Speaking of parkland

Christine was just telling me about this today, while we were hiking. I didn't know it was happening already. ¡Pobrecitos!

Biologists scour Mojave in desert tortoise roundup

More than 100 biologists and contract workers fanned out across a nearly pristine stretch of the eastern Mojave Desert on Friday to start rounding up tortoises blocking construction of the first major solar energy plant to be built on public land in Southern California. On a sunny morning in the height of tortoise courting season, the biologists methodically peered under every bush and into every hole on both sides of a two-mile lane traversing the project site. Following close behind, workers bladed century-old creosote bushes and erected fencing in areas that will soon be declared a "tortoise-free zones."

The effort in San Bernardino County's panoramic Ivanpah Valley, just north of Interstate 15 and about 40 miles southwest of Las Vegas, disrupted complex tortoise social networks and blood lines linked for centuries by dusty trails, shelters and hibernation burrows.

Federal wildlife biologists said it was needed to make way for construction of BrightSource Energy's 3,280-acre, 370-megawatt Ivanpah Solar Electric Generation System. Without the roundup, an estimated 17 federally threatened tortoises -- and an unknown number of half-dollar-sized hatchlings -- in the 913-acre initial phase of the project would have been squashed by heavy equipment. A total 36 adult tortoises are believed to inhabit the project site. "We can never say we got them all out of there — these are cryptic creatures," said Roy Murray of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service desert tortoise recovery office.

Under a plan approved by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, as many tortoises as possible will be captured, weighed, measured, photographed, blood tested, fitted with radio transmitters and housed in quarantine pens with artificial burrows. The tortoises will remain in the pens until they can be transported and released in natural settings elsewhere in the region determined to be free of disease and predators -- a process expected to take several months.

Tortoise translocation is still an experimental strategy with a dismal track record. In previous efforts, transported tortoises have shown a tendency to wander, sometimes for miles, often back toward the habitat in which they were found. The stress of handling and adapting to unfamiliar terrain renders the reptiles vulnerable to potentially lethal threats: predation by dogs, ravens and coyotes; respiratory disease, dehydration and being hit by vehicles.

But project biologist and tortoise expert Mercy Vaughn was optimistic. "Our goal is zero kill," Vaughn said.

Good luck with that. Good luck, critters.

Desert sojourn, day 30

Queen Valley, Joshua Tree National Park

Christine and I went hiking in the Queen Valley area of Joshua Tree National Park (here's the official map [PDF] if you're interested) and had a great critter experience: we saw two tarantulas. Here's video of the first one:

The second one was motionless at the edge of a hole right at the spot where the first one had appeared -- they live in holes in the ground. Christine pointed out that it was mating season and that "males usually don't survive mating... Maybe she bit his head off."

After our hike, we drove a little ways to a parking area for something called Wall Street Mill, a historical attraction we didn't actually visit. Instead, we took a different, unmarked path that led to these ruins:

She said that this used to a store of some sort and that it was open as recently as the early 1970s -- or so she had heard; there was nothing to tell us what we were looking at. We had already been talking about the officially approved activities in the park -- camping, hiking, rock climbing -- differ from the things you can do in the park but which the park staff doesn't want the public to see or know about, such as precolumbian petroglyphs and other relics. She told a story about going to an officially undocumented archeo-astronomical site -- a place where the indigenous people of the area had arranged rocks to mark astronomical events (of which Stonehenge is the best known example) -- one solstice before dawn, and being detained by park rangers who literally jumped out from behind bushes to ask what they were doing there. It was very different when the park ranger assumed his or her police function, she said, suddenly they're no longer this friendly person in a Smokey Bear hat, suddenly they're a cop. And the rangers were very uncomfortable with anyone knowing about the archaeoastronomy site.

Of course, I understand why the park wants to protect culturally significant sites and objects -- they don't want them to get trashed (like, for example, these vandalized petroglyphs). Other sites, such as the Wall Street Mill mentioned above, or events such as the shootout between two crusty pioneers, fit into the Old West narrative the park wants to present.

But the ruins of the store -- if that's what it was -- have no explanatory plaque, no signs pointing to the site, no mention of it on the map. (Here it is on Google satellite.) The 1960s aren't part of the official history.

By now we were standing beside a large piñon pine tree about a hundred yards from the ruins, close by some sheltering cliffs. "There will never be," I said, "a commemorative plaque about the 7000 great acid trips that people took while lying under this tree." And Christine laughed, because that's the kind of thing we used to do.

Desert sojourn, day 29

Local news accounts are full of the story of the hiker from Los Angeles who was lost in the national park for sex days before being found. The story seems to be everywhere, so it's no wonder it's on people's minds. When I was walking yesterday afternoon -- two hours before sunset, up a dirt road not far from the house I'm renting -- a passing pickup truck slowed and stopped and the driver made sure I was okay. "I wanted to make sure you wasn't like that lost hiker guy," he said. Nope, not lost, and not nearly as well equipped, though I do have a hat and usually a pen.

