The more I learn about the desert fires, the bleaker my outlook becomes. I have spent the last weeks immersed in scientific studies, talking to wildlife biologists and range ecologists, reading about the history of fires and the politics among land managers and local resource extractors, watching as a record number of acres of desert land is irrevocably altered, and I become convinced the world is ending.
I had thought, when I started to write my little book on the Joshua tree, that it would be a simple, straightforward paean to a species I admire so well. I spent years observing, learning, growing to love this tree. For nearly a decade I would scold myself that I should get off my ass and write. Seven, eight years passed. Four thousand words, maybe five, were all I had to show for that span of time.
And then April came, and I finally got nine chapters of the book drafted with ten more mapped out, and then the world changed. The largest fires ever to scorch the Mojave and Sonoran deserts happened within two months this summer, and the summer is not yet over. Nearly a million acres burned already, some of the fires the largest the desert has seen in 10,000 years, and the summer is not over.
Matthew and I watched twin thunderstorms roll past us on Cima Dome last month. Lightning struck to our north and south. One of the strikes caught, off to the North in the Kingston Range. Only the vicissitudes of wind direction kept those strikes from hitting the Dome, whose Joshua tree forest is readier to burn than the brush of Wild Horse Mesa or Mormon Mountain. Both of those places burned catastrophically within the last month.
And if the Dome escapes the fires this year, we can only relax until the next wet winter. And other places will burn: Wee Thump, or Dolan Springs, or the Pakoon. And where the land burns, the invasive red brome then grows, fueling more fires. It is a juggernath. I asked one scientist whether he thought we would see the extinction of the Mojave and Sonoran deserts in this century. He was reluctant to give me a definitive yes. There might be something we could do to stop the process, he said. He didn’t know what. Nothing that had been tried so far had worked, he said. Now. he said, is the time to start trying things we don’t think will work.
Far from being a pleasant diversion, a writing exercise, pretty words to evoke lovely landscapes, my book is becoming an elegy. I’ve worried whether my writing would bring people to fragile places, burden the desert with sightseers. Now I fear that readers will never be able to viisit the places I describe. Some of the landscapes I’ve written about have already been destroyed, and more will follow each year. I am not writing a guide for travellers: I am writing an obituary.
Amid this I read an exhortation to downplay this “side issue” because, as the writer put it, “[W]hen Democrats regain power, choice, the environment, worker’s rights — the whole gamut — will be protected.”
Never mind that if you were to try single out an individual human as posing the greatest threat to the landscapes I prematurely mourn, that person might well be Harry Reid. Never mind the arrogance, the sheer self-centeredness of the tone. It is the parochialism of the statement that knocks the wind out of me. Yeah, he sees the unraveling of the global suite of ecosystems, the erosion of species and the accelerating pulses of disruption. But that’s not as important as a dominance battle between two factions of a tiny elite of one species of primates without whom the earth would, unequivocally, be better off.
I have spent many hours these past weeks staying the hell away from my computer. Not reading. Trying not to think about my book. Wishing I could submit, wholly and without regret, to the temptations of misanthropy.
I prune trees instead.
I worked on the live oak behind our house today, cutting the low-hanging branches on which I’ve been hitting my head back to higher-trending forks. I fretted these last years about Sudden Oak Death, but that scourge may pass without much damage. This year’s crop of acorns is healthy, and the fox squirrels will plant new trees thoughout my yard. I agonize when I have to pull them though I have killed more coast live oaks than most people I know.
Yesterday it was the shrubs. Becky hacked away at an aromatic sage that had completely grown over our path, and I fed ten-foot butterfly-bush stems into the chipper-shredder. We piled up two cubic meters of branches and leaves, and the engine reduced them to a quarter that volume. They will make compost to feed the soil. This is an accomplishment I can claim, perhaps my most durable: a manuring of five thousand square feet.
Cleaning up the last of the fallen twigs, I saw the moon rising yesterday over the far hills across Pinole Valley. She was reassuring. Something I love will stay the same. Let the wars rage, the fires burn, let the desert forests become ash before the swirling wind. Let my people die in fear and recrimination. Let a million innocent species end, to compost futilely on a sterile soil. The moon will still swing overhead, waxing as we wane. Even as Earth’s slopes increasingly resemble hers, Luna will look down upon them, bathe them in her sweet cold light. That, at least, is reason for some small gratitude.
Mi luna
ha visto tanto
que cuando le canto su plata me acuna
como a los santos
y los prisioneros, los amantes
los locos errantes y los pordioseros
que amamantamos tu luz.
Cuando no hay amigos, pan ni dinero
solo la poesía que flota en el aire sincero
y en las bancas solas
que hay en los parques
que mueren de frío
esperando amores amanezqueros.
Ay mi luna llena, escucha la pena
cuando un hombre canta
al amor que espera
Ay mi luna llena, escucha la pena
cuando un hombre canta
al amor que quiere
Ay mi luna llena, escucha la pena
cuando un hombre canta
al amor que muere
Ay mi luna llena.
Posted by: Chris Clarke
Categories:
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Desert
Politics
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Science
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