Alone III

Continued from the preceding post

There is something about being alone in the desert. As I said in an earlier posting, sometimes I had company when wandering the desert and sometimes not.  Traveling with a companion seems to fill those spaces in our spirit where we may not go very often.  But the doors to those spaces are open when you are alone. When you can see to the horizon where no structures and no indication of human occupancy or industry mar the view, you are alone. Where there is no other obvious animal life but a bird flitting across the dirt track you are driving on or a feral horse or burro standing on a low ridge in the distance, you are alone. I have often wondered if my observations were more acute and my science more precise when I was with others in the desert or alone.

 

One day a group of us were in Ash Meadows visiting with a ‘desert rat’ who had an old trailer there.  He was actually an engineer who treasured the solitude of the desert and who withdrew to his trailer and shade tree whenever possible.  This was the day that we heard that the US Congress had appropriated the funds necessary for the government to purchase Ash Meadows as an addition to the National Wildlife Refuge System.  I was surprised at how mixed my feelings were.  On the one hand, I was exceptionally pleased that the rich biodiversity would finally have lasting protection from the threat of exploitation or developers and agriculturists that had, for so long,  hung like the Sword of Damocles over this precious resource, this laboratory of evolution and biodiversity. On the other hand, I realized that the edgy days I had so enjoyed had come to an end.  Shortly after the purchase I left Nevada for another kind of desert…a desert of the spirit known as Washington, DC.

 

Alone II

Continued from the preceding post

But most of my work focused on Ash Meadows including that strange rift in the crust of Earth called Devils Hole.  Back in the day, there were several ways to reach Ash Meadows. One route took you through what is now the Las Vegas bedroom community of Pahrump.  Another route was to drive north of Las Vegas for an hour or so, past Area 51 (with all of its reputedly strange goings-on), and turn left at the crossroads of Lathrop Wells almost across the street from the brothel with it’s deep red light. From Lathrop Wells the route takes you toward Death Valley Junction, with it’s unique opera house.  Just before you reached the Junction you would turn left again and head out across the desert at the cement factory.  Only in Nevada do you give directions by referencing Area 51 (As Agent Mulder might say, ‘The Truth is out there.’),  a brothel, and a cement factory. But this was the area in which we did some very exciting biology and conservation.

 

Strange things happened in that patch of desert in those times. Like the time that another student and I were driving into Ash Meadows from Pahrump only to be stopped by a Deputy Sheriff who refused to let us past because there was a body in the road. It was a man and he had been shot. We could see the body there in the dirt of the road with blood staining the gravel.  There were those in Las Vegas then (and I suspect even now who solved disagreements in a terminal manner).Shifting into four wheel drive, we circled the place of execution bumping through the sagebrush and across the stone-hard caliche.  As we came onto the main dirt and gravel road and drove on, I remember wondering how the man had died.  Was it quick or had he laid there bleeding his life out all alone in this this great, seemingly empty stretch of high desert …violent death in a land so filled with life. 

Continued in next post

Alone I

Not long ago, a younger colleague asked me to reminisce about the years I spent wandering around the deserts of southern Nevada and southeastern California.  Questions like this sometimes make me feel even older than I am.  When I think about it, however, I’m now into my seventh decade and much of what I took part in has become a page in the history of an exciting story in conservation biology.  In fact, for that region of the world, the period from the late 1970’s to the mid-1980’s were epochal for the dozens of species of plants, fish, and invertebrates living in the high desert area above Death Valley know as Ash Meadow. 

Even as late as the 1980’s Ash Meadows and the surrounding area was still pretty wild.  I spent the opening half of that decade working on my first graduate degree at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and then working for the University as a Research Associate.  There were times when everyone else was busy and I would take a university vehicle, if one was available, or my own vehicle and, alone. I would drive northwest of Las Vegas toward what was then called the Desert Game Range or Ash Meadows or down to the floor of Death Valley or even further north toward Beatty and the Armargosa River and, on some days, east and then north to Hiko and Crystal Springs and the White River Country.  Pupfish, springfish, and poolfish, and their habitats…during those years I joined them wherever they were found.

Continued in the next post

 

Water in Dry Places

Decades ago, along with a friend and colleague, I drove across the high desert of northeastern Nevada to collect a small fish found in only one stream. After miles and miles of sagebrush desert, dry washes, and arid mountains, we overshot our target. We didn’t miss it we were just traveling too fast through that great lonely land to know when we’d arrived.  Stopping and turning around we parked on the sandy berm almost on top of where the stream flowed through a culvert under the road. There is something almost startling about water, of any sort, in such an arid place. In the years that followed, I encountered water in similar places from the springs that fed into the Salton Sea to the springs of Ash Meadows in the Death Valley Region of Nevada/California to floor of Death Valley itself.

