True Nature Stories: Desert Log

Wildflowers in a sandy wash, Anza-Borrego Desert (3/31/2024).

The moon and stars aligned serendipitously to send me on an April Fool's errand -- not of a thousand-mile round-trip to the desert, but more like 1,714.9 miles (to put a little bit of a fine point on it). Just when I thought I wasn't going to go this year, I learned about the Sunday storm heading for Southern California and started champing at the bit all over again. Thankfully my wife was free to keep an eye on Coco and understanding of my need for speed. And it was a speedy trip indeed, beginning at 3:30 a.m. Sunday and ending at about 3 p.m. today.

The main event was a visit to Anza-Borrego where I expected the weather to be awful (but in a good way), and sure enough, 300 miles into the drive I reached the Grapevine, where the car thermometer read 41 degrees and where snow cake-frosted the surrounding hilltops. My timing was perfect on arrival at the desert, where heavy gray storms poured out of the mountains in waves.

From Anza-Borrego I drove out to the Desert Lily Preserve where I scoured the earth in vain. Not a single desert lily could be seen. That was kind of a long way to go to get skunked. I've never seen desert lilies before and had my heart set on finally finding some. (I had actually seen one back in Anza, so I wasn't completely skunked.) Crestfallen, I then realized I'd forgotten to look for ghost flower back in Anza! Two skunks in a row!

Not that they are unanimously entranced by all who encounter them, but it's kind of a personal thing I have about ghost flowers. I love their name, of course, and also the spooky gossamer of their petals, but this was also one of the very first desert wildflowers I learned way back on my first trip to Anza, which was back in the last century. I had not seen one since.

So I'm walking dejectedly back to the car when -- what's this? -- a ghost flower, right there in the lily preserve! I counted three small plants in all, and no others nearby. All was not lost on the lily front, either. As I began driving back toward the freeway to retrace my steps back to Joshua Tree, I spotted desert lilies galore just off the side of the road. There was barely enough light left in the day to fire off a few frames.

I spent the night sleeping in my car on the side of the road near the southern entrance to Joshua Tree. It isn't great to sleep in a Mazda 3's laid-back passenger seat, but I thought of it as being quite a bit better than sleeping on an airplane. I had a pillow and sleeping bag, even, and I woke up rested and ready for the day. Unfortunately, most of the storm had blown out overnight, leaving just a few stray clouds and lots of wind, which added an extra challenge for my wildflower photography.

Looking at my map as I was about to leave Joshua Tree I saw that I was closer to Carrizo Plain than Death Valley, and I considered nixing the Death Valley leg. But I also figured Carrizo's Soda Lake Road could use at least another day of drying out, and I was eager to see Lake Manly (which I'd last seen in 2005) and Dante's View (which I've never seen before).

I was disappointed to reach Death Valley's Ashford Mill area where there was a superbloom of daisies in '05. There was hardly anything this time, and "hardly anything" about sums up the rest of the valley. It looked like debris flows scoured out all the plants. If that is what happened, a flood-scouring can look as depressing on a landscape as a bad fire. Mineralizing the biota isn't pretty to living beings like us.

I spent last night in the car again, this time near Carrizo Plain (in a pull-out a short ways up Elkhorn Grade Road). The view of the hills from Elkhorn Grade showed green and some yellow, but nothing like the colorful jubilee of yesteryear. Entering the national monument from the south I encountered lots of daisies, fiddleneck, and loco weed, and a few small patches of owl's clover. Compared to many years, especially drought years (remember those?), it was fantastic, but compared to last year it's not there yet.

And what else is not there yet is a passable road. After driving through a couple of sketchy patches of muddy ruts and eroded cracks I thought to myself, "I'm going to keep going because, if it was impassable in an ordinary car, they would have a sign." Right? Indeed, a short distance past the Traver Ranch ruin (and pit toilet), there was a sign: "Road becoming impassable. Vehicles stuck in mud." I decided to go no farther, and I envied the next photographer who came along in a serious off-road pickup truck that even had a snorkel (for crossing deep water). I forgot to ask his name, but he said he just got the truck last year and that he's from Santa Barbara and can easily return in a week or two to see if the bloom has improved. He headed off into the boondocks like he was going for an easy Sunday drive.

My own drive home was through the Cuyama Valley, a lazy and lovely route with hardly any traffic, and green grass and oaks all over the mountains (and lots of yellow on the south-facing Caliente Range). You could probably do a photo feature on that stretch of road alone (including all the agriculture), and even though I didn't stop to take pictures (wanting to get home before rush hour), it was a brilliant drive to end the trip with.