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| By Doug Dolde, public domain, Wikimedia |
Although I'm fond of California, eight years passed before I
finally made a trip west to visit my daughter in the high desert of Palmdale,
California last week. I've missed my annual week of revivification in the warm,
dry climate that clears up allergies, arthritis, and other maladies endemic to
the Deep South. When I was eleven, I developed a liking for the climate and
landscape of the desert during our sojourn in "Diddy Wah Diddy," my father's name
for California.
I was shocked to see the skeletal-looking Joshua trees (my
favorite species of desert trees) on the landscape, but shouldn't have been as
the high desert in California is experiencing severe drought—the region has
averaged only about four inches of rain in several years.
The Joshua tree has been called the "cultural signature
of California's desert landscape," and grows only in the Mohave Desert.
The seedlings of these picturesque trees are shriveling up and dying before
they can put down roots, and scientists say that the trees may lose up to 90 percent
of their range in the 800,000-acre Joshua Tree National Park by the end of this
century if the drought persists.
My daughter lives in the Antelope Valley where water usage
has been limited due to the drought, and water agencies have begun planning for
more storage facilities to capture water available during wet seasons—some
have even suggested building a Bay-Delta twin tunnel project and to limit the
amount of water being diverted to protect the Delta smelt. Currently, my
daughter is abiding by the mandate to limit outdoor water use, and her
once-green yard reflects that limitation. She's considering graveling the
entire expanse of front and side yards.
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| Big Bear Lake, CA |
We also visited Big Bear Lake (elevation 6743 feet!) while
traveling in Diddy Wah Diddy and found that a four-year drought has resulted in
the lake being eleven feet down from full. For the last three years, this area
has experienced a drought condition that resulted in fifty percent less than
the average amount of inflow into the Lake.
But back to the Joshua tree, a succulent known as Yucca brevifolia. The tree grows up to forty feet high and lives more than
200 years, sporadically putting out yellow and white bell-shaped blossoms.
Unfortunately, during the 1980's when Palmdale and Lancaster, aka the
Antelope Valley area, were booming, 200,000 Joshua trees were replaced by
housing tracts and shopping centers (my daughter lives on one of the housing
tracts!). Then, during the 1990's, exotic grasses began to grow among the trees
because of conditions triggered by El Nino, and the grasses caused the forests
of Joshua trees to become vulnerable to brush fires.
As we drove through the Mohave, I kept lamenting about the
stricken forests of trees and consoled myself with the fact that because the Joshua
trees grow for about 200 years, I wouldn't witness large-scale die-offs during
my lifetime, but I hated to see the demise of any of these desert beauties.
Mormons named the Joshua tree after the biblical character
Joshua. They were traveling through the Cajon Pass to Utah in 1857, and it is
said that they envisioned the trees as prophets and that their outstretched
arms pointed the way to the promised land.
While traveling from Lake Tahoe back to Palmdale one summer,
I scribbled twenty poems that included a brief notation about sighting a Joshua
tree, a snippet entitled "Near Cartago, California: Population 75:"
Salt flats,
fields of uncommon snow,
blush at the edges
where brine shrimp wriggle;
and not a mile away
at the turn-off to Death Valley
Joshua trees suddenly jut up,
old men with arms linked
standing too close to each other
grumbling to the sun.
And if you want to read more about these dying desert
attractions, there's a "tome" online entitled Joshua, My Love. The book was written by Mary Austin, a woman who
fell in love with Joshua trees when she moved to Antelope Valley in 1937.
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