botanizing

Old West Books, Tombstone

Under normal circumstances I would drive through a place like Tombstone, Arizona, while trying as much as possible to ignore it; however, I don’t do that today.  Why the special day? I happened to notice a bookstore, and I’m always reluctant to pass a bookstore without stopping.

In Tombstone’s Old West Books, each volume sits on a shelf with its covering facing outward.  The presentation emphasizes every book.  It also limits the inventory. 

There may be as many as 100 books in the store—the fewest books I’ve ever seen in a bookstore.  There are more cowboy hats than books.  The hats perch atop the bookcases and on counters.   The book inventory consists of western lore and history, mysteries, suspense, and some contemporary nonfiction of the sort that I don’t read.  It’s the first bookstore I’ve visited in which the hats were more interesting than the books.

Amado

It’s Sunday morning, but there are no people at the Universal Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ, Inc in Amado, Arizona.  The Church’s empty parking lot is still moist from rain in the night.

The heat of the southern Arizona morning is intensifying.  Humidity amplifies the heat.  Despite the heat and humidity, I would like a cup of tea.

We have stopped in Amado for tea.  At a rustic minimart, the kind of community store that predates well the current craze of interstate exit minimarts which blaze neon and sport many islands of gas pumps.  The pair of pumps here are old.  I don’t see any tea water in the store and ask the cashier whether he has any.  “We have coffee,” he tells me.  “There’s hot water in the tap,” he says, “but it’s probably not good enough for tea.”  I pass on the hot tap tea but buy ice for our cooler.  From the cooler, I fish a cool can of sparkling water to drink instead of tea.

From Amado, we drive across a desert plain of ocotillo and scrub where birds sing.  Rabbits start among the cholla as we approach.  Adrian catches a glimpse of a javelina.  We drive into mountains. 

In a lush wash bordered by oaks and poison ivy, young seedlings of a Mentzelia stand about two inches tall.  These may be Mentzelia isolata, a species that reaches its northernmost distribution in the mountains of southern Arizona.  We also find a lovely cloak fern, perhaps Notholaena lemmoni, tucked among the thick layers of dried oak leaves and strands of club moss on the shaded higher banks of the wash.

Exiting a ring of hell

It’s about 8.00 pm when I get to Phoenix, where I will spend the night and then pick-up A at the airport in the morning.  I don’t have a destination in the city, except to find a hotel for the night, which should not be difficult.  I enter the city from the north on Interstate 17 amid thick and fast traffic and make my way to Interstate 10, heading east toward the airport, where I expect to find a hotel nearby but do not.  After looping through the airport, I find my way back to Interstate 10 going west, where I realize that the roadway is sunken and prevents me from seeing businesses at the exits, and there are no signs near the exits promoting hotels.  The exit for Interstate 17 comes, and I take it to the south, but still there are no hotels.  This highway loops back to Interstate 10, and I find myself once again approaching the airport.  I am driving in circles.  The heat of the city overwhelms the truck’s air conditioner.    I take the next exit for Interstate 17, and this time go northward.  I imagine myself returning to Flagstaff, which would take a couple of hours although the hotels would be visible and the air cooler, but spot finally a Motel 6.  After an hour of circling and searching, I exit from an inner ring of hell to the cool comfort of chain hotel's room.

From the road in Arizona

click on the images for larger views

Two evenings

I am again on the road. 

In a high valley between red mesas and conifer-covered mountains in southern Utah, I find a campsite among apple trees.  I park in the shade between two of the trees.  My site has a roughly weathered picnic table, where I sit to work on my notes.  There is a horse pasture behind me.  Two horses stand head to butt in classic horse pose, each swishing his or her tail to keep the flies away from the face of the other.

