The Mojave Desert – “Hottest, Driest, Lowest”

The Mojave, the smallest of the four North American deserts, is described as a transition desert from the hot Sonoran Desert to the higher Great Basin.  Known as “high desert,” the Mojave’s elevation ranges from 2,000 to 5,000 feet.  It changes from a cold desert in the northern section and a hot desert in the southern section.  

The name Mojave comes from the Native American word “Hamakhaave,” which means “beside the water.”   Mojave Native American tribes live on two reservations; one in Arizona and one in California.
 
In excess of 25,000 square miles, the Mojave occupies potions of southeastern California as well as Nevada, Arizona and Utah.  The Park comprises more than 3.3 million acres of spectacular desert scenery.  Nearly 550 square miles of its area lie below sea level. 

The Mojave Desert is a rainshadow desert, which is an area of dry land on the leeward side of the mountain.   High mountains on the west block the movements of wet winter storms.  The Mojave has the lowest absolute elevation (282 feet below sea level) and the highest maximum temperature (134 degrees F), it is north of the Sonoran and its average elevations are higher.  This results in the average temperatures of the Mojave being lower than those of the Sonoran. Rainfall averages from 2.23 to 2.5 inches a year. 

The Mojave Desert is home to more than 200 endemic species.  “Endemic” species are organisms that ONLY live in a particular location on Earth and are naturally found nowhere else.   

White Sands National Monument – A Desert within a Desert

White Sands National Monument ©2013 Bo Mackison

White Sands National Monument in southern New Mexico is a desert within a desert.

The park is surrounded by the Chihuahuan Desert – a desert of low scrub plants. This desert of white sand dunes has even less vegetation than the Chihuahuan Desert.

Sherpa and I stopped at White Sands on our cross-country trip from the Midwest to Tucson. Since I had a limited amount of time for photographs, I attempted to capture the essence of the park in a few select photographs.

The above landscape photo shows a progression of dunes, each topped with low grasses and yucca. The dunes are spotted with plants that thrive in gypsum — the white sand is pure gypsum. Gyp moonpad and gyp nama are common.

Sand Dune ©2014 Bo Mackison

This photo of the arch of a crescent-shaped dune is a small part of the larger desert landscape.

This kind of landscape photograph is often called an intimate landscape, and is a technique pioneered by Eliot Porter. Typically there is little emphasis on the horizon, the lighting, or a long shot of a vista, but instead the focus is on pattern, texture and composition.

Intimate landscapes often have an abstract feel.

Sand Drift © 2014 Bo Mackison

The ripples of the sand drifts offered plenty of opportunity for a close up photo.

The texture of the fine sand is nearly visible, the texture of sugar. This isn’t a typical macro-photograph, but it does give a good indication of the movement paths of wind-blown sand.

Portrait Session in White Sands © 2014 Bo Mackison

A portrait in a landscape, or an unexpected detail in a landscape.

When I saw this photographer setting up his equipment for a portrait, I had to get a shot even though they were far away. It gives a different perspective of White Sands – the grasses in the foreground, the gently rolling sand hills, and then the tiny figures on the horizon – a photographer adjusting his camera on a tripod, and his posing subject.

White Sands National Monument © 2014 Bo Mackison

White Sands National Monument attracts a fair number of sledders.

The gift shop at the park headquarters even sells the round discs for sledding. So it seemed appropriate, as part of capturing the park’s overall feel, that I include a photograph of the visitors who came to the desert for a sled ride.

Rabbitbrush in White Sand © 2014 Bo Mackison

And a final photograph, a bit of the hardy vegetation that grows in one of the more hostile climates in the world.

Not many plants thrive with little rainfall, constant wind and creeping sands, drastic changes in temperatures of day and night, scorching sun and intense heat in the summer, and a soil that has minimal nutrients. The rabbitbrush and dune grasses are highly adapted plants that live where few plants can.

Palo Duro Canyon in Texas

Palo Dura Canyon Abstract © 2014 Bo Mackison

Palo Duro means “hard wood”. Southern high plains. Rim of canyon is shortgrass prairie, canyon floor has more trees, shrubs, tall grasses. Canyon is 800 feet deep, formed by erosion from Prairie Dog Town Fork of Red River. Rock layers of gypsum (white) and claystone (red) are called “Spanish skirts”. “Grand Canyon of Texas” – second largest canyon in US. Erosion shaped lands, caps of erosion resistant sandstone creating mesas, pinnacles, buttes.

