seldom bow to the wind. There is nothing to stop the wind. 

Looking at the moon

One of the things that we do in Arizona is hike at night. I am not sure that this is so prevalent in other places, but when it is over 100 degrees outside, we would leave for our overnight hike late in the afternoon, or just about moonrise and hike by the light of the moon. You would think that this was only good where there was a defined trail, but of course, we would never do anything so simple as to hike on a trail. We would cut straight across country, hoping to hit the trail or dirt road we were aiming for. Hiking at night is an experience, you need to be careful not to step on things. Things that you would normally not want to step on during the day, like cactus and sharp rocks, but also things that are out in the nighttime that you would probably miss during the day.

If there was a trail we would make really good time, because we weren't stopping to look at the scenery or whatever, but crosscountry, we had to pick the trail, hoping not to end up at the top of a drop-off (or the bottom). Even though it was not nearly so warm as the desert, I would also, from time to time hike across the Mogollon Rim country in the dark. There is not so much to worry about as there is in the Sonora Desert, but on nights where there was no moon, you sort-of wished that you ran into something familiar. 

Back to the desert, another interesting area to hike at night is the Colorado Plateau. There is a lot less cactus, a lot fewer trees than the Ponderosa pine forests of the Rim and you can see for miles. Walking on the Plateau is sort-of like walking around in my backyard. You can't get lost on one hike because you can't walk far enough to make any difference. I have never been lost in Arizona, that I can remember, but I am getting on in years and maybe I have forgotten being lost. 

I never could understand getting lost anyway, until I left Arizona and went to someplace like the Pacific Northwest or the Midwest where the trees grow so thick it is impossible to see more than a short distance and without a compass or map, you might just start going around in circles. Never would happen to me in Arizona.

An Arizona Icon

If during the formation of the various United States there had been a bidding system for natural attractions, surely the Grand Canyon would have brought top dollar. Despite its iconic attraction, it is really a remarkable place. Most of the development is concentrated in a very small area on the North Rim and a slightly larger area on the South Rim. Once you step onto a trail and drop below the Rim the real magnitude of the Canyon begins to impress your mind. I have to admit it, I love the Grand Canyon and I will use any excuse I can find to take a trip to either the North or South Rim. 

The above picture was taken during July, actually the day after the 4th. I have spent the 4th of July in Boston and that is great experience, but I would really have a hard time deciding if I would rather be in Massachusetts or Arizona, if the choice was to go to the Grand Canyon. This view of the Canyon is on the North Rim. Here is a National Park Service photo with a slightly larger angle view of the same part of the Canyon:

You might notice that my photo has more haze. This is due to a large forest fire that was burning on the Kaibab Plateau at the time.

A fragile Immensity in space and time

The Colorado Plateau is land of color and contrasts. But, despite the vast expanse of sky and land, there is always an underlying current of the human impact on the land. Even though the above picture seems timeless, appearances of wildness are superficial. First of all the picture was taken from the edge of a major highway, with cars whizzing by at 65 mph. In the distance, if you click on the picture and look carefully, you will see a power transmission line running across the fields. Even more importantly, the very nature of the view has been determined by years of cattle grazing. Although the grass appears to be growing and green, this is a highly unusual condition, there is seldom enough moisture to green up the grass and except in extremely wet years, the land is usually overgrazed.

On the website, Canyons, Cultures and Environmental Change -- An Introduction to the Land Use History of the Colorado Plateau, the Northern Arizona University Center for Environmental Science and Education makes the following observation:

By the time federal forest reserves were proclaimed in the 1890s, ranchers on the Colorado Plateau had become accustomed to unregulated use of public lands as range for livestock. As a result of these excessive stocking numbers, once rich grasslands were seriously degraded even before the turn of the century, after less than a human generation of use. By the early 1900s, overstocking of sheep on many middle-elevation mesas and in the area's highlands had brought forest regeneration to a halt. The forest floor in some places was "as bare and compact as a roadbed." The fire ecology of the region's forests, particularly the once grass-rich ponderosa pine forests, was drastically altered, causing significant long-term changes to their structure and composition.

By 1912, livestock pressures had penetrated the most remote, timbered and mountainous areas. Theodore Rixon, one of the first foresters in the Southwest, described the situation:
"At the beginning the mountains and heavily timbered areas were used but little, but as the situation grew more acute in the more accessible regions the use of these areas became more general and in course of time conditions within them were more grave than elsewhere... The mountains were denuded of their vegetative cover, forest reproduction was damaged or destroyed, the slopes were seamed with deep erosion gullies, and the water-conserving power of the drainage basins became seriously impaired. Flocks passed each other on the trails, one rushing in to secure what the other had just abandoned as worthless, feed was deliberately wasted to prevent its utilization by others, the ranges were occupied before the snow had left them. Transient sheepmen roamed the country robbing the resident stockmen of forage that was justly theirs." (Source: Roberts, P.H. 1963. Hoof prints on forest ranges. San Antonio, TX: Naylor. 151 p.)

Over one hundred years later, the effects of intense grazing in the latter part of the 19th century can still be readily seen in many parts of the Colorado Plateau.

Out on the open Plateau, like the picture above, there is no frame of reference. There is no way to see what the land once was or what it has become. Driving around the state, the only place you can see a shadow of what once was is along the highways between the roads and the fences. Sometimes the difference in the growth of the grasses is dramatic, with healthy grass and other plants along the roads and bare soil and rocks just on the other side of the fences on the range land. In the above link to the NAU website, please look at the two comparison pictures of grazed and ungrazed land in New Mexico.