The Desert Greens Up

The desert greens up with the late summer rains, turning rock and sand into a carpet of lush growth.  The drought resisters put on new leaves, and the drought evaders spring up, grow, and flower almost overnight.  As we walked the Cottonwood Springs trail in the Franklin Mountains State Park, we were surrounded by an unusually lush Chihuahuan Desert.  I was reminded of Isaiah 35, which anyone who has lived in the desert can relate to--a vision of the dry land blooming and suddenly filling with springs and waterholes as a metaphor for hope and joy.

Amid the rock and sunshine, life finds a foothold, as roots search for moisture brought by the monsoon winds.

"The rock, all matter, all life, is charged with dharmakaya . . . everything is emptiness and everything is compassion."
                                                      --Thomas Merton, The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton

The Monsoon Rains

In the late summer the monsoons arrive, bringing heavy, though spotty, rain showers.

The desert greens up and wildflowers bloom, like the spreading fleabane (Erigeron divergens), a medicinal herb with many uses.

Gardens and fields also welcome the nutrient-rich rains.

Depending on the amount of rainfall, one species might be abundant one year, and another, the next--like these Blackfoot daisies.

Cacti store water and ocotillos make leaves.  These Texas rainbow cacti, prickly pear, and ocotillos live in the foothills of the Franklin Mountains, on a slope that carries heavy runoff during the monsoon rains.

Colorful mesquite pods.  Edible honey mesquite pods should be harvested before the monsoons.  They can contain high amounts of toxic aflatoxin B1 produced by a common fungus (Aspergillus flavus) if left wet on the ground for too long.

Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument

A few years ago, President Obama created the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument to protect the historic, scenic, archaeological, paleontological, and geological treasures of the Organ Mountains, Potrillo Mountains, Doña Ana Mountains, Robledo Mountains, and Sierra de las Uvas.  The Potrillo Mountains unit contains volcanic cinder cones, lava flows, and craters.  The creation of the monument was the result of many years of effort by a broad-based coalition of people and is certainly one of the finest achievements of the Obama Administration.  Overall, the four sections that make up the monument encompass a total of 496,330 acres.  Adjoining it is Prehistoric Trackways National Monument, which contains footprints of numerous amphibians, reptiles, and insects, as wells as plants and petrified wood dating back 280 million years to the early Permian period.

My wife, Libby, and I recently visited Aguirre Springs Recreational Area, which is located in the Organ Mountains unit of the monument. 

Eastern face of the Organ Mountains

Tularosa Basin from the Organ Mountains

Sugarloaf Peak

Pine Tree Trail

Rabbit Ears

All Creation is Holy

The sloka from the Isha Upanishad:

        īśāvāsyamidaṃ sarvaṃ yatkiñca jagatyāṃ jagat |

       tena tyaktena bhuñjīthā mā gṛdhaḥ kasyasviddhanam ||

  can loosely be translated as:

      God is present in everything; therefore, everything is enjoyed through renunciation.

 This is very much the way of St. Francis, the truth that following the path of renouncing possessions allows us to belong to God alone; to have only one treasure.  And since all things are of God, this means that we can experience creation as "brother" and "sister," not as "mine" or "yours," because all people and things become what they really are: our fellow children of God, filled with God's spirit, instead of an illusory bit of personal property. Who can actually possess the wind?   Does a title confer real ownership over the abiding desert?  Only through love does the world become real to us.  We don’t need to "own" a friend--or a stream, or the sun, or the mountains, or the trees of the forest--to truly enjoy them, to experience their sacredness. They are naturally ours, not by right of possession, but through the experience of divine kinship.

I Saw That It Was Holy

I looked ahead and saw the mountains there with rocks and forests on them, and from the mountains flashed all colors upward to the heavens. Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world. And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being. And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy.

                                                                                     --Heȟáka Sápa (Black Elk), Black Elk Speaks

West Texas

I was out in West Texas this weekend with one of my children.  It was hot and dry, but the Chihuahuan Desert was filled with sturdy and tenacious life.

Hudspeth, Culberson, and Davis Counties were scenic with mountains as we headed east on Interstate 10.  (Once we entered the Permian Basin, though, the land became endlessly flat, and dotted with oil and gas wells.)

Below is a photo I took of rocky hills in Hudspeth County that look to me like they are made up of some kind of intrusive igneous rock.  

They were on the other side of the highway from Sierra Blanca, a conical 6,891-foot peak that is something of a landmark and gives a nearby community its name.

In the distance were the Apache Mountains, one of three places where the Capitan Reef is exposed. The Capitan Reef was an enormous 400-mile reef that surrounded a sea called the Delaware Sea in the Permian Period, approximately 250 million years ago. The reef was buried under millions of years of sediment until mountain ranges were uplifted (primarily during the Laramide orogeny), exposing parts of the limestone "fossil reef" left by reef-building creatures like sponges, algae, coral, and other lime-secreting marine life (the other exposed parts of the Capitan Reef are found in the Guadalupe and Glass Mountains).

Below is a picture of Gomez Peak (6,320 ft) under gathering clouds.  It is located at the northern end of the Davis Mountains.

The clouds promise rain, which usually arrives in late summer (it poured in El Paso just after we returned home).  The desert blooms, and the colors of the rock are joined by the brightness of wildflowers.

O Cavafy, O Alexandria

As I walked the streets today surrounded by warm evening light, I thought of Constantine Petrou Cavafy walking the colorful, exotic streets of Alexandria.  I saw him cross squares and navigate narrow passageways in the warm, sultry air; saw him stop for a bit to drink a Turkish coffee in a café or to watch the sunset over the shimmering Mediterranean.  He would take a moment to jot down some lines on human folly and nobility, on the sacred or the profane; but always with a tone of glowing, unimpeachable serenity.  Serenity, even in the face of the possibility that one’s life’s work might come to nothing, as in “Απολείπειν ο θεός Αντώνιον”:

                        την τύχη σου που ενδίδει πια, τα έργα σου

                        που απέτυχαν, τα σχέδια της ζωής σου

                        που βγήκαν όλα πλάνες, μη ανωφέλετα θρηνήσεις.

    Cavafy was a great poet who knew that he was a great poet.  And what higher satisfaction could there be than that?