Somebody should find out what kind of pen it was, and put him in its ads.

In other local news, a bar in 29 Palms burned down on Saturday in the wee hours, and it went up so quick that they're investigating to see if it's arson. The place was a sports bar favored by Marines. Most people told me to stay out of it, which is fine -- I really like the Joshua Tree Saloon much nearer, where I went to watch the first half of a playoff baseball game last night. There the guy on the seat next to me had dialed up ten songs on the jukebox, and with each one he told me why he liked it, and often had a related anecdote. Of Buddy Holly's "That'll Be the Day," he said that Holly had written the song after seeing John Ford's The Searchers, a film where John Wayne utters that line several times -- or so my new friend said.

He went on to say: "I met John Wayne twice. The first time was at Knotts Berry Farm, they dedicated the John Wayne Theater, and he was there and made a speech. He walked by the crowd and I shook his hand, and then later we went out to the parking lot where we knew his car was -- we recognized his car -- and waited for him. When he came out with the guy who drove him, he stopped and talked with us for about fifteen minutes. Oh, he was very nice, extremely friendly. The second time was when I was working at the Disneyland Hotel. He came down the hall and got in the elevator. Then when the elevator went downstairs, I went with the maid into his room and looked at his stuff. There were some cards there with his name on them -- I wish I'd taken one but I didn't -- that he gave out to people, since he couldn't sign his name because he had arthritis. And he had two toupees. Two."

Later in the day: It was warm enough today to read outside in the shade at the end of the afternoon. I happened to look up and see a long line of birds flying from west to east. At first I thought they were ravens, but then I thought, do ravens flock? After thirty birds or so had passed, it seemed like the parade of whatever it was was over. But I looked up later and saw more -- many more. Now it was clear they were turkey vultures, the species I saw a couple weeks ago. A ragged line, lower and closer this time, flew over in the same direction, just north of east. Dozens of birds, not in a straight line, but maybe between 50 and 100 feet apart. A group of twenty or thirty would fly by, and there would be a short break, and then another forty would fly by. I tried taking pictures of them, but failed.

As the sun set, they flew lower, apparently seeking out a place to roost for the night. There are no tall trees right around here and I didn't see them circling to land. When the sun had finally set, that was the end of the overflight. Majestic!

Desert sojourn, day 25

The weather really turned today. Though the sun was, as always, hot and oppressive in mid-day, there was a constant breeze. By 5:30 p.m. when I went outside to read, I actually had to go inside after half an hour because I was too cold. I've turned off all the fans and vents; now, at 7:40 p.m., I think it's about 60 degrees out, or even cooler. Practically a 30 degree difference from this time last week.

I had sort of a critter interaction this morning, if you want to count domestic pets. While I was out on my morning walk, just after sunrise, a pickup truck came bumping along the dirt road. The driver stopped and asked if I'd seen a black and white husky that he'd lost. I said no, but twenty minutes later when I was back in my neighborhood, there was the dog. I called him, and he came over and obediently sat down while I looked at his tag. Unluckily, his only tag was from a rabies vaccination at a vet in Wasilla, Alaska. Well, he was a husky, that made sense. While I was on the phone with them and they were looking up the vaccination records, the man in the pickup came along again, and the dog jumped in the back. The man explained the dog had gotten out when someone left the house earlier in the morning.

If that's not much of a native critter sighting, one very common critter I haven't mentioned yet is the quail. They're all over the place, especially in the early mornings and late afternoons, tootling along on the ground, sometimes in the classic line formation, sometimes in a sort of squad. If they're startled they take off with a very noisy flutter, much noisier than pigeons. But generally they just putter around. They're very cute.

The other very common critter is the cottontail rabbit. They're all over, too, big ones and little ones. Very shy, but you you can't help but notice when they bolt from cover and sprint across the sand until they're out of sight.

Desert sojourn, day 18

Hawks nest along Cottonwood Road, Panorama Heights, Joshua Tree

There's the hawks nest I spotted yesterday. At least I assume it belongs to the pair of hawks I saw hunting from the tops of those same electric poles on two different days. They weren't around this morning; I suppose they hunt different ranges on different days. They aren't dumb. The only critters I saw this morning were two gleaming black ravens. They looked so well-fed that it seemed hard for one of them to lift off the ground, but maybe he was just being lazy.

It's hot again today, but I have no cause for complaint, since it's actually much hotter in Los Angeles, if the weather map is to be believed:

Update: The L.A. Times has just reported record-breaking temperatures of 113 degrees in downtown Los Angeles.