In the evening a young man leads the two horses across the pasture.  Another horse, two mules, and a young woman, who carries an infant, also follow the man.  He leads the two horses through a gate out of the pasture into an irrigated alfalfa field.  The third horse would follow them, but the man hesitates at the gate.  “Stay,” he says firmly to the lone, third horse.  The horse stops and stares at the man.  The horse whinnies, but I sense it is not an agreeable response.  One of the other horses responds.  The young woman’s hair is bright yellow in the late evening light.  She carries the infant on her hip slowly back across the pasture without waiting for the man.  The mules remain to forage near me. When the sun sets the mules bray.  This is long.  Each bray has many pieces—a squeal of drawn breath and barks of forced breath.

Mountain bluebirds forage in the grass of the horse pasture.  I watch them flit from the tufts of grass to the fence that stands behind me.

I listen through the evening to the irrigation—the cook-shook cook-shook cook-shook cook-shook of the sprinkler heads turning to an end and then repeating the motion.  The irrigation waters the same spot of alfalfa from the time I arrive in the evening until I leave the next morning. 

*

The next evening I camp among ponderosa pines at nearly 8000 feet in elevation on the Kaibab Plateau in Arizona.  I have camped before under these same trees.  This is not uncommon in my travels—I often return to camping spots.  When the sun sets below the horizon, the tops of the pines brighten with a harder yellow light.  A swarm of pygmy nuthatches moves from lit treetop to lit treetop.  They are restlessly in motion—hopping round the circumference of the branches as they peck at the bark for food.   A hairy woodpecker pounds a trunk behind me.  There is also an elegant flycatcher that I do not recognize, although I am impressed by the orange underside of its tail.

As the cool darkness comes down, I climb into the back of the truck and into my sleeping bag.  I can hear traffic on the highway that is about a mile away.  Using the light of my headlamp, I take out my notebook and begin to write.

Neighborhood hawks

2 July

A hawk cries.  While this is not unusual in our neighborhood, the cries of hawks this summer have been nearly continuous.  The cry I hear as I arrive home from work comes from a hawk that soars high above the houses of the neighborhood.  Although Red-tailed Hawks commonly come to the neighborhood and yesterday high above three Northern Harriers soared in a tight cluster, the hawk I hear this evening is one of the neighborhood’s Swainson’s Hawks. 

Two years ago Swainson’s Hawks nested in a spruce about 50 yards behind our house, and they are in the same tree with a new nest this year.  I assume it’s the same family of Swainson’s Hawk, although it may not be.   The new nest is at the same level—about 60 feet above ground—as the old one.  The old nest, built on the west side of the tree, was blocked from my view by the tree’s trunk, but the new nest is on the east side of the tree, offering me a view.

I take tea and my binoculars to the deck to check the hawk nest.  The large, mother hawk stands on a branch behind the nest.  She looks shadowy, even in the warming evening light—both parents are dark morphs. 

The downy, white heads of the two young hawks bob in the nest.  The larger of the two, which is the size of a chicken, stands and arches his wings.  I call the larger of the two toddler hawks Pozzo and his smaller, meeker brother is named Lucky.

The mother hawk calls, ruffles her wings, and then preens, pulling at her chest and wing feathers.  Suddenly, she launches from the nest—flying behind thick-topped maples to the south.  I hear her call again, and there is a response from her partner.  Both parents shoot from behind the maple to land at the nest, where they are a dark confusion of feather and wing until, only moments later, in a broad flap of wings the smaller father hawk flies away.   

The mother hawk stands just behind the nest, where she rips with her beak prey that the male brought.  The two young, seated in the nest, extend their necks to their mother.  She pulls quickly at the food and stretches to the young, one and then the other, who take the food from her beak.  The father hawk soars around the neighborhood above the nest.

3 July

In the early morning light, I lie in bed listening to the cry of the young hawks; then a house wren begins to sing.  I get up to look for the birds.  The wren sings from the very top of spruce.  It sits with its back to the morning sun.   The hawk nest quiets.  Both young are nested, and the mother hawk stands guard on a branch.

