After a month into this gig it seemed like we should put some thoughts to paper on this experience thus far. Truly, living in a National Preserve is an incredible experience. We’ve fallen in love with this stretch of land and all is has to offer. It has all the glamour of a National Park without all the notoriety or visitor-ship. Not officially “Parkies” we’ve been given and impressive amount of trust and responsibility and since we’re volunteers we’re the only ones around here who can truly complain about the government not paying us enough.
We stay at the Hole in the Wall campground and when working at the visitor center our commute is about a ¼ mile walk down the nature path lined with signs that call out plant names. At the visitor center and sometimes in camp we get opportunities to chat with some real gems. Many folks know the place better than we do. Other times people are happening upon the Preserve because Joshua Tree has become too crowded or they’re on their way to see the Death Valley “super bloom”. Either way they are pleasantly surprised to have found such a wonder. Our campground is around 4,400 feet in elevation surrounded by cactus-yucca scrub. The campground nine miles up the road another 1000 feet higher turns into pinyon/juniper forest. Going south the elevation drops and creosote takes over. It’s over 80 miles to the grocery store, cell service and internet are limited and sometimes non-existent if the lines go down (often). Needless to say it’s remote and we’re getting spoiled.

Beyond the real human friend we’ve made who works in maintenance and lives up the road we are visited often by curious cactus wrens, a cute cottontail and just this morning a Say’s Pheobe perched on the bike rack and shared a stare at us through the back window.

Monday through Wednesday are our days off and we trade our weeks with errands and honey-do’s with camping in other areas of the park. So far we’ve camped at Kelso Dunes, up in the New York Mountains and among the Cinder Cones which was my personal favorite so far. We walked around in Black Tank Wash where we heard a burro, saw quail and got to see both petroglyphs and pictographs from a bygone era.

We showed up here in the dead of winter and now everyday a new plant is leafing out or even blossoming, days are longer and warmer (until the next storm). It’s an easy lifestyle to live each day in gratitude, even if the work is a little more tiring and creative crushing than we had hoped, it’s hard to complain.

Earlier this week we took a break from our eastern side of the Mojave National Preserve to spend some time exploring the western portion of the place, specifically the Kelso Dunes. Spanning 45 square miles the dunes stand out from all the surrounding mountains with their soft brown peaks. Extending up from a skirt of creosote plains to approximately 600 feet at their tallest peak the dunes will catch your eye long before you get to them. Even though the previous week brought a rare dusting of snow to the dunes I had hoped that the recent heat wave might bring out some critters. I am hoping to one day catch a sidewinder doing its dance on the sands but I’ll spare you the suspense and tell you now there was no such luck this time.

Geologically young, Kelso Dunes started forming roughly 25,000 years ago. The fine grains of sand have blown over from the Mojave river sink and Soda Dry Lake to the northwest having been lifted and carried for miles by the prevailing winds. Dunes sort of march forward by having steep peaks that topple forward in a lift and fall repetition, stopping only when they meet a force greater usually in the form of a mountain range. In the case of the Kelso Dunes they stopped just north of the Granite Mountains. These are the Granite Mountains within the Preserve, not to be confused by the other two sets of Granite Mountains within a hundred miles of these Granite Mountains. These dunes have been stabilized in this location long enough with not much new sand accumulation to be pretty well covered in vegetation. The plants adapted to live with the ever changing dunes tend to have more stabilizing root systems and can withstand being partially covered from time to time. Although it’s not uncommon for them to be so buried that they suffocate and die. Even creosote growing in the sandy dunes skirts will adapt to have more roots than neighboring creosote in rocky soils. Other plants grow quickly spreading many seeds then die off before letting the dunes have a chance to change too much on them. We saw one such plant beginning to sprout, the endemic Borrego Locoweed. It only rains about 4 inches a year here. When it does rain the water percolates straight down. The fine sand is a tight filter so one does not have to dig deep to find moisture. Much like shimming your feet under the beach sand on a hot day.

Of course the best part of the sand is that animal tracks show so well. And because the wind is constantly sweeping tracks clean they are usually relatively fresh. Although it’s not always easy to know just who left the tracks you’re looking at it is a fun game to try and guess. A friend and her family visited us at the park and she took a picture that made me think immediately of ravens. However, comparing her boot next to the tracks in the picture makes one think it would be one big raven! There are kit foxes, coyotes, cottontail and jack rabbits, beetles, lizards and the world’s cutest rodent…the Kangaroo Rat.

