Postcards from Desert Conference – Saturday evening: We visit deserts with Craig Childs

Here are a few notes I jotted down during Craig Childs' extraordinary talk. 

Gazing at Craig's photographs and listening to his stories, I think about my introduction to North American deserts that began in Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon, and with a backpacking trip in the Escalante (before its National Monument designation) where I asked as we took our first lunch break on a knob of rippled Navajo sandstone, "Who owns this?" "You do," said one of my friends. I think about the Alvord, about standing on a ridge atop Hart Mountain on a day of pulling fence, about camping in the Pueblos and watching night hawks dive at dusk. 

I think about the high spirits in the room and how love of this hard and amazing and elating landscape has brought us together.

"You find things in the desert," says Craig. "They are a memory of water."

"This dry landscape is in a rain shadow. The desert is a shadow of rain," he says. 

In the desert, Craig tells us,"You start moving toward water all the time. It's a place where the earth looks like bones exposed.

"Why are we drawn to places that are dry?"

"Water is different in the desert. It's unedited,"  says Craig.

"In this landscape, it's all about water," he says. "Water leaves a mark wherever it goes."

"Desert is water leaving its mark – writing its story in the ground."

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Postcards from Desert Conference – Saturday September 24, 2010

Brent, Devon and WendyKay have invited me to post some snapshots of Desert Conference 2010. I hope others will add some postcards of their own in comments or send me some thoughts and/or photos to post. ~ for wild deserts, Lizzie Grossman

Yesterday nine of us hiked up into Horse Heaven. 

Sage, juniper and the occasional pine. Rabbit brush, desert spray, the last lilac asters, husks of buckwheat, up high whorls of spent pasque flower and wild onion. Debra points out needle grass, Idaho fescue, Sandburg's bluestem. A bench near the summit has the surprise of hedgehog cactus – high desert sea urchins. But there is also cheat grass, medusa head, and in a road cut near some old mine buildings, what may be a relative of knapweed. We pass coyote scat. The leavings of coyotes who've been eating juniper berries. Mule deer and elk scat. In the cactus gallery: one dark lizard. 

Devon helps us identify mountain bluebird, Townsend's solitaire, Cooper's hawk, redtail hawk, Brewer's blackbird, mountain chickadees. 

Ochre yellow grasses, acid yellow rabbit brush blooms, red and pink sandstone mottled with black-green lichen.

The ground is littered with the remnants of what ancient volcanoes spewed across the landscape. There are occasional bits of smoothed white quartz, scatterings of iron bearing rocks greened by oxidizing iron and chalk white chunks of solidified ancient ash. The footing demands attention. At the base of the summit are overhangs that are almost shallow caves, nearly big enough to shelter in. There are 360º views above the Cherry Creek drainage. Sutton Mountain, Stevenson Mountain – the John Day far below and just out of sight. When we begin our descent the light has an autumnal slant. 

We stop to admire the view and Will tells us a tale of lava flows, molten rock, upheaval and subsidence. We are standing on slopes shaped by explosive vulcanism and water.

Desert Conference Car Pooling

Please use this blog to share car pooling information for Desert Conference attendees. Please let others know if you are looking for a ride or can offer a ride.