I miss you like the deserts miss the rain...
Pop quiz: what do leaves on an ocotillo indicate?
Correct! There’s recently been rain in the desert!
Let me tell you, folks, all the ocotillo nearby are awake right now. From Death Valley through Nevada and on down to southern Arizona, the rain has chased us all the way. Granted, we stayed ahead of it enough to avoid some of the lashing that California experienced, but only just. Some nights, we’ve made our bed in the back of the Blazer to avoid the worst of it. Though we do have a circus-tent-sized tarp to cover everything if we need to.
If this isn’t the image of the desert in your head, well I don’t blame you. It wasn’t mine, either! But our timing has resulted in some unique desert experiences, ones we could definitely not have anticipated.
Here, for example, is my first glimpse of Badwater Basin in Death Valley National Park:
Take the human out of this scene and it really looks like another planet:
If you read the Wikipedia article about Lake Manly, it’s all in past tense, as Lake Manly is an ancient lakebed, no more a permanent feature of the desert landscape. But it occasionally reforms in heavy precipitation, and has been persistent since August 2023. On the day we walked to the edge with our umbrella, Lake Manly was in the process of being replenished by the first of the two recent atmospheric rivers, so it might stick around another little while.
No birds in sight on the water, though. It’s salty, as you might imagine. Normally, the salts leach out of the dry lakebed and form these amazing geometric patterns, like pancake ice. As we saw it, the salts were half-dissolved in crumbling crusts on the surface mud:
This was a truly incredible view of a rare landscape! And it’s really helped bring alive the vision of an ocean forming someday in the low spreading center of the western basins, which I recently read about in John McPhee’s classic account, Basin and Range. For anyone curious about the rocks underfoot, I highly recommend beginning there, with his wonderful litany of the poetics of geology.
Did you know that when it rains enough, even the rocks in the desert turn blue?
Just kidding, that is definitely not the reason this rock is blue! It’s pretty, though. Perhaps some chrysocolla, a copper mineral. I might only ever get as far as the poetics of geology, but it’s a start.
Here’s another beautiful side effect of the rain:
This was one of the nights we slept in the back of the Blazer. Maybe forty minutes after this rainbow sighting, it was pelting rain and wind. But it was worth it!
So here we are, after all that rain, finally enjoying a little bit of sunny Arizona at our campsite in Madera Canyon:
Oh my!
But who can resist the excitement of a snow day? When Tyler opened the tent flap in the morning and told me what was out there, I sat up faster than I have any other morning and whooped with joy: “snow???!”
The big bonus here was two-fold. They closed the road up to the campsite to keep the curious hordes from driving the narrow, unplowed route and creating havoc, so we shared the camp with only two other people that night. Deep solitude! And, even better, look who came down to lower elevations to hang out with us:
Yellow-eyed juncos are a life bird for us, one we have missed on previous journeys through this region. We’re so excited to experience their savvy gaze, along with a host of other regional specialities: Arizona Woodpecker, Pyrruloxhia, Bridled Titmouse, Mexican Jays, Chihuahuan Ravens… the potential list for Arizona is long and ambitious. Though we aren’t here at peak season for the broadest variety of hummingbirds in the area, we’ve had wonderful luck at some of the famous feeder stations in Madera Canyon and the Patagonia area: multiple Violet-crowned and Broad-billed Hummingbirds, Rivoli’s and Rufous.
But it isn’t a flashy parade of birds every minute out here. The desert is often vast and sparse, quiet but for the wind. The other afternoon, we stood in the grasslands at Las Cienegas National Conservation Area, waiting for a single peep from the rippling hills. For several minutes, maybe a half an hour, absolutely nothing. We walked a quarter mile, a half, stopping to listen but hearing nothing except our shoes on the gravel road.
And then, with no warning at all, a flock of Horned Larks alighted! As our eyes adjusted on them, we could see nearby a whole patch of grass vibrating with sparrows. We scoped and counted the Vesper Sparrows, hoping for maybe a Rufous-winged or a Longspur in the mix. And though we never saw anything but the Vespers, we were both grinning, happy, light at heart. What’s better than a sunny day, and silence adorned with jangling birdsong?
What a magnificent time you've landed yourselves in the desert! And the wonderful way you share your experiences, ahhh heart warming.
"...and silence adorned with jangling birdsong?" ...who said you weren't poetic!? I love this post about the raid-fed desert. What a magical time to be there. I'm imagining all of the marvelous smells!