Landscapes:

Palo Duro Canyon © 2014 Bo Mackison

“Spanish Skirts” © 2010 Bo Mackison

Prairie Dog Town Fork of Red River © 2014 Bo Mackison

Intimate Landscape:

Juniper Tree in Red Canyon © 2014 Bo Mackison

Intimate Landscape + Portrait:

Karate Chop © 2014 Bo Mackison

Macro.

Yucca Seed Heads © 2014 Bo Mackison

Still life.

Red Earth © 2014 Bo Mackison

Wabi sabi.

Twisted Wood © 2014 Bo Mackison

Prairie Blooming in Yellow

Prairie in September Bloom © 2012 Bo Mackison

“The real things haven’t changed. It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with simple pleasures; and have courage when things go wrong.” ~ Laura Ingalls Wilder

I walked in the prairie yesterday. In mid-September, the prairie is a mix of blooming flowers – mostly Late Goldenrod and Showy Goldenrod. Wild Indigo and a few stalks of Prairie Blazing Star are scattered in the yellows. Oak savannas are in the background.

Prairie Flowers, Prairie Seeds © 2012 Bo Mackison

The true way to live is to enjoy every moment as it passes, and surely it is in the everyday things around us that the beauty of life lies.”
~ Laura Ingalls Wilder

By this time of the year, many flowers have long gone to seed – Rattlesnake Master and Common Milkweed, the yellow Cone Flowers and many of the sunflower varieties.

Some of the paths wander through prairie that is waist-high, but some of the taller prairie lands rise high above my head. It is a hiking experience not often found, walking on a dirt path through flower stalks that are several feet above my head.

The view is all flower and sky!

 Photographs from the Morning Side Trail at the entrance of Governor Nelson State Park, north of Madison, Wisconsin.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. Walking is her daily pleasure, her daily meditation. Walking in the tall prairie is a walk for the senses and for the soul.

Walk through a Prairie

Prairie Rosinweed © 2012 Bo Mackison

The disappearance of a major natural unit of vegetation from the face of the earth is an event worthy of causing pause and consideration by any nation. Yet so gradually has the prairie been conquered by the breaking plow, the tractor, and the overcrowded herds of man…that scant attention has been given to the significance of this endless grassland or the course of its destruction. Civilized man is destroying a masterpiece of nature without recording for posterity that which he has destroyed. ~ John Ernest Weaver, North American Prairie (1954)

Little Bluestem in Tallgrass Prairie © 2012 Bo Mackison

I like to think of landscape not as a fixed placed but as a path that is unwinding before my eyes, under my feet. ~ Gretel Ehrlich

Autumn Macro of Wings and Leaves © 2012 Bo Mackison

. . . the joy of prairie lies in its subtlety. It is so easy—too easy—to be swept away by mountain and ocean vistas. A prairie, on the other hand, requests the favor of your closer attention. It does not divulge itself to mere passersby. ~ Suzanne Winckler (2004, Prairie: A North American Guide)

Prairie Rosinweed © 2012 Bo Mackison

. . . there don’t seem to be words, let alone colors, to do justice to the land and sky-scape that surrounds me . . . as empty as this place can seem, a person might never weary of looking at the land and sky. ~ Kathleen Norris, Introduction to On the Plains (1999)

Achenes and Wings of the Autumn Rosinweed © 2012 Bo Mackison

The sea, the woods, the mountains, all suffer in comparison with the prairie. . . The prairie has a stronger hold upon the senses. Its sublimity arises from its unbounded extent, its barren monotony and desolation, its still, unmoved, calm, stern, almost self-confident grandeur, its strange power of deception, its want of echo, and, in fine, its power of throwing a man back upon himself. ~ Albert Pike (1831-32, Journeys in the Prairie)

Prairie Cup-Plant © 2012 Bo Mackison

A world of grass and flowers stretched around me, rising and falling in gentle undulations, as if an enchanter had struck the ocean swell, and it was at rest forever. . . ~ Eliza Steele, Summer Journey in the West (1840)

