A Desert Revealing Itself
Kick around the national parks and surrounding lands in southern Utah for eight days, marveling at the stunning geological formations, and it’s easy to overlook the flora and fauna, or perhaps not pay the attention we might.
Had to remind myself of that. Amid a natural landscape, especially, observe. Observe carefully. You’ll be rewarded, as I’ve learned over the years, and as the great nature writers, such as Henry David Thoreau, John Burroughs and John Muir, demonstrated so well.
After a strenuous hike to the iconic Delicate Arch in Arches National Park on a recent day, I focused on the formation in front of me, as other hikers took turns getting their pictures taken below the arch.
After sitting a bit, a black speck atop the arch moved slightly. Binoculars out - Ha! A raven. A signature avian creature of the park, adorning its signature rock formation.
It was like that the whole trip. Look for one thing, come upon another. Be open - alert to - what the landscape offers.
In Canyonlands National Park, while hiking the Murphy Point Trail on my way to a magnificent view of the Green River wending far below, I stopped abruptly when in my peripheral vision I caught sight of a showy plant to my left. Cushion buckwheat. The name does not do this beautiful wildflower justice. Atop leafless stems rising above a thick bed of small, rounded, matted leaves was a mass of creamy-reddish round flowers, the whole plant with its own two-foot by two-foot space in the dry desert soil, as if the centerpiece in a just-weeded garden.
In Capitol Reef National Park, my wife, Susan, and I stopped to make a sandwich lunch at a table beside the Fremont River, in the shade of a towering cottonwood tree. Was this the same cottonwood that I see along the Connecticut River back home? Leaves seemed a little smaller, but still, very similar. Took a photo of the leaves and ran it by an identification app on my phone. It was a Fremont Cottonwood, a close cousin of the Eastern Cottonwood. Both of them like to be near water. Not 20 feet away the Fremont flowed, both the tree and the river named for the celebrated 19th Century explorer (and presidential candidate) John C. Fremont.
Turns out, the Fremont cottonwood was to figure in another observation just a couple of days later. While birding along the Colorado River just outside Moab, Utah, I heard what I thought might be a warbler, but was not sure what it was. It was in another large Fremont cottonwood, though I could not see it, because, like so many other warblers, it wouldn’t sit still. I gave up. But I returned the next day, determined to identify that warbler. It took a half hour but I finally heard it and, though it took longer than I preferred, actually saw it maybe 15 minutes later. Tiny, not especially colorful for a warbler. But there it was - for perhaps three seconds before flitting away. Lucy’s warbler. Found in southeast Utah and a comparatively small area elsewhere in the Southwest, I had never seen one. A life bird, as we birders call these sightings.
Checking the field guides, I found it likes cottonwoods near water. Pay attention and these associations between plants, animals and their surroundings emerge.
At Bryce Canyon National Park, the crowds gather along the rim overlooking the star attraction, the hoodoo towers of red and buff rock, truly awe-inspiring. I wanted to see them again - I visited the park for a first time more than a decade ago - but I also wanted a look at a tree that gets far less attention from park-goers. Bristlecone pine. It is a species that can live for thousands of years - and usually looks it.
Drove to the far end of the park to Rainbow Point, where there is a great view of the formations below and a one-mile loop trail - the Bristlecone Loop. I arrived early and, while stopping often to observe plants and birds, saw no one else for the first 40 minutes.
About half way around the loop - at 9,100 feet elevation - I came to the bristlecones. You can’t miss them - they tend to be scraggly and their needles, which encircle the ends of branches, look like bottle brushes.
They are found at high elevations in rocky, sandy soil that exposes them to punishing winds. Because of that they are confined to small populations in the southwest, growing incredibly slowly. One in Nevada is approaching 5,000 years old.
It was one of those trees I just had to see for myself. And did.
In searching for the bristlecone, of course, I happened upon other plants, including the charming alpine clematis, with pale violet nodding flowers. And what was that plant with clusters of yellow flowers and holly-like leaves? Oregon grape.
But it is geological features of the region that bring the crowds in summer. It wasn’t always so.
In the late 1950s, when Edward Abbey twice spent the warm-weather months as a ranger living in what was then Arches National Monument in Utah, its few roads were unpaved and visitors to its vast expanse of stunning geological formations were scarce.
Many days, Abbey had wilderness to himself. He loved it.
