Carnival of the Arid #1
[Update: CotA#2 is now online!!]
Welcome to the first ever Carnival of the Arid! The mission of CotA is to provide a wide-ranging look at blog artistry coming from, or inspired by, the world’s arid regions. We’ve got a lot of good submissions for this inaugural installment of CotA, with poetry and geology and politics and weird living things.
Before we get started, a few management issues.
If you’re featured here, please take a moment to link to this post on your site. If everyone here drives traffic to the CotA, all the participants will get more people looking at their submissions, which is the whole point! If you’re not a participant (yet) but you like what you see, give us a link or otherwise spread the word around.
I’ve done my best to make sure everyone who submitted an appropriate piece got in, but if I’ve missed you somehow—Like I did with Leslie Sobel’s entry at first: oops!—let me know.
Subsequent Carnivals of the Arid will take place on the first of each month for now, so if you missed out on this round, don’t fret: just submit your post for the next round! Email me here to do so. [Added later: for those of you on Twitter, consider following CotA’s feed at http://twitter.com/AridCarnival.]
Lastly: a gentleman by the name of Richard Schwartz submitted two beautiful desert photos by email, but his return address seems not to be working. I’ve posted both photos here, one to start the CotA and one at the end, but I have no other identifying information. Richard, if you intended for me to link to another site, please let me know by email or in comments here and I’ll fix you up.
Canyonlands from the La Sal Mountains, Richard Schwartz
Adventure Journalist
My Nevada
Roving writer Tee Poole declares her love for what might be the least-appreciated state in the US, in a post so heartfelt I absolutely had to have it lead off this first ever Carnival of the Arid.
Microecos
Time’s Spiral in Arrow Canyon
In Arrow Canyon near Moapa, NV, passersby over the last hundred years have scratched graffiti into the desert varnish. Their handiwork overlays—and in some places obscures—an astonishing set of petroglyphs ten or more times as old as the historic scratchings. But the petroglyphs’ antiquity pales before that of the fossils in the nearby rock. They date from 318 million years ago, when the Mississippian epoch was ending and the Pennsylvanian beginning. microecos is there, with Estwing rock hammer and camera in hand.
Lounge of the Lab Lemming
Camels in the Outback
Australia’s deserts have been a sort of global laboratory for invasive exotic species, with rabbits and prickly pear cacti being the two most notoriously destructive examples. Dromedary camels were introduced to the Outback beginning in the late 19th century, then abandoned as the Auto age dawned. Unsurprisingly, the desert-adapted camels did very well in the Outback. Chuck Magee ran into some on a recent road trip: he offers photos, some guesses as to why the dromedaries aren’t as ecologically destructive as one might guess, and an opinion on the proper seasoning for camel meat.
Sabino Canyon Blog
Beware of Teddy Bears
The Sabino Canyon Blog—a wonderful find, where blogger Diane C chronicles the goings-on in a beautiful riparian canyon in the southern foothills of Tucson’s Santa Catalina Mountains—offers a brief and affectionate look at the Teddy Bear Cholla, and an excellent object lesson, with photos of her punctured husband, in why you should always carry a large plastic comb with you in cholla country.
Painting With Fire
Artist and desert rat Leslie Sobel is stuck in Michigan, a lovely state but one devoid of desert. She helps herself get through the non-arid winter by remembering desert visits past, with photos.
Desertsouthwest
Seeing Palm Canyon
Blogger Cheryl Ann takes us on a hike through Southern California’s Palm Canyon, and its gorgeous native palm stand. Wonderful photos. (Note: if you’re at work, turn down your speakers for this site, as there’s auto-loading music. Unless, that is, your coworkers like Enya, in which case crank it.)
Through the Sandglass
The man who figured out how deserts work
Michael Welland, author of “Sand: The Never-Ending Story
Gossamer Tapestry
Painted Canyon
Doug Taron, usually confined to Chicagoland, went on an entomologically oriented hike in southern California, through a claustrophobic slot in the Mecca Hills called Painted Canyon. He brought us back photos. If you’ve wondered what it’s like to walk into a slot in the earth and climb up dry falls on rickety ladders placed by previous hikers, these photos give a good hint. Also seen: stilts and pelicans on the nearby Salton Sea.
