“ To sleep—perchance to dream ...” – Shakespeare (Hamlet) Winter is an excellent time to enjoy desert landscapes. Cool temperatures provide ideal conditions for long comfortable hikes. However, it is not my favorite time. As hot as deserts can be during the summer, the cold winter temperatures also limit who is awake and can be...
“ A species is a reproductive community of populations (reproductively isolated from others) that occupies a specific niche in nature.” — Ernst Mayr A niche in the ecological sense was derived from the Middle French word “nicher,” meaning to nest. The term ecological niche was first employed by Joseph Grinnell in 1917 in the paper...
“I would not sacrifice a single living mesquite tree for any book ever written. One square mile of living desert is worth a hundred ‘great books’ – and one brave deed is worth a thousand.” — Edward Abbey Across the grasslands of the Chihuahuan Desert in New Mexico and Texas, mesquite is loathed, reviled. Mesquite...
“The grass and the vines and the willow trees were all so lush and vividly green that he was slightly awed by them. Their location within an alcove of a cliff made all of it more remarkable. It was such an unexpected place for something so beautiful, like an oasis in the middle of a...
“ Perhaps I am just a hopeless rationalist, but isn’t fascination as comforting as solace? Isn’t nature immeasurably more interesting for its complexities and its lack of conformity to our hopes? Isn’t curiosity as wondrously and fundamentally human as compassion?” — Stephen Jay Gould One of the scientific disciplines primarily populated by naturalists today is...
“ Without rain, there is no life." — Jerry Yang During these late fall and winter months, you can often look toward the mountains and see snow capping the peaks, reminding us of the winter season even when it can be 80 degrees here on the desert floor. Take a closer look and you will...
“ Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.” — Frank Lloyd Wright One of the many mysteries of mysteries of nature, one of those riddles wrapped within an enigma for desert naturalists to ponder, is “what factors determine when annual wildflowers will bloom?” Clearly the amount and timing of...
“ The lizard brain is hungry, scared, angry, and horny.” — Seth Godin Any attempt to infer what other species think is a mistake. Nevertheless, we can probably be safe to assume that survival is at both the forefront and backdrop of any individual’s thoughts, regardless of what species it is. Survival includes finding sustenance...
“ Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” — Carl Sagan Under the rubric of natural history, that “something incredible” might include asking, “What is it?”, identifying if a species is new to science or perhaps just new to a particular location, to “How is it connected to the larger web of life?”, or...
“ All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful ...” – Cecil Frances Alexander (1848) Ms. Alexander was referring to “all god’s creatures” and at the same time making an argument that all life is precious, regardless of whether we perceive them as cute, or cuddly, as food...
“ Nature is not more complicated than you think, it is more complicated than you can think.” — Frank Edwin Egler Frank Egler was a plant ecologist who, among other accomplishments, assisted Rachel Carson in her writing of her profoundly impactful book, “Silent Spring.” As Egler so correctly stated, ecological systems are exceptionally complex with...
Rescue: free from confinement, danger, or evil I would add another environmental-based definition: “to slow, halt, or reverse a threat that could otherwise lead to local or broad-scale extinction.” Modern climate is resulting in hotter, drier conditions across the deserts of the world, hotter and drier than most species have ever experienced. Across the hottest...
“ Every single living thing is food to at least one living thing.” — Mokokoma Mokhonoana Every single living thing is connected to other living things. Those connections are through parasitism, predation, herbivory, or pollination, and they are essential for sustenance, growing, and reproducing. Over past millennia, as climates changed and species moved, either previous...
“ Earth’s geology, like its life forms, constantly changes as time passes. Seas rise and fall, mountain ranges erode, and new mountains ascend. What was once was a verdant forest can be replaced by a desert ... Earth’s geology is magnificently restless, and that is the key to understanding the generation and regeneration of Earth’s...
“ No matter how hard we try, the fires are going to keep getting bigger, and the reason is really clear. Climate is really running the show in terms of what burns.” — Park Williams True, yet there is another driver dictating wildfires in deserts – invasive, non-native grasses. There are grasses that are native...
Ecotone: a transitional area between two plant communities, such as forest and grassland. It has some of the characteristics of each bordering ecological community and often contains species not found elsewhere in the overlapping communities. Ecotones, sharing species between different ecological communities, are areas with higher biodiversity than either community alone. Local examples include transition...
“ Without rain, there is no life.” — Jerry Yang So true, and acutely so in deserts. One of the many insidious impacts of modern climate change is that arid regions, including deserts, are becoming both hotter and drier. Our current drought exceeds any in more than 1,000 years, and if the modeled predictions are...
“As one grows older one should grow more expert at finding beauty in unexpected places, in deserts and even in towns, in ordinary human faces and among wild weeds.” — C. C. Vyvyan “But what attracted me to weeds was not their beauty, but their resilience. I mean, despite being so widely despised, so unloved...
"Cruel birds, ravens, but wise. And creatures should be loved for their wisdom if they cannot be loved for kindness." — Hannah Kent “Raven?? Yes?? What do you believe in?? I believe in – finding out!” — Ellen Schreiber Early desert naturalists rarely saw ravens. Their field notebooks recorded ravens maybe once in a week...
" Mountains know secrets we need to learn. That it might take time, it might be hard, but if you just hold on long enough, you will find strength to rise up" – Tyler Knott Escaping the ebb and flow of ice sheets during the Pleistocene, our desert sky islands are populated by vagabonds from...