 A few minutes later the mother flies low behind the maples to a row of tall shrubs between the Lutheran parsonage and the Mormon church.  The shrubs are the abode of crows.  The crows go crazy.  The hawk screams at the badgering crows and flies back to the nest, where she stands for only a moment before leaving again, flying up and around to soar over the neighborhood.

Sometime later, the mother hawk flies low and fast across our backyards with prey in her talons.  At the nest, the mother hawk rips the food apart and gives it to Pozzo while Lucky continues to lie in the nest.

In the afternoon, the crows are again after one of the parent hawks.  All are overhead—silhouetted by the sun.  The crows tail the hawk, which screams when one or the other crow accelerates at the hawk.  The hawk flaps its wings at the attack; it turns sharply, stalls, twists, and flaps again to evade the crows.  The attacks continue until the hawk beats hard and fast its wings and wheels upward gaining quickly crow-less sky to soar high above the neighborhood.  I watch the hawk wind downward until it perches in the sky, holding its position, body arched to hover, over the Lutheran church.

 4 July

Early in the morning, the mother hawk feeds the toddling Pozzo and Lucky.  The two young stand outside of the nest close to the mother, who is ripping pieces of food from prey.  Lucky, the smaller of the two young hawks, takes food from the mother’s beak.  Larger Pozzo pecks and rips at the prey on his own.  Each young hawk bobs backward his head as he swallows.

Although the mother hawk has been at the nest, standing on a branch beside it, except when she has gone to forage or meet her arriving mate, she has been at the nest only intermittently today.  I see her or the father or both soar throughout the day above the neighborhood.  The young cry—krie-ew, krie-ew, krie-ew.  Periodically, I hear one of the parents—as if to say, ‘I’m here—don’t worry’—call from flight, and I wonder whether the parents remain within listening distance of the toddlers (or whether they fly to escape the cries).

In the evening, both Pozzo and Lucky are outside of the nest.  Although Pozzo commonly moves around the branches close to the nest, Lucky is usually in the nest and is often lying down.  Tonight Pozzo sits on the west side of the trunk, where the parents stand at feeding to rip apart food.  Lucky lies against the trunk on the east side.  Pozzo stands periodically to stretch and rumple his wings.  The parents continue to soar above the neighborhood moving swiftly from western to eastern sky—their wings are steady, never beating.  I hear now, and have intermittently, through the evening, a distant ‘krie-ew’ called from one of the parents.

 5 July

This is the first day that I do not see the mother hawk sit at the nest site.  She comes only to feed Pozzo and Lucky, and then returns to flight.  Both parents continue to soar within sight of the nest throughout the day.

 6 July

Song birds sing and a dog barks.  I can hear traffic—the earliest workers of the day are out.  This early morning both mother and father hawk are screaming.  The father sits at the nest, but the mother is in the sky to the west, where two crows chase her.  She wheels swiftly and zips to the nest, and the crows are lost.  Only for the briefest moment are the two parents at the nest together.  The mother has hardly landed before the father leaps to wing and flies away.  The mother hawk begins to tear at food held at her feet.  Both Pozzo and Lucky are standing outside of the nest and both peck and rip at the prey. 

 7 July

About 6.00 am I take a cup of tea out to the deck.  The mother hawk stands in the morning sun on the south branch beside the nest.  She is still and her wings, held just slightly out from her body, appear like a cloak.  She looks like Rodin’s statue of the brooding Balzac.

Several minutes later, a lump rises in the nest.  The back of one young bird comes up, and then the youth stands.  It arches its wings and takes a couple of unsteady steps.  The young bird looks at me—his downy head is still mostly white but has peppery speckles.  He begins to preen—using his beak to pull at chest and wings feathers.  The young bird steps around the nest and cries.  He spreads again his dark, but white-spotted, wings.

