Carnival of the Arid #4
Hello, and welcome to a slightly belated Carnival of the Arid number 4! As is becoming traditional, we kick off this episode with a stunning photo by Richard Schwartz, who writes:
I am still sadly blogless. I will be floating down the San Juan late this month and early next, so I thought I would send another pic early on for your consideration.
This one requires a little explanation. Last week we had a day of high wind, so that by mid afternoon the sky was a uniform orange that looked liked the atmosphere on Mars. Fine red-orange dust coated everything. About 4 it started to snow, hard enough to put about 2” on the ground by 6. The snow did a bit to clear the air of dust, but it was still hazy and orange. A bit before sunset the snow stopped and the clouds lifted enough for late, low sun to light up everything with a sepia-like orange-yellow glow from the sun, air, cliffs, and slightly dirty snow. The pic is straight off the camera; no Photoshop or other manipulation.
In 11 years of watching sunsets in upper Castle Valley, this is the only time I have seen this particular glow. It lasted about 30 minutes and was a satisfactory end to a boisterous weather day.
Wow.
Moving on.
Can an island in the Caribbean be considered “arid?” I’m not sure myself, but from Doug Taron’s description over at Gossamer Tapestry, it sure looks that way. Doug visits Bonaire, an island in the Netherlands Antilles 20 miles off the Venezuelan shoreline, and brings back remarkable photos of the island’s cactus-and-thornscrub vegetation.
Just to maximize the range of this month’s entries, let’s follow up the Arid Tropical Island with the Desert Full of Water. At Listening Earth Blog, Andrew Skeoch and Sarah Koschak offer us photos and sound recordings from a once-in-a-lifetime event:
Several years ago, Sarah and I journeyed to the Australian outback, hoping to record the calls of Cockatiels.
We were not having any luck finding them (they are highly nomadic birds, and seemed to have departed the area a few weeks previously). However we did discover something unexpected - a group of ephemeral lakes in the desert, filled with water for the first time in 40 years.
In a more conventionally arid setting, over at AnzaBorrego.net, Bob Baran relates the story of a hike to the Indian Hill Pictographs area.
Carnival diehard Rana at Frogs and Ravens gets personal, recalling Easters spent in the desert as a child, hunting plastic eggs under the cholla and ocotillo.
Michael Welland at Through The Sandglass relays a link to the Guardian’s list of desert-related films, with discussion of a couple of his favorite sandy flicks.
Incidentally, it’s Horned Lizard day here at Carnival of the Arid #4. Elizabeth Enslin offers a fine discussion of Genus Phrynosoma spurred by a hiking encounter with a couple of short-horned lizards (Phrynosoma hernandesi), in an excellent first entry to CotA. Welcome, Elizabeth!
A bit farther north, in Central Nevada, Highway 8a’s Silver Fox runs into a photogenic and cooperative horny toad she tentatively identifies as a Phrynosoma platyrhinos, and then a juvenile probably of the same species sweet enough to make it onto the front page of Cute Overload. Well, maybe. (We all know that the vernacular “horny toad” is a lizard and not any kind of toad at all, correct?)
From humble lizards to queens whose names resound throughout human history: we have it all at Carnival of the Arid. Caroline Gill takes us to the Syrian desert and the fabled city of Palmyra, a.k.a. Tadmor, once a center of world trade and now a romantic ruin and UNESCO World Heritage Site. Caroline mentions a recent archaeological discovery at the site and reflects on the life and legacy of Palmyra’s Queen Zenobia, putative descendant of Cleopatra and Dido and a recurring figure in European literature of the last 1700 years.
Palmyra also figures in the history of Utah, in that there’s a small town with the same name near Rochester NY in which the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints got its start. Utahn Gretchen Baker returns to CotA this month, first passing along a post on the Protect Snake Valley blog: a profile by Ken Hill of the valley’s public high school, apparently doing a fine job educating local young adults out there in the back of beyond. Gretchen also offers a post on her own blog, Desert Survivor, detailing a fascinating trip to the Lunar Crater area in Central Nevada, and a walk into the Black Rock Lava Flow.
At Painting with Fire, Leslie Sobel is thinking about New Orleans and missing the Canyonlands. An odd juxtaposition, but it makes sense when you read it. She has photos of the latter.
I can relate to Leslie’s longing, though I’m way closer to the desert than she is and really have no reason to whine. In my post Regarding the Mexican Wolf I spend a little time ruminating on civilization and wildness and longing, confinement and freedom and comfort and a few other things. And there’s a picture of a woof. You might also like a photo I posted here.
At The Clade, BillW relates the story of a long hike in the remoter parts of Big Bend National Park. Along the way Bill gets headed in the wrong direction, ambles into thorny vegetation, and nearly steps on a poor rattlesnake. I had to double-check to make sure I hadn’t written the piece after one of my hikes.
Also at The Clade, The DesertBlog’s Larry Hogue has an update on Southern California Edison’s role in spiking a feed-in tariff law for Palm Desert. As Larry puts it:
When those of us who think the desert is worth something speak out against destructive, poorly placed solar power projects, we’re called NIMBYs, BANANAs, obstructionists, climate change deniers, or worse. But when Southern California Edison blocks the best initiative available to put lots of photovoltaic (PV) solar power on our cities’ rooftops and parking lots, that’s just business as usual.
On that activist note we end the fourth installment of Carnival of the Arid. Be sure and go comment on the entries and thank our contributors for their fine work! See you next month, and feel free to offer your own pieces for CotA5 either in comments here or by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Comments
Glad to see I got something in there! Next time I’ll try for something more natural, less political.
Gee Chris, I’ve never met anyone who’s spent much time in the desert that didn’t have those things happen. I think we need to create the Order of the Crooked Spine for real desert rats!
stunning photo.
Chris, this is the best CotA ever! Thanks again for hosting. The photo by Richard Schwartz is exceptional - am glad he was there to capture that unusual event (or not so unusual?). The orange sky with red-orange dust covering everything may be related to three similar dust events recorded in the snows of the San Juan Mountains this year, as described recently at Geology Happens.
Snow, red sky, really strange and beautiful.Thank you for the great image.Glad to find you again.
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