Mojave Desert

USA: CA: San Bernardino Co.: Mojave National Preserve: Sweeney Granite Mountains Desert Research Center: Norris Camp

Today and tomorrow we are split into our crawdads and shuffled between the four instructors to familiarize ourselves with the desert in different capacities.

This morning crawdad 3 (aka Ryan’s Shorts) explored plant adaptations with Emily.  We collected and examined leaf specimens, their vestiture, size, and color that protect them from desiccation, predation by herbivory, and dramatic temperatures.  We looked at Yucca schidigera and Cholla spp. and lots more!  We sniffed at citrusy Thamnosma montana, but were interrupted by a hummingbird on a Pinyon Pine, a classic distraction.  We hand lensed in on annuals in the wash, and on the spongy innards of the Desert Rhubarb leaf.  I learned the term glochids the hard, prickly way, by getting a bunch lodged into my hands.

At lunch we heard from Mark, who gave a presentation about indigenous peoples of the Mojave, namely the Chemehuevi tribe and their land management practice of caring for plants and tending them.  They prune willows for weaving pliability and Prickly Pear to bear more fruit.  Were they conservationists?  Not necessarily, but their relationship to the land is certainly one of care for resources.  We also heard from Jake, who enlightened us about plant communities.  Takeaways from a sock substrate demo and much else was that bigger substrate means that water filters through more quickly, the playa is super low and super salty, and cryptogamic soil increases moisture and soil stability.  It also favors native plant communities as they are adapted to latch on and germinate in cryptogamic soils.

After lunch we joined Camille in the caves of the Granite Mountains near a pictograph and did some sense meditation.  Then we drew a bird’s eye view map of the land to orient ourselves.  Afterward, some keying just for extra fun during our down time, but we spent over an hour on a Phacelia and I have some beef with the key.  (There were no filament flap appendages at the filament base!!!)

Chili dinner wherein to pass the threshold I had everyone give their best fart sound.  Following dinner we huddled in the hut to hear Natural History presentations.  The field guides are enclosed in this booklet!

Finally, we learned about the history of Mojave land management from Elena.  I was surprised by the recent developments in land protection!  Obama era land designations!  We also discussed the differences between National Monuments, National Parks, and National Preserves as federal designations.

Now I am writing this and enjoying a banjo-mandolin-guitar trio featuring the occasional jaw harp.  Many plants today! Many birds, including a sound ID lesson from Ryan just after breakfast.  Many more tomorrow as we spend time learning with Chris about rocks and soil and with Ryan about birds!

In the spirit of the desert winds, ever blowing,

Your bearded wizard,

MC

U.S.A.:C.A.:San Bernadino Co:Mojave National Preserve:Granite Mountain Reserve:Ken Norris Cabin

Above is a picture of some clouds moving across the desert playa taken by the class camera!

8:49pm If you’ve never been to the desert, let me be the first to tell you about the drama. There is more than meets the eye. A whole undisclosed chaotic cast of cacti, birds, rocks, clouds, reptiles, and mammals lay hidden in the sandy washes, just waiting to put on an unexpected show. I had always been a passive desert tourist, driving through the heat and dust in the safe protection of a car, dusting snack crumbs off my feet instead of pulling cholla spines out of them, and shifting to the shady part of the backseat when the window got too hot. I had never really experienced the desert. To really experience the desert, according to author and desert expert Marc Reisner, one must “march right into its white bowl of sky and shape-contorting heat with your mind on your canteen as if it were your last gallon of gas and you were being chased by a carload of escaped murderers. You have to imagine what it would be like to drink blood from a lizard or, in the grip of dementia, claw bare-handed through sand and rock for the vestigial moisture beneath a dry wash.” Reisner understood the drama, and I think I’m beginning to.

This morning, us field quarter students awoke to a scattering of pink and grey stratus clouds shading the early morning sun and providing an added chill. We showed up to breakfast in our own pink and grey clothing, multi-patterned leggings, alien green sunglasses, squid hats, and subtle blue tutus--today was Funky Friday. The morning cold persevered, yet we kept our funky spirits as we listened to the low and dwindling song of the Cactus Wren, or crawled on hands and knees to find the fuzzy leaves of small desert plants.