By the time I finish my tea I still have not seen the second young hawk.  I worry about an accident—perhaps one of the young hawks has fallen from the nest or been taken by a crow or another raptor.  The preening young bird continues to walk around the periphery of the nest and then steps into it, where it stumbles slightly—and suddenly the second young hawk stands.  It is Lucky, who has been has been stepped-on by Pozzo.  Both of the young hawks now stand in the nest.  Pozzo picks about the nest for food.  Lucky stretches his wings and lies down again.  The mother hawk, seemingly oblivious to the antics, still stands statuesque in the sun at the side of the nest.

15 July

We have been gone for a week, and I wonder whether the young hawks will have flown away in our absence, but, when I check, they are still at the nest.  Pozzo stands on a branch beside the nest and preens.  As usual, Lucky sits in the nest, his back is shadowed and his head looks like a knob.  Lucky turns to face me and cries. Krie-ew . . . krie-ew . . . krie-ew.  I can see the pink of his cheeks.

Pozzo is now nearly as large as his father, and Lucky is only a little smaller.  They have lost the down from their heads, which are now smooth and brown, although they still have a little white at their cheeks and eyes.  Their bodies are a rufous brown although with a lattice of white on their backs and chests.

The mother hawk brings food to the nest and both young leap toward her.  Both Pozzo and Lucky reach aggressively with head and neck to the food.  Pozzo tears at the food, then turns to look at me, a ribbon of prey entrails hangs from his beak, and his head bobs back as he slurps the food into his mouth.

After the feeding, the mother hawk flies across the street to sit at the top of a spruce.  A pair of crows dive at her—one after the other—swooping up and curving down to sweep at the hawk’s head, but missing it by several feet.  The mother hawk dips her head at the dives of the crows until finally they give up.  The hawk remains in the tree and watches, turning her head from side to side.

This is the first day that they have not been continuously within view of the nest (at least as far as I can see).  I see the parents when they come to feed and periodically one will be soaring overhead, but they seem to be distancing themselves from the nest.

 16 July

Pozzo stands this afternoon halfway out a branch on the north side of the nest.  He begins to flap his wings—they are not fully extended, but nearly so—and I sense the power in his strokes.  He leaps up and gently, but quickly, flaps his wings twice and lands on the west branch close to Lucky, who stands in a shadow beside the tree’s trunk.  Pozzo next hops to the south branch with a shake of his wings.  Here he sits and preens for a few minutes until he hops back to the feeding spot on the west side of the trunk, where he picks at spots of food and tilts his head back as he swallows.  Pozzo hops again to the south branch, a spot where his mother has often stood to guard the nest as the young hawks were growing, and spreads his wings—holding them stiffly out in the sun. Krie-ew . . . krie-ew . . . krie-ew, he calls.  I watch his beak open with each call and feel that I can nearly see the sharp sound of his cries.  Restless Pozzo finally stills and stands motionless to stare at me.

 17 July

When the mother hawk brings food, Pozzo tumbles over Lucky, and the mother flees. Lucky disappears in Pozzo’s wings—I fear he has been speared by a talon.  The young hawks wrestle and roil like teenagers until, finally, Pozzo takes the food, leaving Lucky to sit.

18 July

Pozzo is ‘flying’ this evening from branch to branch around the nest.  He flaps and lifts off from the north branch to land on the west branch.  From the west branch he flies to the south branch.  From the south branch he returns to the west.  From the west branch he flies to the south, where he stands and screams.   Lucky stands beside the tree trunk.  Lucky has been about two days behind Pozzo in his development, but he generally has been less aggressive—spending much of his time lying in the nest or sitting by the tree trunk.  [He’s the sort of kid who will probably read novels instead of playing sports.]

19 July

I leave today for another trip, but I check the hawk nest before I go.  Both of the young hawks lie in the nest, and I can see only their shadowed backs.  It is a scene much like that two weeks ago when the young hawks were just becoming active and large enough to see.