Imágenes Prestadas
Cerro La Bruja
We’re multilingual here at Carnival of the Arid #1, and those readers que pueden leer el texto Español will enjoy reading Claudia Lüthi’s narrative of a trip to Peru’s desolate Ocucaje region, in the company of a paleontologist, to find Pliocene fossils in the Pisco Formation. Those of you who can’t read Spanish will enjoy seeing the photos Claudia offers. Oh, the wanderlust.
Chinleana
Revised Chinle Stratigraphy of Chama
A whole blog devoted to my favorite geologic formation! The Chinle Formation, laid down in the late Triassic period by freshwater lakes and streams, crops out in places as widely dispersed as Red Rock Canyon in southern Nevada, and the Four Corners region—and, depending on who you ask, possibly in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas as well. The confusion arises in part from the broad variety of rocks historically included within the Chinle Formation by geologists, and geologists have their hands full trying to determine which far-flung patches of red rock correspond in chemical and fossil content and paleomagnetic orientation. It’s like putting together a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle based on patterns hidden inside each piece, and with nine-tenths of the pieces lost over the last hundred million years.
In this CotA submission, Bill Parker reviews a recent paper reworking the stratigraphic nomenclature for the Chinle in the Chama Basin of Northern New Mexico. It’s a fascinating look at not just the process of untangling the geological knot that is the Chinle Formation, but of the inevitable disagreements among geologists over how to interpret the available data.
Coyote Crossing
Is a Fish More Important Than A Tortoise?
In this post, I lament the tendency among urban environmentalists to shrug off damage to the desert in the name of the greater good of renewable energy generation, and point out that none of those same environmentalists seem to advocate destroying river habitat to fight global warming with big hydro. Hence the title.
Via Negativa
A White Body in the Heart of the Desert
A translation of El Cuerpo Blanco al Fondo del Desierto, by Homero Aridjis. In Dave Bonta’s words:
I wanted to submit something to the first edition of the desert-focused blog carnival that Chris Clarke just started, the Carnival of the Arid, but I don’t know much about deserts, so I found this poem to translate instead. Homero Aridjis — whose last name contains the word “arid” — is one of Latin America’s foremost conservationists, in addition to being a widely published poet.
Caroline at Coastcard [Land & Lit]
Postcard 12: Gloucestershire in Negev
Welsh blogger Caroline’s significant other, David Gill, is an archaeologist and poet. In Caroline’s submission, she offers a YouTubed reading, by David, of his poem Gloucestershire in Negev, set to photos of that canonical arid land.
Earthly Musings - Blog Site of Wayne Ranney
A Flagstaff-based geologist, Wayne has apparently been doing quite a bit of traveling lately, including some time spent in southern Africa. In the Namib Desert, Wayne spends some time looking at the local geology, and gets a glimpse of the Namib Desert’s unique biota, with dune beetles and the odd plant Welwitschia and other living things that have evolved to take advantage of fog condensation — the Namib’s only source of water.
Protect Snake Valley
Modern Pioneers
I wrote a few days back about the current attempt by the City of Las Vegas to commandeer the water in the Snake Valley, a ranching community 200 miles north on the Nevada-Utah line. Kathy Hill, a third-generation Snake Valley resident, sends along this post introducing herself and her husband Ken, who’ve been working to live sustainably in the valley and now find themselves faced with the task of defending it against an implacable bureaucracy. You’ll definitely want to check back for updates on the progress of their work to keep the Snake Valley’s water in the Snake Valley.
Anza Borrego
Sunrise Powerlink
AnzaBorrego.net, like Protect Snake Valley, is another blog devoted to defending a desert treasure, in this case the better-known Anza Borrego Desert State Park east of San Diego. In this post, blogger Bob Baran bemoans the California Public Utilities Commission’s approval of the Sunrise Powerlink transmission corridor. The approval was a partial victory in that legally protected wilderness in the park won’t be involved, but the new route still involves damaging priceless desert backcountry lands for an unnecessary power line. Bob provides a phone number for those interested in expression their opposition to the Powerlink to the Governor’s staff.
DesertBlog
Bighorn Sheep are Counting On You
Linked here on many occasions, the Desert Protective Council’s DesertBlog, run by Larry Hogue, offers this piece from last October on a potentially disastrous plan by the US Fish and Wildlife Service to cut back on the Peninsular bighorn sheep’s critical habitat. There’s an action item on the post that expired in October, but the issue is still very much alive, and you can contact the blog’s management if you’d like to find out more. Larry’s got some wonderful photos of (non-Peninsular) desert bighorn sheep there as well.