As luck would have it Tim caught something small moving in a hole as we made our trek towards the top of the dunes. We sat quietly, Tim with a camera and me with the binoculars, while about 50 feet away emerged a Kangaroo Rat beginning his/her nightly duties of sweeping the entrances to at least four holes, taking stock of the plants nearby and occasionally stopping for a scratch. We giggled, took pictures and sat in gratitude for its willingness to share this time with us for about 15 minutes. After one last dramatic flip into its home again we moved on to our original intent. Slipping in the soft steep sand we made it to the top of the highest peak just in time for sunset. A moment shared with a few others who’d made the trek from the other side of the hill. Heading back down towards camp we ran down the untrodden portion of the hill and managed to make the dunes boom with each step. Kelso Dunes and the Eureka Dunes of Death Valley National Park are known for this booming sound as air escapes between the sand when it is disturbed. It brought a child like joy to the end of our evening.

Here’s a link to the video Tim took of the Kangaroo Rat: https://youtu.be/TecgDGdkqE8

Visiting so many of our National Parks this year we were inspired to look more at the possibility of spending some time as park volunteers. It seemed like a bit of a pipe dream but, we looked anyway and eventually landed on the Mojave Preserve (http://www.nps.gov/moja/index.htm). With some interesting twists of fate we were officially offered the position and start on January 20th, 2016. We plan to stay on until the end of April. With all this rain we might just be in the right place for an epic desert bloom in spring.
We’ll be spending most of our time at the remote campground and visitor center at Hole in the Wall. The preserve has only a few paved roads and a handful more dirt roads. While the lights of Vegas are as clear as day on the horizon the skies above are wide open. With this in mind we’ve ditched our kayaks and packed our new telescope.

Of course traveling around this year was a dream come true and we are so grateful that we took the risk and did it. Well, mostly a dream come true. Living on the road, especially covering the miles that we did, is not the same as a vacation. We thought we’d have more downtime that we think we’ll finally get over the next few months. We expect to be plenty busy on our working days but are very much looking forward to being in one place. Considering that the Mojave preserve is 1.6 million acres we’ll still have lots of exploring to do.

Thanks everyone for following along in 2015. Your words of support meant everything to us. Happy 2016!

Never use a palm frond to pull yourself up. I learned this the hard way when I was 9 or 10 years old. I had become separated from my dad and siblings and, since they were up ahead, I needed to get up a large step on my own. Turns out palm fronds are sharply barbed and instead of lifting myself up I managed to slice my own palm as it slid down the frond. To be perfectly honest I don’t remember much of what happened after that. Such are my memories of the great many hikes I have done in Palm Canyon.
Palm Canyon oasis is located in Anza-Borrego State Park, which is in the Colorado Desert, which in turn is part of the greater Sonoran Desert. The California Fan Palm is rare, found only in a handful of canyons in the Mojave and Sonoran deserts. The only native palm in western North America was a source of food Native Americans and its berries are still for Orioles and Coyotes. The dead fronds that fall about the trunk like a layered hula skirt protect the trunk and create a protective roost for small birds.

Anza-Borrego was the former delta for the Colorado River and it’s common to find fossilized sea creatures. What used to be much less common was a glimpse of the Desert Bighorn Sheep which frequent the oasis. Borrego is the Spanish word for sheep. My dad would often bring binoculars and would scan the hillsides looking for the sheep. After so many years of no sheep sighting I just gave up looking. A couple of years ago after Christmas I, along with some family members, made the trek to the canyon. The man at the entrance booth enthusiastically told us to look out for the sheep as they’d been spotted many times recently. We more or less brushed it off since we’d had no luck in the past. We hadn’t walked more than two minutes when seven ewes and one ram walked 20 feet in front of us as they crossed the trail. My mom, niece, nephews and cousin stood very still while my sister grabbed her phone to video them go by. Incredible is a bit of an understatement. We couldn’t believe our eyes that after all these years we finally saw them and so close! Turns out the video didn’t take because my sister’s phone had a full memory. We laughed that no one would believe us.

The sheep populations are a constant struggle. When the populations seem to recover mountain lions eat well and can bring down the numbers pretty quickly. Worse than that is their susceptibility to illnesses from domestic sheep which are often allowed to graze on BLM land near Bighorn Sheep habitat. Because they have no natural resistance to these old world diseases they are much more lethal to the Bighorns, who often die within days of contracting the illnesses. There are some steps to trying to keep them separate and Bighorn introductions back into native habitats often have excellent results.

Palm Canyon was such a wonderland and sacred place for my family that we never really explored Anza-Borrego beyond its walls. How could you not be drawn to the cool pools of water in the heat of summer? In 2004 a flash flood completely reshaped the canyon trail and the oasis. In my youth there was a deep pool a little ways before the Palm Oasis that one only wanted to swim in on the hottest of days. The large boulders that created the pool blocked most of the sun and the water always stayed chilly. The Palm Canyon of my childhood has been scoured and filled in and is gone forever but the specialness of the place remains.