Butterflies at Gedney Creek

Thousands of bright yellow and black swallowtail butterflies stream from water puddles.  They are massed in the roadside gutter and alight at our approach.  I can’t help hitting a few as we drive up the Selway River, but most move in fractured waves from the roadside to the edge of the forest until we pass.

At the mouth of Gedney Creek, checkerspot butterflies flutter around us as we have lunch.  These are perhaps northern checkerspots—I have only a quick look and no guide at hand. After lunch, we load our daypacks for a walk up Gedney Creek.

The creek is loud.  The sound dominates.  As we walk, I try to shift my focus from my ears to my eyes.  I can see the creek only through drooping, lichenized branches of the cedars and around the brighter green of the small willows and cascara.  The creek is a rush of white, churning water.  Darker water, which can has lines of Prussian blue, holds to a few stretches on the opposite side of the creek, where a cliff face constrains the channel.

My eyes adjust to the cedar forest.  Where we begin the ground is relatively open, except for fallen logs, wiry stems of snowberry, trailing Linnaea, and clumps of miner’s lettuce that have dimpled petals.  A few weathered bead lilies, their leaves hanging like the tongues of tired dogs and their flowers worn-out, sit in the cedar debris.

For about two miles, the trail parallels the creek, and it holds largely to the riparian zone.   This moist place is lush.  Thimbleberries stand taller than our shoulders, and, at their branch tips, cupped white flowers look directly into our eyes.  The tips of tall bracken fern fronds brush our biceps as we pass.  Slender stalks of valerian, which have delicate white flowers, stand from the lower, leafy vegetation, including clumps maidenhair ferns.

In sunny openings, blue butterflies jangle in flight above blue flowers of penstemons that have a hold among rock outcrops.

The trail climbs abruptly in switchbacks that take us up the slope and away from the creek.  The water’s rushing noise recedes.  The temperature warms. 

In a moist niche, where we stop in shady woods to gather our breath, we see a small, brown skipper caught in a spider’s web.  The butterfly’s wings flutter rapidly.  A small spider treads the web toward the butterfly.  Suddenly, the butterfly pulls away from the web.  We are surprised.  It flies upward—just inches—and then goes downward—we inhale deeply, expecting the butterfly to catch again in the spider’s web—but it veers right and lands on the rounded shoulder of a mossy stone that anchors a corner of the web.  The moment feels perilous. We back away, leaving uncertain the butterfly’s story.

Collecting the new Mentzelia

I stay close behind Melissa.  She walks up the desert wash in Chaco sandals and a skirt.  Her steps are swift and balanced.  It is difficult for me to match her pace. She walks through the creek.  I plant one huge hiking boot at the creek’s edge and look for a stepping stone at midstream—which I don’t see—then stretch my stride to reach as far across the creek as possible.  Melissa, who works for the National Park Service on vegetation management, found last fall a new population of our likely new species of Mentzelia.  Today, she’s taking us to the population.  Melissa had been working with her vegetation survey crew to gather data on the effects of tamarisk removal.  We arrived as she and her crew were finishing lunch.  Melissa put down her lunch box to lead Wendy, Max, Heidi, and I the half mile or so up the side canyon to the location where she found the new population of the new Mentzelia. 

Seeing the population will provide me with important details about the kinds of environments used by this unusual subshrubby lineage of mentzelias.  I want also to collect some additional individuals so that we can understand better the variation characteristic of this new species.

“It’s along here,” Melissa says and slows to look at the gravelly hump along the spine of the creek’s channel  “There it is,” she says a moment later and points to the plant.  The Mentzelia is growing in compacted gravel and sand in a shallow bank along the creek.  It’s an odd place for a Mentzelia of this sort—we usually find relatives of this species growing on steep slopes of loose rocks or on knolls that have gypsum crusts.  “There’s another one along here,” Melissa says.  I look up the creek and then see the other, smaller plant a few feet from the first one.  

