White Sands National Monument

White Sands National Monument
camped at Oliver Lee State Park
Jason and Nancy

 This version of yucca was in huge bloom across this part of the desert, this time the Chihuahuan Desert.



 

 

 

What does this look like to you?  For all the world it looks like snow. It is gypsum—sheetrock.  On the bottoms the stuff is thick like flour.  The dunes themselves are fine sand, about the consistency of sugar.  The visitors center sells and rebuys saucer sleds. Children were sledding everywhere.  A 6 or 7 yo girl and her dad kicking a soccer ball around the hard packed picnic area.  The echoing laughter and Spanish sound musical.  As everywhere, we didn’t have to walk far to be again mostly alone.

“The dunes are easy photography because there is so much white space around everything.  It’s a natural for composition,” Jason contributes.  “Maybe I should start photographing snow.”  He finds White Sands the most notable environment of the trip to date. 

For me it was difficult to photograph. How can a photograph share the feeling of standing on a dune in the midst of 275 square miles of sand dunes white as snow?  The incongruity of warm “snow” . . . Jason trying to trying to do donuts in a big parking lot surfaced by sheet rock mud.  Scientists have found the same hydrous calcium sulfate deposits from Mars Rover substance analysis, proof of water.  And indeed it feels like walking on a Voyager away mission in the Delta Flyer.  Last factoid:  the water table is 2 or 3 feet down.  Desert has a paucity of soil and water, but here there is water.  

 

 A Challenging Hike up Dog Canyon.

 A walking report: We average 12-14 miles a week.  We walk harder trails. This was the first I turned back on.  On Dog Canyon Trail my judgment was that while I could get up, coming down would be too risky.  My legs feel strong, still in all my ability to ascend exceeds my ability to descend. The trail was steep, we crossed maybe 20 feet of a smooth surfaced slanted rock.  I lost footing in loose sharp stones more here than all other trails combined.  The trail itself was steep and it cut into a steep, rocky, cactus-filled mountain side.  Looking down I felt not exactly dizzy, but the need to divert my eyes directly back to the trail.  On the land, stay fixed on where you want to go.  On the water, face the danger and back away.  Life lessons.

NPR series on border stories: One this morning was on the Tohono O’odham Nation (near Ajo and Organ Pipe).  My new acquaintances, Fred and Della, are Tohono O’odham. They used to be called the Papagos.  It was a Spanish given name meaning “bean eaters.”  In the 70s the tribe reclaimed its own name. Fred told me it felt proud to be again “people of the desert”. Then he chuckled, “But I was kind of used to bean eater.”  Travel makes news personal. Tribal law enforcement in one year found 125 dead bodies on their reservation—a problem obviously, but also because it takes tribal resources to investigate the deaths.

Maybe you heard these NPR stories too and they are like the stories we heard again and again, especially around Aho.  Then a story about a woman crossing in a group, being detected by Boarder Patrol, outrunning them and then finding herself crossing alone without even water harsh mountains and desert canyons, arroyos and wide hot valleys.  She was saved, finding a discarded cigarette lighter.  She built a brush fire to insure attention from Boarder Patrol helicopters.  She has decided to stay south. 

A father being deported for the third time.  “What will you do now?”  He responds, rest my feet a little, implying that he will again cross north at his earliest opportunity to be with his 3 yo and 8 yo children in Los Angeles.  “What do you think about being on this deportation bus?”  A voice full of softened sadness, I want to be with my family.

Right on top of that, in a different universe the area is filled with a small nation of comfortable white people traveling for warmth and pleasure.  Many for learning too, for understanding more.  Being in that group requires humility and presence.  At our last border patrol check point, “Is anyone in the trailer? Are you both US citizens?” First no, then yes then back to the incredible journey in landscape.  Someday I would like to live in one place long enough to penetrate beyond the superficial, to better appreciate the complexities.   

Again the military influence so pervasive in the deserts.  Leaving this camp we crossed the White Sands Missile Range.  Missiles are being fired over the roads the morning we left, closing even the major highways. We enjoyed a lazy morning in camp. And the highways reopened 1ish. The Fort Bills McGregor Range and Holloman Air Force Base are also lie near our camp.  After this these photos we moved back to the Las Cruses area.  We have been many days at Leasburg NM State Park campground.

