August is the month of the long mornings.
Starting before sunrise Sol burns the air to the east sending it here in thick slow-rolling waves.
It is not at all unpleasant,
the effect is comforting in its ambient beauty.
Subtle.
Sustained.
There is a degree of perfection in this rounded nexus–a timelessness in time–in a singular day before the flat-heat whiteness begins.
All of this is August the month of long mornings.
Some rocks (not this one) will speak. I remember the first time a rock ever spoke to me. I was out near the Colorado River in a wash littered with evenly shaped cobbles. They were slightly different subtle colors, red, blue, gray, pink, and so on, and so forth. They were so very pretty lying in the wash with blue sky, billowing clouds, and all of that was attractively scattered here, there, and everywhere.
One rock stood out to me. I picked it up and took a good look. It was a little bigger than the palm of my hand in a comfortably rounded shape. There were no blemishes or markings or really anything that would note this stone as different from any other stone in the wash. However, it felt different. It felt like it knew me and was waiting for the day that I would come and pick it up. Today.
Then it spoke to me. I stood there dumbfounded, mouth agape for quite a long time. The rock had said, “I want to go to your house.”
“Then what?” I thought.
It heard my thoughts. It must be, like, telepathic.
“You need me,” the rock said. It continued; “I am the exact size you need to cover that big red plastic tumbler that you use to soak pieces of mesquite in water to give your BBQ smokey flavor. I am the correct weight to keep the wood submerged so that it may get wet.”
So I brought it home and it was right. It has been perfect for the job. I use it every BBQ. Now, when the rock speaks to me you know what it says? It says nothing. Not a word. Not a sound. Just like it is just a rock.
It is still a cool rock though.
—
Walter Feller
This subsection comprises the higher elevations and cooler parts of the San Bernardino Mountains. The mountains are a horst with faults and steep escarpments on the south-southwest, east-northeast, and west-northwest sides. The subsection is made up of steep and very steep mountains with narrow to rounded summits. The elevations range is from about 4000 feet up to 11,502 feet on Mount San Gorgonio. The predominant natural plant community is Ponderosa pine series. Precipitation is about 30 to 40 inches annually. Much of it is snow. All but the larger streams are dry through the summer. There have been natural lakes, but any lakes that persisted until historical times have been replaced by reservoirs.
For a more detailed description see;
Upper San Gorgonio Mountains
Also see;
Lower San Gorgonio Mountains
At the mouth of Afton Canyon, it may be easier to visualize a great lake, Lake Manix, breaching its shores and its waters carving this terrible and yet beautiful gorge through the layers of the millions and millions of years of earth that have gone before. At least at one time, it was believed this all occurred rapidly, over the course of a few weeks, raging in colossal destruction. Now, I believe, the evidence shows it was not just one seismic event that provoked this tearing of the landscape, that it took place over thousands of years driven on by multiple events and changes in climate.
Thin clouds of purest white streaked through the crystalline sky miles above the dune as it glistened and glittered in the morning’s golden sunlight. The ever-present wind swirled out of its invisibility high above grazing the crests of each swell, placing a yellow halo at the crown of each and every rise. Soon, these phenomena broadened and covered everything leeward. Never just one grain but nearly an infinite amount of particles bouncing and flying over the top. The sandscape vibrating and flirting with focus and vision. Wave after wave, all as if it were applauding itself, this audience of at least trillions upon trillions upon trillions of its own. This is the way sand dunes travel and comfort themselves.
There is no apparent grand purpose other than subtle providence, yet, that is grand in itself.
After all the commotion, Bug, the darkling beetle, emerged from its hiding place an inch below the surface. Rat, arrived first, however, and it ate Bug. Then Hawk also swirled out of its invisibility high above in the crystal sky and snatched Rat with bloody talons flying off home to its ravenous brood.
Rat knew he had come to his end, for all rats die as does everything else that lives. Rat was pleased that it was Hawk that would consume him. Coyote or Snake would not honor him with such an aerial showing of the vast world he lived in before he was killed.
END
w.feller
END
w.feller
Roadrunners kill rattlesnakes.
Desert turtles live a hundred years.
The loudest noise in the world is thunder.
The horned toad is not a toad; it’s a lizard.
The Vinegaroon is half spider and half scorpion.
Animals are wild because man has made them so.
The largest gold nugget ever found weighed 630 pounds.
A cubic foot of gold weighs more than half a ton — 1203 pounds.
There are many kinds of cactus that will not grow in the desert.
A lightning flash lasts approximately one-millionth part of a second.
Horsehair rope as a barrier to stop rattlesnakes has been proved a myth.
One pound of honey represents the lifetime work of more than 1,000 bees.
A mule knows three times as much as a horse, and a burro is smarter than a mule.
The Indian population in the desert is steadily growing — from 8,000 to 45,000 in 60 years.
Needles of the prickly pear cactus are cut to size, shaped, polished, and sold as phonograph needles.