Autumn Macro of Little Bluestem © 2012 Bo Mackison

“Grasslands challenge our senses, calling us to open our eyes to impossibly broad horizons and then, in the very next breath, to focus on some impossibly tiny critter hidden in the grass.” ~ James R. Page, Wild Prairie: A Photographer’s Personal Journey (2005)

Above my Head in the Prairie © 2012 Bo Mackison

It seems to be a constant contradiction of itself. It is delicate, yet resilient; it appears to be simple, but closer inspection indicates that it is extremely complex; it may appear monotonous, but it is diverse and ever-changing throughout the seasons. ~ James Stubbendieck (1988)

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. Today I offer you a few photographs of the prairie combined with quotations that describe the prairie in America’s Midwest throughout its recent (200 year) history with man. There isn’t much prairie left to see, but whenever I walk in a remnant, I feel awed by the possibility of a prairie that goes as far as the eye can see.

Buenos Aires National Wildlife Area – An Arid Grassland

Buenos Aires Grassland © 2012 Bo Mackison

Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge in southern Arizona is 118,000 acres of grassland, mountain ranges in the background, riparian corridors rippling through the land. The habitat, a semi-arid grassland, is land of the masked bobwhite quail and pronghorn antelope, both of which are being re-introduced in the region. Grasses once filled the Altar Valley, and are now maintained and restored by prescribed burns.

Grasses © 2012 Bo Mackison

In the 1800s, Altar valley was open grassland. Pronghorns had free range, falcons and hawks filled the air with their swooping, gliding, and soaring.  Mexican wolves, black bears and jaguars roamed in the grasses, traveling the corridors between the mountain ranges.

Poppies in the Grasslands © 2012 Bo Mackison

Then the Valley began filling with small towns and ranches in the 1860s, and the delicate balance maintaining the ecosystems gradually suffered. As ranchers expanded and grazing bared much the grasslands and exposed the land to the monsoon rains, erosion of the barren soils quickly followed.

With the grass gone and natural fires suppressed, mesquite gained a foothold. The grassland no longer supported the masked bobwhite quail or aplomado falcon. Pronghorn, wolves, bear, and jaguar were hunted or trapped.  Lehmann’s lovegrass, a non-Native grass, was introduced in the 1970s to help stop erosion. But this poor substitute for native grasses and now considered an invasive species, did nothing of benefit.

Spring in Arivaca Cienega © 2012 Bo Mackison

Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1982 to re-establish the grasslands habitat and protect the Arivaca Cienga* and the Arivaca Creek and its watershed, and important resource for the several hundreds of kinds of birds that either live in the region, migrate through, or winter over.

The area is again lush with grasses. The wildflowers are abundant — Mexican poppies turn areas golden with bright color, purple bunches of Verbena add contrast.

A beautiful place, an important resource to protect and preserve.

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cienega   pronounced see-en-ay’-ga.  spanish, A cienega usually is a wet, marshy area at the foot of a mountain or on the edge of a grassland where below ground water bubbles to the surface.

Sonoran Desert

Saguaro National Park © 2012 Bo Mackison

The Sonoran Desert covers approximately 100,000 square miles and includes the southern half of Arizona, southeastern California, most of the Baja California peninsula, the islands of the Gulf of California, and much of the state of Sonora, Mexico.

It is lush in comparison to most other deserts. Two visually dominant life forms of plants distinguish the Sonoran Desert from the other North American deserts: legume trees and columnar cacti. It also supports many other life forms encompassing a rich spectrum of some 2,000 species of plants.

Spring in the Sonoran Desert © 2012 Bo Mackison

The amount and seasonality of rainfall are defining characteristics of the Sonoran Desert. Much of the area has a two season rainfall pattern, though even during the rainy seasons most days are sunny. From December to March, storms from the North Pacific Ocean occasionally bring widespread, gentle rain to the northwestern areas. From July to mid-September, the summer monsoon brings surges of wet tropical air and frequent, but localized violent thunderstorms.

Desert Dusk © 2012 Bo Mackison

The Sonoran Desert differs from the other major North American Deserts (Mojave, Chihuahuan, and Great Basin) in that it has mild winters; most of the area rarely experiences frost. About half of the biota is tropical in origin, with life cycles attuned to the brief summer rainy season.