As the day turned toward lunch, many of us noticed the dark clouds forming over Cima Dome North of us. The cumulonimbus clouds seemed to reach their tendrils closer and closer, crawling towards us across the desert playa, forming more recognizable rain on the nearby Providence Mountain Range. If you’ve never sat in the desert sun and watched a rainstorm move towards you, the suspense is more thrilling than the anticipation of a roller coaster car slowly moving towards the drop. Many of us began running around frantically, trying to secure our tents and pull rain gear over our funky clothing. We braced for desert rain. What would happen? What would it be like? Would the cacti suddenly come alive with the added drops of moisture? Alas, the drama continued, the plot shifted, and as quickly as it had moved towards us, the clouds broke after only the slightest splashes of water dampened our toes. With no rain in sight, we continued our adventures. We shed our rain layers and opted for sun hats. But, for me, the drama continued. Smoothing our fingers over granite rocks, we learned the saga of how these intrusive igneous boulders came to be. Once a melting pool of minerals deep within our Earth’s crust, these rocks cooled over millions of years while slowly making their way toward our surface. Now these crystalized structures sit on the desert landscape, having been witness to millions and millions of years of desert history.

The day ended with a mildly undramatic and extremely delicious purple dinner, and a gorgeous sunset against the nearby mountains. I’m excited what the desert has to offer us tomorrow, and if you ever happen to be driving through, might I suggest you get out of the car, dig your fingers into the rocky soil, and observe the stories unfolding all around you.

U.S.A: CA: San Bernardino Co: Mojave National Preserve: Junk-car Wash approximately 5 km northwest of Norris Camp

          Today began with the whole class taking our first field trip away from the Norris Cabin after two full days of rotating through instructors and hearing what they had to say about the various aspects of a desert ecosystem. We all hopped in the vans and cruised through the dirt road and were greeted with some toasty weather, inside a very large wash. Alas, there were no junk-cars. We started at about 9:50 and were given an endpoint to arrive to by 11:30 a.m. and were introduced to the idea of a “lead” and a “sweep” instructor who are responsible for setting the group’s pace. We were not to pass the leader nor drag behind the sweep and our objective was to cram as much naturalizing between those two people that we possibly could as we hiked. This activity entailed seeing many cool species, such as the Beavertail Cactus (Opuntia basilaris) in full bloom, some lively Ash-throated Flycatchers making their calls that are reminiscent of a referee’s whistle, and we caught a Long-nosed Leopard Lizard, who was relatively content to let us stare at him for a while. He wasn’t very eager to run off after we released him and I was able to snag a nice photo.   

U.S.A.: C.A.: San Bernardino Co.: Mojave National Preserve: Granite Gap

USA: CA: SAN BERNARDINO CO.: SHEEP CORAL: SOUTH NORRIS CAMP & CABIN 

A large lumber grasshopper had appeared at 9:59 am in this windy warm part of the preserve where a small zebra-tailed lizard with blue sides and black stripes on its legs, tail, as well as light dark spots covering its back. These lizards cannot run as fast as other lizards and cannot have long snouts like the long-nosed leopard lizard. This juvenile zebra-tail is 6.5 cm in length with five toes on each foot. This lizard is an insectivore while others can be carnivores and herbivores (omnivores). Males have spots on the back of their hind legs and females are smaller. The males have a 2 elongated penis that can inflate and extract when breeding with a female. A good way of identifying a lizard species is to observe the scales. Average size is 6.3-10.1 cm (2.5-4 inches) in length.

Six more lizards began to appeared in my sight, but they appear to be more than anticipated. The one that has made several appearances is the common side-blotched lizard; the males are larger and have darker scale colorings than the smaller females. We had finally captured a yellow-throated male side-blotched lizard with a blue striped scale pattern on its back and had done push ups for both territorial and for display of fitness for a potential female for breeding. Even whiptails and another zebra-tail were found near the wash where we had found our side-blotched lizards.

The class had split into two groups and I was with the asgarath group that are identifying a small yellow flower with 8 petals, 5 sepals, and over 15 stamens. This specimen was found in the wash towards the farthest mountains away from the wash. We had concluded that it was a Wallace’s Wholly Daisy because it had cotten like silk covering it’s stipe like hair.