Each rattlesnake helps man by killing off between 100 and 150 rats, mice, gophers, and ground squirrels every year.
The dried stalks of the desert yucca are gathered and sent to a factory in Brooklyn, New York, for the manufacturing of artificial limbs.
Horned Toads sometimes lay eggs and other times will give forth living young. It seems that the mother can’t quite make up her mind.
Over 3,000 different herbs and plants for therapeutic use were grown in Montezuma’s Mexican botanical gardens years before the discovery of America.
It is estimated that half a million snakes and twice that number of lizards were killed for their skins and turned into shoes and purses last year for milady’s fancy.
The department of education in Mexico wants the children in that country to look to the old Aztec god, Quelzaoatl, for their presents each Christmas, rather than Santa Claus.
Many old prospectors have been saved from thirst by the water contained in the famous barrel cactus. Today this barrel cactus furnishes the base for some of the noted cactus candies.
Wrinkled inhabitants of the desert shake their heads and whisper startling exaggerations when you ask about the Jumping Cactus (Cholla); nevertheless, it does jump, but only when stirred by the swish of your pant leg or coat sleeve.
INDIAN NAMES. In the matter of geographical names, the contribution of the Indian is conspicuous. At least twenty of the states comprised in the United States bear Indian names, while for rivers, lakes, and towns, the list of Indian names is in almost equal proportion.
Mojave Trail
This secluded valley once bore primitive traffic and knew the lithe tread of native feet. The ancient Indian trail from the Colorado River to the coast led up the Mojave River into the mountains and climbed Sawpit Canyon to the summit of the range. The Piute Indians, using this trail, leaving a pathway that guided a Spanish priest, explorers, and pioneers across the desert waste and over the mountain barrier. When the Mormons came, in 1851, immigrant wagons wore a well-marked road through Cajon Pass. Thereafter, the old Mojave Trail through Summit Valley was little used.
Billy Holcomb Chapter No. 1069, E Clampus Vitus
Through the thin window, I watch the torn-away sky
clouds shredded and stolen as sharpened winds howl by
Spinning wildflowers and tumbling weeds
frantically, frantically spreading their seeds
Two birds in a bush warbling in trills and quavers
it is the lopsided melody the garbled song favors
Trade rats somersaulting across the bare ground
cartwheeling badgers angrily claw as they wheel round and round
Stiff-legged coyotes hobnobbing in play
catching jackrabbits and cottontails that can only jump up, not away
and dust swirls into dust devils then dispersed above
All of this, all of this, lonely, barren, wind-scarred, and loved.
It seems that people have made use of the San Andreas Fault long before automobile or even wagon roads were developed along its seam. Shown is a 1901 U.S.G.S. map where I have traced the route leading from near Blue Cut in the Cajon Pass, just about straight northwest to Valyermo. The dotted line portion shown at the Big Pines saddle may have been either a mule trail or a road possibly impassible or without increased effort by wagon or auto. Indians likely used the features of the fault as a footpath to do as we all do; go from here to there.
The impending doom of Mr. Bubble
They were brothers, airborne, spiraling to earth together. Brothers as brothers can be, they remained brothers until they fell on the divide together; one splashed toward the ocean, and the larger of the two trickled toward the desert. That large raindrop would do fine; however, the small one would have to find its own invent an ocean. Until then, the little raindrop did what most other raindrops do, and that is to fall.
At this point, many raindrops would soak into the earth joining the stormwater underground. These rainshadow renegades would travel to the aquifers deep into the earth below to ancient, private, and murky waters.
From sticks and dead leaves and rocks and out of crevices other little raindrops dripped to trickle together in intricate alpine streams hastily making way through a myriad of delicate and fragile waterfalls, into pools, then resting a few moments before being pushed out by the increasing deluge behind them.
From these streams to creeks the raindrops gathered rushing rather blindly through boulders and fallen trees in the narrow canyon joined by other smaller canyons and joining itself to larger creeks coming from larger canyons until swirling and twisting, colored with mud and dirty foam, all of a sudden coming together to become a river.
“Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice,” thought the little raindrop. It had found its way–to a river that should by all accounts transport it to the sea.
That didn’t happen, though. The river fell into the quicksands and disappeared into an eerie underworld layered below the clouded skies, under the sands of the empty river, and above the dark and mysterious aquifer.
Later, there was the bright and sunny sky overhead when the raindrop, risking evaporation, surfaced for a breath then soaked back into the safety of the shallows.
Again and one more time again this happened. Finally, there is no finally. The little raindrop simply never came back. After all, it was just a raindrop, and this river in the desert never reaches the sea.
The end.
Finding my first fossil was a much bigger deal than I thought it would have been. There was a lot of excitement and yelling. Running around, too–don’t know why, I mean, it wasn’t going anywhere. There were people from the museums, also. They were standing over in the shade grumbling in muffled mumbles. They coveted the find. However, smiling broadly with all rows of their sharpened teeth showing, they stood next to it for pictures.
