I’m so grateful to Theriomorph for sitting in while I was gone. I think I’ll be rereading her posts here a few times. She has been informed, he said in a passive construction, that she is welcome to post whatever she wants here, whenever she wants.
I’m grateful as well to all of you for your good wishes about the desert trip. There were no snakes, at least none that I saw. (This is becoming a liability for the book: I have had no Mojave rattlesnake encounters whatsoever.) In fact, vertebrate life of any kind was scant. There were night lizards and rabbits aplenty, and my days there began and ended with a Greek Chorus of coyotes, perhaps the best coyote singing I have heard in my life. But very few birds. Thousands of butterflies: there have been rains, and swallowtails in the desert will sometimes throw a second brood when the rains come. I watched an indra, a relatively rare swallowtail, lay eggs in the turpentine broom that covers the dome.
And I watched stars. There were plenty of those. An immensity of stars, this earth insignificant and fleeting.
An immensity of Earth, this desert insignificant and fleeting.
An immensity of desert, this man insignificant and fleeting.
I watched the stars, and the lights of aircraft overhead, blinking red lights with souls aboard them. I wondered if any of them were looking down at this broad expanse of dark, wondering if anyone was looking up at them from within it.
I wondered if any of them were looking down at this broad expanse of dark, wondering if anyone was looking up at them from within it.
Believe it or not I wonder that exact thing when I look out of plane windows. But I wasn’t on any of the planes you saw last week.
charles beat me to that comment. flying by day, there is at least a chance i can recognize what we are flying over, and i wonder at seeing so many landscapes, even from way up there. at night—i wonder about the small clusters of light below, and the dark places between.
Welcome back.
Beautiful words…
The cactus is making the peace sign!
Beautiful stars.
A sky like that has the same effect on me as espresso.
Welcome back!
I lay out on the sand at night by the South Fork Yuba River last weekend, thinking similar thoughts. Saw a number of meteors and satellites, and was curious if the space station denizens were observing by its absence the dark swath of the relatively unpopulated northern Sierra Nevada, where I lay. Perhaps not quite the contrast of the East Mojave adjacent to Vegas, but noticeable, I would think. The next morning, my charming camping neighbor Olga asked me what we were seeing when we looked up at night and saw the Milky Way. As I went into a spiel about our galaxy, what it was, and our peripheral position in the outer portion of one of the spiral arms, I was reminded of Arthur C. Clarke’s Nightfall and the imponderable brilliance that we would be subject to if we were located closer to the galactic core with its abundance of globular clusters and super-clusters. Would make Vegas look like small potatoes, indeed, and that annoying glow from over the eastern horizon from Cima Dome would be, well, unnecessary.
You are wrong so rarely, Fred, that I find I cannot resist the impulse to correct you.
Asimov wrote Nightfall.
Welcome back!
You can have one of the two Mojave rattlers we saw this spring. I want to keep the other ;). Oh, and we still have one Mojave reptile living with us (a lovely little collared lizard.) But you’d have to fight 10 year old Gracie for her.
I can’t wait until it’s cool enough to return.
Your desert stay may have been rattler-free, but the hills above San Mateo weren’t. Here’s part of an e-mail from a friend (a symphony violist):
I just got back from a week in Kaiser Hospital where I landed after a baby rattlesnake bit me on the knuckle of my left hand Labor Day morning while I was weeding right up near the house in the back yard! I’m going to be fine, but the inside of my entire left arm is the color of liver and very swollen. The discoloration and swelling extends all the way down my left side to my hip, and I’ll be off of work at least another two weeks at home. It may take weeks, but a full recovery, including playing the viola, is anticipated.
Yikes. And that from a “baby.”
On a lighter note, here’s a recursion challenge—it’s a fill-in-the-blanks one:
An immensity of stars, this earth insignificant and fleeting.
An immensity of Earth, this desert insignificant and fleeting.
An immensity of desert, this man insignificant and fleeting.
An immensity of me, this ________ insignificant and fleeting.
An immensity of ________, this ________ insignificant and fleeting.
For me, the blanks would read “ice cream,” “ice creeam,” and “coronary,” but I’m sure CRN’s erudite readers will be able to come up with some better ones.
That’s pretty much why I always take off my wedding ring when I hike on Mount Diablo, where I HAVE seen rattlers. The ring is platinum, and I imagine a nip on the left arm could cause me to lose my ring finger from edemic strangulation before the paramedics could find a way to cut the ring, especially as I’d likely be six miles’ walk from a phone.
Of course, as I don’t want Becky to worry about the snakes, I tell her it’s because Diablo is infested with gorgeous hikers.
The babies, incidentally, are rumored to have the strongest venom.
When I lived in rural Connecticut, the big worry hiking in the spring was running into baby copperheads, which were rumored to be both fearless and much more venomous. Never ran into one, but a few friends did.
I appreciate venomous snakes - but from a distance.
Glad to hear your friend is okay, Sherwood.
Hey Chris - You know what? Last night as I lay down in bed (no stars) and reviewed my day, I said “Dang it! You know what - I think Asimov wrote Nightfall, not Clarke!” Was too lazy to get up and check, though - said to myself, “If I was wrong, I bet Chris corrects me.” Well, waddayaknow! Sorry, all those prolific 50’s and 60’s science fiction writers/science popularizers are blending together now, although back in the day I’m sure I could have recited them chapter and verse WITH correct attribution.
On an un-related note (although at least peripherally related to this thread re the desert), have you read Michelle Nijhuis’ recent article in High Country News called “Bonfire of the Superweeds”? About Sonoran Desert invasion by buffelgrass, mostly, with extensive quotage and field visits with Julio Betancourt. Mentions the Sahara mustard threat to the Mojave only in passing, as possibly a worse threat even than buffelgrass. If you haven’t seen it, I can get an e-copy, since I’m a subscriber, and pass it on. It’s an excellent, albeit depressing piece.
And finally, the reason, as I understand it, why baby rattlers’ bites can be more dangerous than adults’, is that that they don’t have control over how much venom they inject. Adults can release “appropriate” amounts, and reserve high doses for taking prey, as opposed to defense.
Chris: in fact I was on one of those planes (on my way to Yurp for a work thang) and while admiring the desert from Way Up There, I did indeed wave at you.
I remember encountering a baby rattler on a walk up in Cotati one day. It was sunning itself in the middle of a road, and I tried to persuade it to move to the edge so it wouldn’t get run over. I hadn’t realized I was playing with such a big fire (though I knew it was at least kinda stupid). It had that baby cuteness even if it was a rattler. It moved, finally.
you get it across so well.