USA: CA: SAN BERNARDINO CO.: MOJAVE NATIONAL MONUMENT: AMBOY CENTER AND CRATER

Ryan presents a brief overview of the history of the Amboy crater and volcano. As the continents shifted, the tectonic plates had created new forms of land from mountain ranges, to deserts, to even tropical or forest ecosystems. This also triggered the volcanic eruption due to the separations of continents and reformations of other countries. The fourth eruption occurred in 10,000 B.C. at the end of the last ice age. Chris then lectures us on lizards that inhabit this region of the state. They are ectothermic and have higher body temperatures than most mammals. Lizards are also able to regulate their body temperatures behaviorally through rock sitting, sun basking, and seeking refuge in shaded areas. Iguanas can heat themselves up with rocks warmer than the ambient air temperature. We had found desert iguanas, either underneath a scrub or on rocky boulders and we were lucky enough to capture one of them to get closer observations. It had a bright brown, gold, and white coloring on its back being covered in black spots throughout its entire body leaving the underbody blank white with or without bumps on its under hindlimbs to indicate that it was a female or a male (males have those bumps only!). We also found on the scrubs on top of the crater common chuckwallas that were browsing on some of the woody plants while Chris had attempted to catch one that got away, but caught a different one that appeared after the first one disappeared into a side crack and after I lost a chuckwalla that I attempted to capture myself at the lower crater near the lunch tables. We also attempted to catch a female long-nosed leopard lizard that was displaying orange coloring on its under body that indicated that it was ready to mate with any males that were in the area. We had no success, but we got lucky with a male juvenile chuckwalla with a shorter tail that was growing back and had its previous tail broken off. It was larger than the biggest desert iguana that we encountered, had black scales and a white tail with a fat storer near its hips. On our way back to camp, we passed a roadrunner that ran across the highway and was a little grayer than I had expected since they are normally brown. We also spotted a loggerhead shrike on a yucca tree while we were entering the national preserve to return to our campgrounds.

USA: CA: SAN BERNARDINO CO.: MOJAVE NATIONAL PRESERVE: SWEENEY GRANITE MOUNTAIN: DESERT RESEARCH CENTER NORRIS CAMP AND CABIN

While I was beginning to settle back in at 3:35 pm, everyone had spotted a rattlesnake that was a juvenile and it was resting on a beavertail for quite some time. I was able to key out that it was a speckled rattlesnake, until I was corrected that it was a mojave green rattlesnake it was seen with checkered spots.

U.S.A: CA: San Bernardino CO: Mojave National Preserve: Sweeney Granite Mountains Desert Research Center: Ken Norris Cabin

Today is one of our fellow classmates birthday, happy birthday Matt! We all woke up to unexpected rain showers (in the desert!) around 4 a.m and it didn’t stop until around 6:30 a.m. Unexpected, nonetheless amazing that rain actually does occur in the desert, contrary to what most people would think! We all gathered to eat yummy blueberry pancakes with bananas for breakfast made by our awesome cook crew, shoutout crawdad 1! Due to the rain, our schedule changed for the day and we postponed our trip to the Kelso Dunes to tomorrow in order to let the dunes dry off. Instead today we went to go see the Joshua Trees, which aren’t really trees but are more tree like succulents, at Cima Dome. All of us were astonished by their shapes, sizes, and forms. We were so amazed by the Joshua trees and we spun the wheel about them, until the wheel spun out of control! We also observed creosote, mormon tea, and different species of cacti surrounding these tree-like succulents. I also heard birds chirping and as soon I was leaving I witnessed a squirrel munching on the fleshy blooming flowers of the joshua tree. On the van ride home, Ryan asked us to really spin the wheel and come up with final theories as to why Joshua trees are so tall in height, and why they would want to be this size. Our van group came up with a skit about our theory which was that Joshua trees lived amongst mega flora and fauna and climate change eventually wiped everything out while Joshua tree stood tall and strong even ‘till this day among shorter flora. It was interesting and entertaining to see every group’s theory skit and see how diverse all our ideas were about the Joshua Trees. Afterwards, we learned through Emily and Chris that the real history behind the Joshua trees long ago lived amongst more trees in a most environment while the ground sloth would eat the fruit and disperse the seeds through it’s scat, and this was discovered through fossils. Who would’ve thought! We came back to camp to eat dinner, sing Matt happy birthday and end our day with everyone sharing personal and emotional reflective nature notes, all inspiring and beautiful. Now time to go study for tomorrow’s species quiz! 

U.S.A:C.A.:San Bernardino Co: Mojave Desert Preserve: Granite Mountain Reserve: Ken Norris Cabin