So try to picture these – Acres of purple verbena mixed with white desert primrose stretched out along the base of Coyote Mountain. A desert iguana basking atop a volcanic boulder. More acres of desert dandelions painting the desert floor yellow beneath a landscape of blooming ocotillo and Joshua trees. A crumbling 1950s motel with remnants of Pepto pink bathroom tile glowing in the desert light. The absolute and totally dreamlike shimmering vision of the Salton Sea and its surrounding communities. The incongruity of Salvation Mountain, an apparition of both color and bizarro rising from an already bizarre landscape. A circle of delicate yellow blossoms crowning every barrel cactus in sight. A perfectly posed desert bighorn on a rock ridge, exactly impersonating the Northern Pacific mountain goat. The indescribably perfect plumage across the breast of a California quail. The screaming neon pink of blooming hedgehog cactus. A sleek little black BMW with New York plates buried up to its hubcaps in sand two miles in on a 4-wheel-drive-only road (yes, the accompanying humans were also noteworthy). The wide, locked gate to Crazy Fish Ranch festooned with a banner which read, We Support Our Troops, and a large red-white-and-blue decorated plastic hand flipping off I couldn’t figure out exactly what or whom. Me, probably. More than a thousand Guernsey cows standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a huge (and hugely disturbing) feedlot that extended over a mile in each direction in the center of the industrial agricultural complex known as the Imperial Valley. Without a piece of shade anywhere. Think July.  Think Costco beef. The massive Riccardo Brecceda welded-steel sculptures of Pleistocene fauna

(and a few dinosaurs) scattered across the cactus meadows outside of Borrego Springs. Near Ocotillo Wells (which bills itself as the ORV capital of the world), and abutting the “largest gypsum mine and plasterboard plant in the world”, several hundred mostly abandoned RVs and trailers, but a few with obvious signs of life. Two hundred migrating Swainson’s hawks circling in a Velvia-blue-sky-backed kettle just above my head and feeding on flying ants. The barely visible headlights of Jeeps and ORVs flying across the dunes in the last of the light through a massive dust cloud of their own making, exacerbated by 60 mph winds. See what I mean? And I didn’t even yet mention the naked guy I flushed out of a creosote bush in the middle of a dry lake bed. There is indeed much weirdness in the Mojave but I discovered that very little of it has to do with having massive thorns or a long tail, but rather with the possession of two legs.

Traipsing around the desert for three weeks was long enough to acquire a bit of insight into the ecology of this piece of the Mojave, and the affiliated ecological challenges, which are substantial and significant. The BLM’s continuing sacrifice of huge tracts to motorized recreation is accompanied by enormous ecological consequences, and the invasion of the exotic Saharan mustard threatens much of the Mojave, from Anza Boreggo, north to Joshua Tree and Death Valley National Parks. Anza Borreggo is already suffering greatly with large expanses of what was once exclusively covered with wildflowers and native plants now smothered by the incongruous green of horizon-to-horizon mustard. The only place in Henderson Canyon that even begins to look like the verbena-carpeted Henderson Canyon of five years ago is where a group of volunteers pulled the mustard as it was erupting this spring. It is an annual, so one-time pulling is not going to have much impact. The botanists I talked with told me they had no idea how long the seed bank would be viable. Ten years of pulling? Twenty? Fifty? Across maybe 600 square miles? On both public and private lands? In addition to the environmental devastation being wrought by the ORVs? Hang your head and cry.

I was also there long enough to acquire a deep appreciation for the Mojave Desert as Place, which has been developing through my many trips to Death Valley. And finally managing to be there when the desert bloomed – well, I alternately thought I had walked right into Disney’s film, The Living Desert, or a Taos School painting by Dixon or Blumenschein. The subtle juxtaposition of the reds of the chuparosa, the blues of  scorpion weed, and the yellows of the brittlebush, along with the red tips of the ocotillos waving in the ever-present wind, and the blazing pinks of the hedgehogs and beavertail cacti underneath it all, complete with scampering lizards – the shimmering afternoon heat waves transformed everything into an impressionistic piece of art that could be touched and smelled and heard and felt against your skin. And heart. Life as art. I cannot imagine what it is like to be there in August when it is 110°, but on a brilliant blue sky 80°  March day, it was perfection.

So there’s much more to follow, and I hope you’re intrigued. I want to conclude with one of the best things I encountered on this Journey into the Surreal Mojave (right up there with Mr. Naked Guy and desert lilies). One evening I was hanging out at the Visitor’s Center at Anza Borrego, bird watching and just generally observing life in the desert, when a roadrunner did what roadrunners are supposed to do – ran across the road in front of me. But they are usually alone, and this time a second one followed and I thought, Aha, it’s spring – courtship behavior. They stopped just a few yards in front of me and the one that turned out to be the male dived head first into the middle of a creosote bush and emerged with a lizard dangling out of his mouth. Poor lizard, I thought. Lucky Lady Roadrunner. Mr. Male Roadrunner went running up to the female, lizard in his mouth, and I’m thinking, how sweet, he’s going to offer her the lizard and I’m going to get to see the equivalent of “Hey Honey, can I take you to dinner?” At which point, without even asking which restaurant or Oh, is that lizard for little ole me ?, the female instantly dips her posterior, Mr. Roadrunner jumps on top, and after about 30 seconds of furious activity on both their parts, he dismounts. They both stand there seeming somewhat dazed, looking at each other for about 5 seconds, when Mr. RR explodes in a full run in the opposite direction, leaving Ms. RR behind in his cartoon dust cloud. And here’s the real point of this story – the poor hapless lizard was STILL dangling out of the roadrunner’s mouth as he disappeared into the desert sunset. I have no idea whether or not Mr. RR ever intended to offer the lizard as inducement, as proof of hunting prowess and virility, as thank-you, or was just momentarily diverted from his evening meal. My last thought as I contemplated what had just transpired in about 75 seconds — is this a perfect metaphor for the male sex or what? And I suppose that the little lizard didn’t survive his role in roadrunner procreation, whatever it was. In the end, he was neither bribe nor token of affection — he was just dinner.