Evening at our camp at the mouth of Dog Canyon in the Tularosa Valley, as big a valley as you can imagine.

Saguaro National Park

 Saguaro National Park

We camped at Gilbert Ray Campground, a Tuscon Mountain County Park.  We took day hikes each morning.  Jason's photos follow . . . mesmerized by the saguaro cactus and its manifestation of spirit.

 

 

 

My photos follow . . .

I watch Fred make prayer sticks for two Tohono O’odham children.  I ask if I can photograph and he nods and smiles, yes. He led the children through a ritual starting with handing them saguaro sticks about 5-6 inches long.  Three sides rounded, one flattened.   He divided it into four sections with a marker and then asked them to draw something important to them in each rectangle—colored markers in a big pile.  He held the stick and asked them to explain what they had drawn, then wound pipe cleaners onto the stick—methodical and certain.  Handing them a bowl of colored plastic beads he asked them to choose four.  After stringing a leather thong through the premade hole at one end, he had the children put two beads on each side of the saguaro stick, the prayer stick.  He tied the knots to hold the beads to the stick and with a third knot closed the leather thong into a handle.  He finished it by tying a more complicated knot in a certain pattern at the opposite end of the stick.  Giving the stick back to the children, he asked them to repeat after him.

Pointing the stick to east, “To the east,”

“To the east,” repeated the children.

“And all good things that come from it.”

Their refrain, “And all good things that come from it.”

“To the north and all good things that come from it.

“To the west and all good things that come from it.

“To the south and all good things that come from it.”

He was careful to close the circle moving the stick back to the east before moving it vertical and holding it down.

“To Grandmother Earth, and all good things that come from her.”

Then up.

“To Grandfather Sky, and all good things that come from him.

“Your sticks are blessed now and you can use them always,” he told the children.

 

Jason in our camper at work on the computer with the photography.  First he takes photos and then he paints them with a computer.

Walking through landscapes I am over and again impressed with how small and short lived our lives.  These plants can weigh 7 tons and grow four stories tall.  At the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum Jason found a map that lights up all the electricity connection in the US.  East of the Mississippi is solid lights, almost no corner of dark.  The West is the opposite.  We are out here scratching the surface of the extraordinary.

Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument And Ajo, Arizona

Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument

And Ajo, Arizona

Camp at Twin Peaks Campground 

The organ pipe cactus does not grow much north of here.  This park sits directly on the Mexican boarder and the cactus is more common to that country than to our own.

Our first experience hiking with saguaro 

 

Hiked into Victoria Mine one morning, an abandon operation within the monument.

 

Note the bathtub.  I’ve been missing mine!

 

A cactus wren.  Many birds here have specialized beaks for getting around the stickers to feed.

 

Took some doing to extract this from Jason’s boot.  The cacti haven’t heard of barbless.

  Ajo was a planned community built in the early 1900s by a mine owner who wanted good things for his workers, tho eventually a labor strike did break the mining.  Phelps Doge picked it up later and eventually marketed the small homes—500-600 sq feet—to snow birds as “the place where summer spends the winter.”

Ajo felt more like a border town than a mining town.  Nonetheless it was reminiscent of the Berkley Pit, tho this one wasn’t nearly as large. 

The coffee place on the town square.  The old guys at the shaded table back in the corner of the patio are like the old guys at morning coffee in every small town. Gamers anyone?!

Protestants

Catholics

A hummingbird nest is not too much bigger than thimble.  It was certainly smaller in diameter than a half dollar.  For perspective, the white is an orange blossom.

The Curley School

This school was renovated by HUD and is now an “artists colony” in a multibuilding complex.  The big old school now houses reportedly spacioius nice apartments and studio space which artists can rent inexpensively.  The top rent we found was 600/month.  Hmm ...

 

The park brochures warn against speaking to anyone with a black water bottle—painted black to decrease reflection and, therefore, detection.

The desert insists on it’s own terms.  Not much spirit of compromise.  You bow to its relentless heat and prickly nature.  If you don’t, it brings you to your knees.  One way or another, it puts one in the praying position.  We often kneel to shoot.