In “Desert Solitaire,” written a decade later and now considered a classic in the environment/nature canon, Abbey set the tone in his introduction: “Do not jump into your automobile next June and rush out to the canyon country hoping to see that which I have attempted to evoke in these pages. In the first place, you can’t see anything from a car; you’ve got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk, better yet crawl, on hands and knees, over the sandstone and through the thornbush and cactus. When traces of blood begin to mark your trail you’ll see something, maybe. Probably not.”
Well, lots of us now jump in our cars, vans, RVs and SUVs and swamp Arches National Park - it became a national park in 1971 - so much so that the park imposed a computerized timed entry system to try to keep waiting times at the gate to something bearable for park-goers. More than 1.8 people visited Arches last year.
It is the unfortunate situation with our national parks. We love them and we often overcrowd them in summer, especially the most famous like Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Zion. Abbey, who died in 1989, likely would be shocked. He was not a guy who liked paved roads.
Traveling through the belt of national parks and monuments in southern Utah, an enormous area that, thankfully, still is, at least in places, wilderness or near-wilderness, it is almost hard today to recall that until the mid-19th Century, wilderness in America was anathema, something to be exploited, settled, tamed.
Given the popularity of the parks, it is equally hard to understand that even to this day many parks or proposed parks are opposed by local interests, often commercial. Creating North Cascades National Park in Washington state, a magnificent park that includes a huge wilderness backcountry, was contentious for decades.
We need more parks. I also think we need to explore and appreciate those national forests, state parks, national wildlife reserves and private holdings open to the public that may not have the name recognition of a Yosemite, but are nonetheless terrific places to commune with nature - and often are far less visited. Perhaps a three-day trip to Arches becomes a two-day trip with the third day spent exploring a trail in a lightly-trod national forest? That could help with lines at some of the big name parks.
In a visit to Yosemite years ago, knowing Yosemite Village would be crowded, I spent my first day in the park at one of its more remote areas. Hiked to a pristine lake and saw almost no other people over an afternoon. I of course then spent several days in the Yosemite Village area, too.
On our trip we dawdled at Dixie National Forest one day, and poked around multiple Colorado River riverbank access points. I even managed to raft 7 miles of the river one day.
Meanwhile, in visits to some three dozen national parks over the years, some of them well known and popular, others less so, I’ve found one pleasing constant, demonstrated nicely at Bryce Canyon on this trip. On a weekend day when the park was mobbed with tourists, uniformed park rangers walked the parking areas, directing traffic, even helping drivers to find a parking place or safely back out from a space amid the heavy traffic. It was as if they wanted to help out.
Park rangers, in my experience, are almost invariably pleasant, often cheerful, no matter how many times a day they are asked questions like, “What’s a good hike for me?”
A raven atop Delicate Arch in Arches National Park, Utah. Arches is a hugely popular national park that drew 1.8 million visitors last year. Click to enlarge.
Cushion buckwheat is far more pleasing to the eye than its name suggests. It was growing beside the Murphy Point Trail in Canyonlands National Park, Utah. Click to enlarge.
Leaves of the Fremont cottonwood, growing beside the Fremont River in Capitol Reef National Park, Utah. Click to enlarge.
Crowds gatherer along the Rim Trail in Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah for views of the park’s towering, colorful hoo doos, the geological formations that are the centerpiece of the park. Click to enlarge.
A scraggly Bristlecone Pine tree at 9,100 feet elevation in early morning light at Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah. Bristlecones are a very uncommon species found at high elevations in the desert southwest. An incredibly long-lived species, one bristlecone in Nevada is more than 4,000 years old. Click to enlarge.
The bottle-brush-like needles of the Bristlecone Pine in Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah. Bristlecones can be found along a high-elevation trail at Rainbow Point. Click to enlarge.
The Colorado Rive flows 2,000 feet below a visitor lookout in Dead Horse Point State Park, Utah. Click to enlarge.
Desert plume, also called Desert Princesplume, was flowering nicely in several of the national parks. This photo is from Dead Horse Point State Park, next to Canyonlands National Park. Click to enlarge.
Double Arch in Arches National Park, Utah, is one of the most spectacular geological formations in the park, reached by an easy, short hike from a parking area. Click to enlarge.
Steve paddle rafting on the Colorado River near Moab, Utah, with guide, Shawn, at the oars. The Colorado is running high because of heavy snowfall this winter in the West. Click to enlarge.