Earlier this month was my birthday and even though it’s a bit of a drive from San Diego Tim, my mother and I made the trek out there. Due to time constraints we didn’t make it to the Oasis but that didn’t matter much. The Colorado Desert is a place worth the drive for just a few hours of enjoyment. Palm Canyon is a place of refuge, a soul nourishing place that even after my parents divorce they continued to individually still take us there. Over the years we’ve brought new family members and old friends to this beloved place. Early in my relationship with Tim we camped there with my siblings when my niece was just nine months old. My brother dutifully carried her on his back most of the hike. To go with her again at 5 years old and help her over big rocks and watch her girly shoes light up and sparkle as she hopped, jumped and climbed right behind her older cousins gave me great joy. Someday soon I’ll get to see her baby brother most likely leading the pack with all his energy to spare and I hope in the not to far future to bring my in-laws there to share my family’s special place they way they’ve shared theirs with me. After seeing and experiencing so many wonderful places this year it was nice to come back to see the place where my love of the outdoors was instilled.

A couple of years ago on a fateful trip down the Green River with Tim we found ourselves on a sand bar on our bellies looking closely at the Sacred Datura plant. Our close inspection put us face to face with a large green caterpillar with large white spots that looked like eyes down its sectional body. Keep in mind we’d been in the depths of Canyonlands National Park of southeast Utah for five days when I tell you that looking at this perfectly plump juicy looking specimen that I had an overwhelming urge to pluck it from its protective roost and eat it. Such is the power of the desert that it can make a jack vegetarian want to be an insectivore.

How is it that in a lunar landscape, shaped by wind and water, the massive sandstone layers that make up the Grand Staircase of the Colorado Plateau have not all but washed away? This desert filled with plateaus, canyons, slots, cliffs and such wondrous shapes as hoodoos, goblins and sandpipes, hints of ages long since past with dinosaur, plants and ocean fossils, entire petrified forests with old trunks emitting a rainbow of minerals. Thunderstorms fill the summer air and flash floods stir up rivers of red, winter brings snow at higher elevations and yet only 6-8 inches of water on average.

To understand how with all this weathering it manages to still be fecund, at least for those who have adapted to this desert turbulence, you have to watch where you step and maybe even get on your belly. Look closely at the ground. What you’ll eventually see is a community cyanobacteria, lichens, mosses, green-algae, micro-fungi and bacteria called Biological Soil Crust or Crypto-Biotic Soils. These crusts take years to form. Shaped but pale in color that crust may be 10 years old, dark thick crusts could be well over 100 years. National Parks like to remind us that one boot print can wipe out the whole thing. In other words “Don’t Bust the Crust”! Crypto-Biotic soil is credited with producing oxygen and pushing nitrogen into the soils. Also know as “nitrogen fixing” which is necessary for plants that need nitrogen to grow but cannot absorb the nitrogen from air. Without the Biological Soil Crust there would be nothing more than the blowing sands and towering stones.

In complimentary contrast the green of the junipers, pinyon pines, cottonwoods and willows only highlight the beauty of the red, pink and tan sandstone walls, stream-beds and soils. With the juniper/pinyon forests dominating the landscape you’re never far from the shade of the twisted, gnarled papery trunks of the Utah Juniper (Juniperus osteoperma). Due to the harsh growing conditions a 50 year old tree might not even top your head and a tree several hundred years older might only be double that height. The blue “berries” of a juniper are actually tiny cones covered in waxy protection. These berries are an important food source for birds, rabbits and coyotes alike. Traditionally the juniper was used as a medicine, fibers for shoes, beds and even toilet paper. The rot resistant wood has also been used for both fence posts and roofing. This strong scented tree manages to withstand the high winds and lack of water. Juniper trees can cut off water to one or several branches in order to keep other branches nourished and still producing seeds in times of drought. So well adapted as it is there are some who might call the juniper invasive, this is really an allowance of normal ecological succession with lack of fire disturbance to hold back the tree’s spread.

Watching the orange glow of the fading sunlight on the steep walls of red I know the best part of this place is coming soon. After the smores are made and the coyotes have begun their call of carnage the night sky begins its show. Far from the city, suburban and industrial lights the milky-way illuminates the sky. Even on a moonless night there is enough light, if you let your eyes adjust, to take a little stroll. Late one night by the embers of our fire we both caught a shooting star followed by a dramatic fire ball.

After we’ve moved on I dump out sand from my boots. Red flakes dot the sidewalk, reminding me that I may come and go from southern Utah but that red sand and orange glow are forever with me.