Wendy, Max, and Heidi arrive, and we all admire the new mentzelias.  “We should expect them on these slopes,” I say, and we disperse to climb the loose, mud-colored stone of Muav limestone.  Wendy is above me on a steep slope when I begin to find additional plants.  She climbs to one of the plants that is growing on a stack-like outcrop of stone, and here she finds a single open flower.  We had not expected open flowers in this population, which we expect to flower later in the summer like other closely related subshrubby mentzelias.

As I walk along the slope above the creek, I find more individuals of the Mentzelia.  They appear to be most frequent in the angles where stone outcrops meet the talus slope, which probably offers some advantage in increasing the amount of water available.

Wendy sits in the wash to press our collections of the Mentzelia.  We talk about the oddness of finding the plants growing in the unstable wash, which has the advantage of offering more water than the steep, talus slopes but would be prone to scouring floods that could wash the plants away.  As we talk about the possibilities of the plant’s seeds to germinate and establish themselves in the wash, I look down and see five young seedlings of the Mentzelia.  These are young plants that probably germinated earlier in the spring.

Finding the Mentzelia population has given me a huge energy boost—which I need because we are soon expected at the rafts to continue our trip downriver this afternoon.  I fill my hat with water and put it on my head.  We begin swiftly to walk down the wash.

[this essay dates to 4 May]

On the water

I am not easy on water, having never learned to swim, flunking even the lessons in floating that I had as a small child at the swimming pool in Ft. Madison.  The thought of being on water makes me apprehensive. 

As the boatmen finish rigging the gear on our rafts, the rest of us find life vests.  We don and attempt to fasten the vests, which are too tight or too loose.  We adjust for each other the various straps until each of us, taking a deep breath, is able to snap our plastic buckles in place, and, then, breathing out, we feel our chests and ribs constricted by the now snug vests.  Just before we board the rafts, the boatmen give us instructions on what to do if we are thrown in a rapid into the water and how they will rescue us.   I waddle toward my assigned raft.  I feel Frankensteinian—that is, like that man’s constructed monster—made of cast-off and miscast parts—my arms are propped outward acutely by the life vest, and both arms and legs are enclosed in hobbling layers of stiff, synthetic fabrics and raingear.

We motor down the cool morning river.  The first small rapid splashes us with cold water.  I shiver and wonder at the cold ahead.  We stop soon—only a mile or so from the put-in at Lee’s Ferry.  

This trip through the Grand Canyon with the National Park Service is to conduct vegetation surveys and make collections of plants.  Lori, one of our leaders, introduced us yesterday to the projects for the trip, which are centered on the invasive shrub known as tamarisk or salt cedar.  Tamarisk was introduced to North America from its native range in Eurasia and Africa in the 19^th century.  During the dust bowl years on the Great Plains, tamarisk were planted to create windbreaks to limit soil erosion.  Since then, tamarisk have spread to the rivers of the southwestern US, where they form thick bands along the edges of rivers and washes, out-competing native trees, such as cottonwoods, and changing dramatically the vegetation of riparian zones.  Tamarisk are common along the Colorado River, and they became especially prevalent in the Grand Canyon after the Glen Canyon Dam was built upriver.  The dam regulated water flow, eliminating seasonal flooding of riparian zones in the Grand Canyon, which allowed the proliferation of tamarisk and various other changes in canyon ecology.  Lori tells us that the Park Service has not attempted to manage tamarisk along the Colorado River, but they are working to control its spread in side canyons (see this link).  Our trip is devoted partly to surveys of side canyons where tamarisk has been removed to determine the consequences of the removal efforts—whether tamarisk or native vegetation is returning—and monitor for the spread of tamarisk. 

A second facet of our trip is to survey for the presence and spread of tamarisk beetles.  A few years ago, biologists in Utah began to experiment with a natural predator of tamarisk—a beetle (Diorhabda carinulata) that forages and reproduces only on tamarisk—as a means of controlling population spread of the invasive plant.  The tamarisk beetles have moved south from their release points and have settled on tamarisk populations in the Grand Canyon.  The Park Service is interested in studying the spread of the tamarisk beetles and whether they can help limit the tamarisk invasion.  Our crew has been armed with insect nets and instructed on sampling for tamarisk beetles and beetle eggs.  At our first stop along the river, a team from our rafts samples for beetles using the insect nets, which they sweep across the branches of the tamarisk.

