The Colorado Plateau (5/2/2024)

If you are somewhat of a regular, you know I always have a few books open, and yes I need to update my reading list on this blog. Currently, I am reading Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey. While this is a required reading as I describe <here>, I am getting a lot of enjoyment out of it. Abbey is a radical; he was on the FBI watch list, and I just read that he wanted to grind up all the domestic dogs into hamburger and feed it to the coyotes. He was hoping that this might change the tune of coyotes and make them more pleasurable to listen to. I have heard many coyotes in the Chihuahua of southern New Mexico during the field work that I was doing for my Ph.D. On top of that we have seen and heard them in the woods behind our home here in suburban Virginia. I dare to differ with Abbey in that I actually enjoy their shenanigans and howling.

Abbey's description of the landscape in the Moab area hits me in the guts. I spent time in the area in 1980 and 1981 to do field work for my Masters. His description of the landscape is amazing: the Henry Mountains, Dead Horse Mesa, the La Sal mountains, the towns of Hanksville, Blanding and Moab, the Bear’s Ears, and of course Arches National Park. My research plots of the time were in the Henry Mountains, near Fry Canyon, in the mountains near Monticello (between Blanding and Moab), and near Green River. 

I realize now that I might as well have spent time on some of the mines Abbey wrote about but were abandoned when I spent time there in 1980. Abbey wrote about uranium prospecting in his book, and I was working on the results of all that work.  As I am sure, a lot of you are aware of, uranium was used to generate energy and for more sinister reasons such as blowing up things and killing millions with one small bomb.  Southeastern Utah and the Moab area is littered with mine shafts dug into the cliff sides and piles of waste materials that were dumped below those holes. These dump sites were bare, and we were doing research on the revegetation of these piles. 

 My research involved the revegetation of uranium mine-spoils. Uranium and its mining features heavily in Desert Solitaire. In the 1940s, 50s and 60s uranium was in huge demand; areas in Ontario Canada and in the Canyon lands had some the largest deposits of that mineral in North America.  At the time Blanding had a uranium enrichment plant.  I also worked on a site of another uranium enrichment plant in the Red Desert of Wyoming, just north of Green River, UT and Rawlings, WY.  That plant had a large herd of wild horses nearby and it was always fun watching them gallop through the area.   

One of my favorite experiences was my work near Fry Canyon. The canyon was aptly named, it was scorching hot in July. My thermometer read 110 degrees. It had the typical desert vegetation of juniper, salt bush, galleta grass, Indian rice grass and I remember seeing mallows, sunflowers and cacti. We had our two dogs with us and during the day they slept under the truck I was driving. We had to drive up a dirt road in the canyon and arrived at my plot after maybe a half hour to forty-five minutes off-road driving. Camping there was fun as well. Just nice to be out so remote in the desert with no extraneous sounds or lights. It is something that the folks I follow on YouTube (my guilty pleasure) that live in vans out West often do. I remember wondering about cougars, poisonous snakes, scorpions and coyotes.

In 1980 we showed my parents around the Four Corners Region when they visited from the Netherlands, and we took them to Moab, Arches and Dead Horse Mesa. What still amazes me was that during our visit to Dead Horse Point, we were standing and looking at the Colorado River, when a car drove up and two Dutch ladies stepped out, speaking Dutch. At that point there were five citizens of the Netherlands and only one American on the point. Quite a coincidence. One of my favorite memories is that after the meeting we decided to drive down a dirt road to the Colorado River. My wife Donna walked in front of the car (an old AMC Pacer) to move all the big rocks out of the way, make sure we would not bottom out or slide down the ravine.

As I mentioned before, we returned to the area in 1992 and it was great to see it again. I was more of desert rat by then, after getting my Ph.D. and subsequently having lived on the Colorado Plateau in Gallup. Abbey's description of the Navajo, the people, the nation and the treatment of the people was very familiar as well; I spent 3 years working with and around the Navajos. I describe our recent visit to Gallup and the region <here>.

