August 25, 2005 – One of the great appeals to me of the Southwest is the ability to notice and appreciate each individual element of the natural surroundings as I encounter it. Water and nutrients are scarce, so plants keep their distance; some even exude poisons from their roots to prevent competitors from establishing themselves nearby. And without a thick covering of vegetation, rocks, crevices, and other features of the terrain command attention as well.
In such a landscape, individual bristle cone pines less than fifteen feet tall stand out as sculpture, their wonderfully convoluted shapes bearing witness to centuries and even millennia of hardship and perseverance; bold rock faces challenge the best work of modern artists with multi-colored displays of lichens, patiently assembled and subtly metamorphosing over the decades; and ephemeral pools of limpid water hide below pour-offs in empty canyons, remnant memories of sudden storms, surrounded by the tracks of the wildlife they sustain.
Many years ago, when I briefly made stained glass windows for a living, I built quite a large commission depicting a Japanese garden. Before going to work on the design, I spent the better part of a week in the library (remember libraries?) absorbing the principles on which such works of landscape art are based. I’ve forgotten most of what I learned then but recall that classical Japanese gardens employ only a few stone shapes, pagoda designs, tree types, and gravel patterns, each of which has its own associated symbolism and all of which together inspire calm and contemplation. The results can be stunningly successful.
Happily, anyone can appreciate the exquisite beauty of each element of a Japanese garden, as well as the serenity and appeal of the whole with no knowledge of the symbolic meanings that lie behind the design.
I find the comparison to a Japanese garden to be inescapable wherever I travel in the Southwest. The landscape is a kaleidoscope of settings of charm and beauty not only in the broad sweep, but also in the finest details. I am camping as I write this at about 7000 feet, in one of the juniper/pinyon pine “pygmy forests” that are common at that altitude. Each tree stands at a respectful distance from its neighbors, and gnarled, twisted roots extend, octopus-like amid outcroppings of volcanic rock, pocked and contorted from erosion and graced by a perfect camouflage pattern of gray-green lichens. Occasionally, brilliant splashes of orange-red fire dot lichens electrify the somber faces of outcrops. Some species of lichens can live for 4,000 years. How old are these?
My campsite is on one of the innumerable sloping lifts that together comprise the Nevadan Basin and Range. Each is a plate of crust broken free from its neighbors, Western edge weighted down with accumulating sediments and Eastern aspect a bold, raised escarpment greeting the rising sun. The result is so pervasive that Clarence Dutton, a pioneering geologist of the Southwest, likened the myriad ranges to “an army of caterpillars marching towards Mexico.”
The example upon which I’ve made camp terminates in a sheer rock face a half a quarter mile away; its edge is gradually breaking away in great chunks, forming a boulder garden below. Approaching the edge requires a measure of mountain goat agility, deep fissures interrupting your path in the last hundred yards, and the surface weirdly eroded where weaker elements have been dissolved by rain.
On this irregular platform of rock, not only are lasting water and nutrients almost non-existent, but the winds of winter sweep with full, unbroken force as well. In the shallowest depressions and fissures grow miniature ferns and flowers; in those that are slightly larger, the most determined pinyon pines might attain a height of just five feet, though each will have a trunk more than ten inches thick at its base. Farther back, in a shallow pan of accumulated gravel and organic matter, an ancient juniper is a tangle of bleached-white, barkless trunks from which extends a single live branch, a narrow, sustaining band of living bark connecting it to the roots, and its flat, scaly greenery decorated with tiny teal-blue, berry-like cones.
Nighthawks, working overtime, swoop overhead in sharp, jaggy flights as they hunt insects. They are the arctic terns of arid places and make a frequent call that is something between a squeak and a beep! (The Audubon guide, trying its best, describes it as peet!) Platoons of pinyon jays play tag, flying from pine top to pine top, keeping in constant touch with their own indescribable call. Higher overhead, ravens fly past and vultures spiral high in the warm updrafts spawned by the dark, volcanic rock.
Places like these are a photographer’s paradise, as are millions of acres of desert, crag, canyon, and alpine meadow throughout the Southwest.
To me, the deeper meaning of these natural Japanese gardens is that they are precious, crying out to survive. If I were a writer of inspirational literature, I might strive to find more metaphors in the determined struggle of these ancient trees in the face of the unstoppable might of nature. But such window dressing should not be necessary. The importance of ensuring such scenes survive to sustain the lives of our grandchildren should be evident to anyone whose own existence has been enriched by their presence.
You can find the first post in this series here
If you’d like to read future posts in this series, be sure to provide your email address in the upper right corner of this page and check the “Email notice of blog entries” box
Follow Us!