My mission on this trip is to collect plants, and I am joined by colleagues, Wendy and Max.  Wendy has been studying the flora of the Grand Canyon for many years, and she knows intimately the place and the plants.  Max, too, knows the plants of the region exceptionally well.  While much of my research involves plants of the Colorado Plateau and more generally the intermountain western US, I do not know the flora of this region like Wendy and Max.  I feel like an amateur in the face of their floristic knowledge.  While Wendy and Max marvel at a sedge that grows near the water’s edge, I wander the gravelly bar.  I find a lovely Orobanche (broomrape), which Wendy tells me is unusual this far northeast in the Grand Canyon.  I find also a population of Cronquist’s blazing star (Mentzelia cronquistii).  The blazing stars are my reason for being here.  I have been studying the evolution of blazing stars for several years, and Wendy and I believe that we have discovered a new species of blazing star in the Grand Canyon.  This trip through the Grand Canyon will give us a chance to explore for additional populations of the new blazing star and give me the opportunity to sample the diversity of the various mentzelias that are here.

We stop next at Cathedral Wash, where Apache’s plume and prince’s plume are in bloom, and a hackberry in bright leaf has fruits.  As the day edges onward, our stops to survey for tamarisk beetles become quicker, and there is little time to botanize.

The raft moves calmly on smooth water.  I grow comfortable with the boat and the water.  We are quiet in the afternoon, after shade descends on the channel.   The shaded river has a wiggly blue path at midstream where sky and water, in a way, meet.   Our course down the blue path is bordered by deep, rufous browns and viridian.   Where the river manages a reflection of a sunlit cliff face, the water shimmers with orange. 

We enter evening with a series of rapids.  I grab a firm hold on a rope that secures our gear (and hopefully me).  Each rapid begins with rolling arcs of shiny water—I am enamoured by the curve of water, and I would stay here on the rapid’s tongue where the water bends and shines like metal—and then we plunge into the holes where white, shattered water curves high, rising over the front of the raft, and back at us.  The frigid splatter hits like shots, and we twist away, recoiling tensely, at each strike.

In the mid day heat, I had taken off my rain gear, allowing the rest of my clothes to become soaked.  In late afternoon, when shade descended on the river, I grew cold and put on again my rain gear, which served to keep the cool air and chilling spray of water away from my skin, but the rain gear held a clammy cold from the wet clothes tightly against me.  Is this a pleasure?—I wonder to myself.  I am anxious to reach camp.

*

Sun shines on our camp.  When we arrive the rafts must first be unloaded.  We then receive instructions on how to set-up the kitchen and toilet.  I shiver through the instructions—my shoulders are tensed against my chill, and I can hardly move in my drenched, cold clothing.  When we are released, I take my gear to a pair of large boulders that will serve as the head of my bed for the night.  Fleece pants, a dry, cotton shirt, and a fleece pullover are readily at hand in my pack, and I walk upslope behind the boulders to change clothes among the shrubs.  In dry clothes, I warm quickly, and the pleasure of the place returns.

[this essay dates to 2 May]

Night at Lee's Ferry

Even the cacti—their pads and withering flowers ringed in fleshy pink and chilled purple—look wrinkled from cold at Lee’s Ferry.  The night’s cold causes me to pull the hood of my sleeping bag tightly around my head.  Only my nose and eyes are exposed at the opening of the hood.  With two fingers and the thumb of my right hand I reach across my body to find the Velcro flap that seals the opening of the sleeping bag at the top of the zipper.  I sleep warmly in the cold night. 

 

[this essay dates from 2 May]