Anyway, these are some of the things that I am reminded of when I read Abbeys book. While he is an interesting writer with great observations, his book can be tedious at times because of the run-on sentences and the difficult words. This is something I try to avoid in my lousy writing, but Abbey is a master. I found one sentence that is an entire paragraph long and in print was something like ten printed lines in the book. Moreover, I had to use a dictionary to look up some of the words he uses. But he was radical; while most of the time I agree with him, I would not dare to put some of it in print. He had guts and called it out.

I hope it was somewhat interesting and motivates you to pick up this interesting book.

September 24, 2024, my return to the desert of the Colorado Plateau.

Desert and Walden (3/22/2024)

Last week I signed up for a workshop with Clay Jenkinson that will be held at a resort in Idaho in early January next year. I will need to fly into Missoula, MT and it is somewhat interesting to tell folks it is in Idaho, because it feels like it is in Montana. The workshop is a discussion of two books, somewhat like a book club. We will be discussing Theroux's “Walden" and Abbey's “Desert Solitaire.” Interestingly, I have both books and have read parts of both of them. While it is still nine months or more away, I started re-reading Desert Solitaire.

Desert Solitaire discusses Abbey's time working for the National Park Service at what is now Arches National Park. I spent time in the Moab, Canyon Lands area in 1980 and 81 during my graduate studies at Utah State University. We returned as tourists in 1991 when we lived in Gallup, NM. By training, I am an arid land (or desert) ecologist, or even better a plant-ecophysiologist or stress physiologist. Abbey's book is hitting close to home when he details the plants, animals and sights in the Moab area. His environmental views also align with mine, and I even think his cynicism. Naturally things have changed since the time he was there. I remember well that we felt terribly intimidated by the buff young mountain bikers during our 1991 visit, so we decided to just go for a hike in Arches and not rent bikes (and make fools of ourselves).

While reading Abbey's book I wondered about my desert experiences. Where have I seen them, encountered them and spent time in them? My first real encounter with a desert was that morning we woke up in the airplane that took us to our new job in Uganda. This was in 1978 and we were flying over the Sahara. I was in awe. Later in life I have set foot in what looked like a desert in the Turkana area of north-western Kenya; I spent a lot of time in the Four Corners Region of the US; on the dry Tibetan Plateau of Nepal; in the deserts of Yemen; Egypt; and in the Chihuahua in southern New Mexico. I also spent time in the Great Basin, the Sonoran and Mojave deserts of the U.S. I grew up on the Island of Curacao and lived there for 13 years and this island was pretty dry as well. The island was covered by cacti. This might explain my love for the desert.

One of these days I will try to describe some of my experiences in all these deserts. For right now I’ll start with some generalities about why I have this love for the desert. As I mentioned, I grew up in the Caribbean, and from my bedroom on the island I grew up on I could see for miles. I could see the main land of Venezuela on a clear day, and at night we often saw the lightning on the mainland. With every lightning bold you could see an outline of the mountains sixty some mile away. I often tell people that I need to see the horizon, or at least be able to see for miles and miles. The desert allows that. While as I am sure you are aware of, I love trees and forests; however, I need to get away from that and broaden my view. During our recent trip through the Dakotas I was in heaven as well, driving through the more arid short grass prairie and again being able to see the horizon.

Being an ecologist, desert survival of plants, animals and even people fascinate me. This is what I call stress physiology. Even when I was working on my bachelor’s degree in the Netherlands in pasture ecology and agriculture, I was spell bound by an article in (forgive me) the Readers Digest about reforestation in the Moroccan desert. I fascinated me so much that I requested a book by Evenari entitled “Negev the challenge of the desert.” The book detailed traditional (Bedouin) and modern ways of living and surviving in the desert. I read the book from cover to cover. This was before my Sahara flyover. Anyway, stay tuned and I'll write more some about my desert experience another day.

The high Arizona desert.   We are looking back at the mountain above Flagstaff.   I took this picture in September during our trip across country.