There is something almost taunting about water in these environments. There is so little of it amid so much aridity.  In its aloneness, it is startling and often beautiful.  The waters of some of these springs appear to be turquoise while others are more clear than the finest crystal.  I will never forget being deeply submerged in the waters of Devils Hole and watching the bubbles on my SCUBA gear rise toward the distant surface, a small rectangle of turquoise far above me. Water in dry places, in desert lands also has a unique spiritual quality reflecting the both life’s tenacity and its impermanence.

Life Is Tough II

(Continued from the preceding post)

Several subspecies of the Desert pupfish (Cyrpinodon nevadensis ssp.) are located in small spring-fed ponds in Ash Meadows. Some subspecies occupy pools about the size of a small living room and this may be the entire habitat for this fish…the only place on Earth where they live-out their precarious existence.  These pools may hold from several hundred to several thousand of these little fish.  It doesn’t take much to make most of these fish ‘happy;’ just a little water with the right chemistry and temperature range and they seem to do quite well.  I cannot tell how many times I have watched the little male pupfish in their blue nuptial colors claim a spot the size of a hand, a scoured-out depression made by a passing feral horse or burro, hold it against other males, attract a female with his colorful ‘dance,’ and spawn.  The entire genetic history of the species is replicated in a depression not much bigger than a small sauce pan, if that big.

I recently saw a television special on the habitat and wildlife surrounding the Chernobyl  nuclear reactor.  Depending on who you listen to, biodiversity is either recovering or on the wane in that radioactive area.   Regardless of what the data show, there does seem to be a robust population of some species. Humans are not allowed to spend much time in the area around Chernobyl.  Is it the absence of humans that makes for the presence of other species? It is ironic to think that biodiversity may be able to exist with exceptionally high radiation counts but not with the human population counts that existed before the reactor meltdown. 

For additional information on some of the species mentioned refer to:

Baugh, T. 1981. Observations on the courtship and reproduction of the desert pupfish (Cyprinodon macularius. American Currents 7(3):15-18.

Baugh, T.M. 1981. Adapting Salt Creek pupfish (Cyprinodon salinus) to fresh water. Western North American Naturalist 41(3).

Baugh, T.M. and J. E. Deacon. 1983. Daily and yearly movement of the Devil’s Hole pupfish Cyprinodon diabolis Wales in Devil’s Hole, Nevada. Great Basin Naturalist 43(4):592-596.

Baugh, T.M. and J.E. Deacon. 1983. Maintaining the Devil’s Hole pupfish Cyprinodon diabolis Wales in aquaria. J. Aquariculture and Aquatic Sciences 3(4) :73-75.

Baugh, T. M. 1984. In search of the Salt Creek pupfish. Part 1. Freshwater and Marine Aquarium 7 (5): 34-35, 44-45.Baugh, T. M. 1984. In search of the Salt Creek pupfish. Part2. Freshwater and Marine Aquarium  7 (6): 31-33, 54, 56.

Baugh, T.M. and J. E. Deacon. 1988. An evaluation of the role of refugia in conservation efforts for the Devil’s Hole pupfish Cyprinodon diabolis Wales. Zoo Biology 7:351-358.

Life is Tough I

There is more and more being said about the almost continuous discovery of other planets in our galaxy and the number of them that might be able to support life.  I have never doubted that there is life on other planets and have attributed the doubt of others to our human arrogance.  Life on Earth itself is tenacious and resilient.  We find life inhabiting near boiling water in many places, at depths with incredible pressure around the Black Smokers in the deep ocean canyons, and to the near airless regions at the outer edges of the atmosphere

Those of us who have worked in the more difficult and demanding climes around the world know about life’s resilience and tenacity.  Although I have been involved in conservation work with manatees, mangroves, and, most recently, mountain bogs, much of my early work in conservation biology was in the deserts of Utah, Nevada, and Southern California where the nights can be very cold, the days hot as blazes, and fresh water sources few and far between.  What was even more amazing to my friends and relatives was that I was working with fish; small, even tiny fish there in the deserts from the Salton Sea in Southern California, up through the springs and creeks of the mountain valleys of Northern Nevada and Utah, and down to the floor of Death Valley hundred feet below sea level. 

One of these systems, Salt Creek originates in a low range of hills on the floor of Death Valley.  This is the only place in the world that one finds the appropriately named Salt Creek pupfish (Cyprinodon salinus) in a spring-stream complex with water temperatures that reach over 112F in the summer, with salinities much in excess of sea water and with a spring that pumps enough Lithium out to keep a manic-depressive happy for a long time. 

(The comments will be continued in the next posting.)