Looking For Detachment
Blogger Silver Fox sends along a series of posts on the Fisher Towers region northeast of Moab, Utah, with wonderful aerial photos, accessible hand-drawn diagrams of the geological formations underlying the area, an Arches National Park stratigraphy chart, and Jon Bon Jovi. Silver Fox also offers this photographic tribute to desert writer Ed Abbey, whose 82nd birthday was Friday.
Postal Poetry
This arts blog, which features short poetry on postcards (or postcard-sized images), and which last year published my Searchlight, Nevada-based, LOLcat-inspired work Eated, submits the wonderful “Passing Thru” by Katherine Ren Powell, on driving past Barstow.
10,000 Birds
Birding Up and Down the Rio Grande Valley
At the premier birding group blog (or group birding blog?), Mike wraps up his coverage of a birding trip to the Rio Grande Valley with the story of the last day of his trip, and abundant photos. (Strange to see a ladder-backed woodpecker, which I know as a Joshua tree forest denizen, hanging out in a Texas riparian bosque!) Though parts of Mike’s day were spent outside the strictly defined boundaries of The Arid, he and his companions did get to Starr Country Park, inside the Chihuahuan Desert, and habitat for cactus wrens, pyrrhuloxia, and roadrunners.
Arvind Says
Sonoran
Arvind, a long-time member of the Coyote Crossing commentariat, takes some time at his blog to talk about the evolution of his appreciation for desert landscapes. Like many of us who grew up accustomed to lusher landscapes, his first views of the desert came as a bit of a shock. How, he wondered, could a person look out at the desert and not want to… green it up? Time spent in the Sonoran Desert brought him to the realization that the desert was just as lively, just as beautiful as a tropical forest or temperate garden. The desert is still seen by most as an empty backdrop, and, says Arvind, ” I am ashamed to think that at one point in my life, I have shared this view. Not anymore. Today, I cannot see a desert in the world and not think it is beautiful.”
Geology Happens
And as an appropriate capper for this first Carnival of the Arid, the blog Geology Happens offers The Long View. An excerpt:
The canyons of Utah really enable us to take a long view.
Literally: the view here is long. No biology to interfere with the view.
Environmentally, the area is so fragile, that we can see how a little degradation can end up a problem for decades or even centuries.
Can we as a society take a long view. I wonder sometimes.
Me too.
Thanks for reading! Please feel free to respond to any of these posts here in comments, or better yet, on the participating blog. And submit something for March’s CotA!
Castle Rock in Castle Valley, Richard Schwartz photo.
Comments
Thanks for a great, diverse collection of posts on our arid regions of the world. There’s a lot to learn and savor here.
I am a 30+ year resident of California’s lower desert, near Palm Springs. My husband and I love to travel and explore our deserts. I have several blogs, but desertsouthwest (http://desertswest.blogspot.com/) is my desert blog. I recently did a 7 post feature on the Indian canyons of Palm Springs, including Palm Canyon and Andreas Canyon. Here is the link to the first article ~~ http://desertswest.blogspot.com/2008/11/seeing-palm-canyon-113008.html
[Included! - CC]
Great work, I will try and get something done about a few desert invertebrates, just need to finish a few projects on the slightly more damp neotropical ones.
Damn. Missed it. :mad:
A smorgasbord of desert articles to visit and enjoy!
Thanks for hosting Chris! It’s a great carnival, and glad to hear you’ll be continuing it in the future.
These are fantastic, thanks for pulling them together.
I love the desert, even though I don’t live in or near one. Now I want to go visit, not “some day,” but now.
Congratulations on getting Carnival of the Arid off to a good start.
I love this idea and the desert. I live in Arizona where the deserts are diverse spending six months in central AZ and the other months at the North Rim of Grand Canyon NP. Will try to get in on the next Carnival of the Arid.
Well done. This is a nice addition to the world of carnivals. I had hoped to have something for this one, but I’ll have to wait for next month’s edition. Glad to see this was a success and will continue.
That’s a lot of arid blogs! Thanks for putting this together, Chris.
There are so many interesting articles to read here. Living in Michigan, I crave the hot climate desperately! Thanks for putting these blogs on one page, so much to learn..so good for the soul!!!
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