In a little more than a whisper from their dark huddle, one could hear, “It should have been us. We are worthy.”
I like to watch the very end of the day–the last slivers of light seen while everyone has gone home to have their dinner and watch the television. Those last shreds of light must be mine, at least as far as my eyes can see. I see how lovely this light is, nearly, nearly an invisible veil as shear as color. There are final bits of sunlight delicately pulled away from jagged edges in order to begin the evening properly. And here, especially where rainbows once beautiful and bold, now faded and wicked, tear the low light trying to hold on to the day, these olden days past . . .
Cerro Gordo, The “fat hill,” produced silver, lead, and zinc for a century. At its peak, over 1,000 people lived here working in mines as the San Felipe and Union. At the time, the smelters were the best there were. Silver was roasted and formed into bullion, sent down the Yellow Grade road by a mule team, and shipped across Owens Lake by steamboat. From the lakeside port of Cartago, the bullion was loaded onto Remi Nadeau‘s freighters and hauled into Los Angeles.
Photos of the Mojave River from headwaters to termination
Photos of the Mojave River from headwaters to termination
***** PICNIC TABLE GEOLOGY PRESENTS *****
30-second seminars — by Some Guy
Hole-in-the-Wall – Mojave National Preserve
About 18.5 million years ago one day everything was blah, blah, blah and then all of a sudden . . . POOOM!
Hot, suffocating ash buried every living thing in the path of the blast. An area of over 600 km2 was covered with ash and rock fragments so hot that they welded together after they reached the ground. The toasted and fossilized remains of birds, mammals, and plants lie entombed beneath the volcanic tuff that forms the colorful cliffs of Hole-in-the-Wall.
Elmer Long’s place — Historic Route 66 – Helendale, Ca.
Sometimes you get out there to do what you do whatever it is you do when you are there but it just doesn’t look real and something is not quite right. Well, you are correct because nothing is quite right or real 100%, but what are you going to do? Cry?
Someday all beautiful things will have been worn away and become mundane and undesirable to view. Then, I imagine all the ugly stuff will become unique and beautiful because they are different and exciting. I imagine.
The scribbled road escapes through a broken gate tearing across the rumpled and scratchy desert.
Zig-zagging hastily along the narrow and dusty trail.
Traversing the rise, and disappearing, then a cloud of dust and disappearing again into the far horizon.
Under the dull gray-white skies of this heartless Mojave valley
Nothing moves and stands fast until dark.
Ekphrastic Surrealism
Under the Metallic Sun: Invasive Species
(Mirror sun and stucco flower by Dennis Rudolph)
Mike was alone now. It was just him and the wind in the desert. He wasn’t scared. He would listen to Nature. It would speak to him–tell him what he needed to do. In fact, the wind was trying to touch base with Mike at that very moment. It was saying, “Hey Mike? Mike? Can you hear me, Mike? Mike?” Mike, however, was preoccupied with trying to get a signal. Without water or shelter, Mike was a goner. Too bad for Mike.
It is the strangest thing; the river; I follow it downstream and it becomes smaller and smaller and smaller. With every step, it becomes less and less and less. The water diminishes and depletes until it is just a trickle, until a glisten, until just a wet spot surrounded by damp sand, and then nothing. That is how this river ends–not mightily at an ocean, but quietly, subdued in the sand and rubble and stone becoming as if it never were.
Mojave River
https://digital-desert.com/mojave-river/
Various photos of Johnson & Lucerne Valleys
There are three ravens in the sky above the oak on the left. The raven on the far right of those three flew in front of me after first cawing and catching my attention. Over the years I have learned when this happens there are two ravens flying safely and quietly behind me. I like to believe they do this as a strategy to distract potential predators.
Veristic surrealism; an abstraction of a reality created through free thought.
Questions to ask yourself;
Do you like it?
Why do you like it?
What does it represent to you?
Veristic – positive, life, moving forward.
And if you do not like it; it does not exist.
All of a sudden nothing made sense. Not that there was nothing or that anything in the nothing meant nothing but that nothing with nothing in it did indeed, not mean nothing.
There is a broken land where mountain ranges rise like angry tidal waves in turbulent, slow-motion seas, senselessly wrestling in convection.
Occasionally, countless battalions of clouds march briskly right to left without leaving a drop of water, all saved for a brutal assault on a faraway fire.
adapt or die–that is all that can be said.
Broken animals and plants living in uneven symbiosis.
and above; thrown into the wind, birds fly incorrectly and confused
and tumble from the sky in mid-breath.
tiny fish in the broken river’s warm water quietly dance an intricately choreographed ballet.
Trees are not trees . . .
and the rabbit is not in charge as he would have you believe.
remember that.
Bragging coyotes arrogantly bark and yap after a kill
Then they eat.