Still, I'm thinking of going to the movies this afternoon, a mid-20th century way of escaping the heat. There is one movie theater, predictably in a shopping center in the suburbanized town of Yucca Valley. And there's a drive-in too, which all my hip friends say is the only way to go. That's in Twentynine Palms. Actually, knowing there's a 6-screen megaplex in a shopping center in Yucca Valley and a drive-in in Twentynine Palms tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the difference between the two towns.

Desert sojourn day 17

Up early today, 4.5 miles. In my now-standard rectangular route in the neighborhood, I encountered for the first time a female runner. She was going clockwise while I was going counter clockwise, so we passed each other twice. She was heavily equipped with the arm-strapped combination music player-runners timer and looked very professional.

I also saw the two hawks I saw a few days ago, and this time I noticed their nest. I didn't have a camera with me, so I'll take a picture tomorrow.

I skipped church and worked all day long on my book, and I got a lot done. While I was working, a coyote trotted right by the window in broad daylight -- it was maybe 10 in the morning -- but I didn't move fast enough to take a picture of him. Handsome animals.

At the end of the day I sat outside reading and drinking a beer. As the sun set I took this picture of the view across the street. It didn't come out that great using the cellphone camera. I guess I was too lazy to go back in the house and get the better digital camera. I took that picture at sunset; the hills are the foothills of the Queen Mountains and they make up the southern border of the national park.

It was quite a hot day. When the sun set I hosed off the west side of the house, where the concrete back porch was radiating a tremendous amount of heat. And it's supposed to be hot tomorrow. I can always go someplace air-conditioned; I can even take my laptop and work from wherever.

When in doubt, just throw anything

A woman fending off a bear attack grabbed the closest thing to hand -- a 12-inch zucchini from her garden -- and threw it at the snarling ursine, hitting it on the noggin. It fled.

Desert sojourn: day 12: Eagles! or buzzards or something

I started my morning walk around 6:00 a.m. and I have a new, simple strategy: walk towards the sunrise until the sun actually rises, and then turn around and walk away from the sun. This worked great this morning, except that I kept going for another twenty minutes or so after sunrise. This caused no problems, except that I went 5.25 miles instead of around 4 miles, and toward the end of the walk I could really feel the sun on my back. Usually I'm indoors before it starts to heat up.

Around 10:15 in the morning, I glanced out the window and saw this:

Click the picture for All Sizes on Flickr.

Then I recalled that Christine had told me a few days ago about just this phenomenon -- huge birds (buzzards?) settle in large trees for the night during their annual migration right around this time of year; they circle and swoop down in the evening, then take off in the morning. And sure enough, this morning there they were.

I caught them just as they were forming up to head wherever they were going. They had a three-foot wingspan -- they were much larger than the hawks I saw yesterday -- were golden-brown, and were sort of circling each other as they slowing gained altitude and headed off to the west. Here's a short video I took with the same digital camera; it doesn't show much detail, but you can see them swooping around each other. Wow, that was exciting.

Update: Christine informs me they are turkey vultures.

Desert sojourn: day 8

A road runner came to visit

Realizing how the rear of the house remains cool all morning long, I've been working at the kitchen table with the back door open. This morning a road runner came by and nearly poked his head in the house. I said "Szzzt!" which I am used to doing with the cats at home to keep them from coming into the bedroom, but the road runner never met a cat and didn't know what I meant; he didn't budge until I picked up the camera. Then he hopped up on the bench where I sit and have coffee after my morning walk, and I got this picture before he hopped off and trotted away.

In the early evening, I drove to downtown Joshua Tree to the studios of the local radio station. It's part pop music station and part small-town local station, with local news stories. My ideal of desert radio is "The Hot One for the High Desert" as heard on The Firesign Theatre's "Everything You Know is Wrong." This station isn't as fusty and weird, unfortunately, but it does have a few distinctly strangely voiced announcers. Tonight I got a chance to sit for over an hour and interview one of the DJs in between announcements. I asked him about a general picture here, and I've tried to be careful not to make it seem like I'm just looking for dirt, but people keep serving it up. According to the guy I interviewed, drugs and crime are fairly rampant. But I also have a contact in the local sheriff's department and want to get his side of it too, as well as the side of as many other people as I can.

It was a little before 8 pm then, and I didn't feel like going home, so I drove 35 or 40 miles to The Palms in Wonder Valley and had a beer. The bartender, an attractive brunette, had one arm in a sling and did everything with the other arm. She kept telling people that she had broken her elbow a day or two before, though I didn't hear how it happened. This place is way out there. After I finished my beer, I went out to the parking lot and looked up at the stars. Even though there was a bright enough moon to cast a distinct shadow, the stars were shining brightly, because there are no other lights out there.

The other good thing about The Palms, aside from its extreme funkyness, is that there are no Marines. Not that I have anything against them, but I don't want to be in a bar when they're drinking. I'd rather stay far out of the way, and if I have to drive 30 miles, fine.