It’s been humbling walking day after day in desert after desert.  We’ve been watching plants make adjustments and adaptations to even slight variations in moisture and altitude.  Resources and expenditures used precisely for survival—practical, sensible, elegant. There isn’t much left over so I admire the cultures that have lived from desert resources.  More about the saguaro in our next blog.

Pipe Organ National Monument was a kind of non-choice—it chose us.  We needed a small repair on Seven (our trailer for those of you don’t know her yet) and the Tucson dealership had the nearest available next appointment and we had some time to kill.  Organ Pipe was a good half way stop.  On all the highways near the border there are multiple patrol checkpoints east and west, north and south. 

One morning early coming out of the campground into Ajo (for my monthly clinic Skype meeting) I drove through a check point, creeping forward with my windows down.  The agent on the driver’s side greeting me with a good morning and a gesture I thought waved me through. As I rolled forward two agents were shouting for me to stop, which I did instantly and they were immediately in each open window.  “Didn’t you see that stop sign, lady?  When you see that, you stop,” loudly from the passenger’s side, a bloated angry frustrated face.

“I’m so sorry.  I thought I was waved through as we have been in the past.”

Then the agent at my elbow gentling and soft, “It’s alright.  We understand.”  Pause and then,  “Are you a US citizen? Okay then, and next time please stop.” I realize after that the “wave through” only happens north to south.

All volunteers, agents and just plain folks in Organ Pipe National Monument, the communities of Ajo and Why acknowledge the level of “illegal activity” in the area.  Human trafficking and wholesale illegal substances are common.  Seems incongruous that it is criminal to need work, and then go to a place someone wants to give you a job.  It felt real tender walking through the early mornings on trails that had evidence of migrants passing in the night.  

Here humans in distress are a more primary concern than the stickers, reptiles, mammals or birds. The sharp distinction between day and night is what keeps things alive and safe—including us.  We were welcomed on sanctioned trails in the day.  We didn’t leave them and we never walk in the dark anyway.  Here is the first place we were admonished not to.

Day and night.  Paul Johnson and Linda Robbins told us they were in Ajo once in August and that all activity occurred an hour or two before sunrise and again at dusk.  Not just animals, even the people spent midday still and inside. 

Yeah, Helena folks!  Thanks to George Shunk.  Paul and Linda invited us over.  When I drove up, out bounds Linda Stoll.  She lives one door down.  They have purchased and are improving the small homes built in the early 1900s for miners.  I kick myself for the photographs I missed.  Paul and Linda have done an amazing and beautiful job with their home and yard.  Linda is working hard on hers too and it’s already great.

Another missed photo occurred when I came around the front of Seven in camp, my hands full, and I almost stepped on a 4-ft rattle snake.  Moving away from me I never felt fear, and only amazement at its patterns and motion.

Missed a nighttime shot of javelina—aka desert pig.   Sturdy looking critters with big thick snouts, black, snuffling and snorting.  I woke hearing something around our camp, right by our trailer and truck.  Decided it was prudent to take a look and found three of the critters–two big (maybe 40-50 pounds, a little bigger than our Zach) and one young ‘un.  Jase woke up and had a look too.  They disappeared rather efficiently, seemingly oblivious to us.  In Ajo they are the resident, and sometimes troublesome, wild life like our mule deer.

Ajo felt really good to us.  Partly for the generous Helena welcome.  Partly for its isolation—80 miles to the nearest box store.   We liked the border town feel and are curious about the Curley School.  It has been renovated into apartments for resident artists and has studio spaces in the apartments or near them.  For me it was the first place that I thought, yeah, we could live here all winter. We could live in one of those apartments; keep a pick up camper for forays into landscape.

Walking the town one morning an old guy, Bruce, invited me to check out his garden and home.  He has lemons, limes, grapefruit, oranges and tangelos.  He has all manner of greens and tomatoes in his green house.  The humming birds blew me away.  He kept saying, get closer, they don’t mind.

I have wondered at the stark humbling, on your knees, spiritual edge of this environment.  Maybe it’s the retirement adjustment. Maybe our Montana environments engage majesty as this does humility.  At home the landscape lifts me up. Here I am on my knees and being shown gratitude from close to the ground.  Who said (John Updike?), “the desert is the palm of the hand of god.”  Seems about right to me.  We are held in the palm of something vast.