ANOTHER WET MORNING

“The silence of too much winter,” I once wrote in a poem, and I might add, “the winter of too much wetness,” as I look out at wet leaf piles heaped in the backyard. A prediction of fog and more rain evokes in me a desire to visit a place I love — the desert of southern California. The feeling is further enhanced when I open a folder that contains copies of postcards my mother collected on a trip to California in the 40’s — cards on which paintings of the desert were shown. The paintings appear on linen cloth cards, and, in particular, I was drawn to two: one of smoke trees in a desert wash and another of Joshua trees jutting into a blue sky.

A great classic book about the desert suitable for the kind of droopy weather we’re experiencing was written by John Van Dyke. It’s simply entitled The Desert, and if you read this tome, you might feel like trading locales, swamp country for desert terrain, for at least a week or so. The author spent three years living in and studying the environment of the desert from a naturalist’s point of view, and he paints with elegant prose what is portrayed in the renderings on the postcards I inherited from my mother.

As I finish up a book of poetry I’m writing — some of the poems based on the desert in Khuzestan Province, Iran — I’m reminded of lines in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: “The worldly hope men set their hearts upon, /turns ashes or prospers, and anon,/like snow upon the desert’s dusty face,/lighting a little hour or two is gone.” Since I’ve memorized many of the quatrains in the Rubaiyat, this verse particularly resonates with me because it reminds me of how our everyday pursuits center on vanity and of how much we avoid the desert places if we can. But it’s there that we encounter the Self and our need for a more spiritually centered life. 

I’ve lived in at least two desert places: El Paso, Texas and Ahwaz, Iran, and from 1983-2007, I made annual treks to southern California where the brilliant light often restored my body and spirit. One summer while we traveled to Palmdale, California from Lake Tahoe, which straddles the line between California and Nevada, I sat in the passenger seat of a rented car during a few hours’ journey and was inspired to write 20 poems about the desert places we passed through, e.g., a brief one entitled “Sage Advisory” and another “Near Cartago, California.”

The long green fingers of sage

reach, open-handed, upward,

unafraid of the brilliant sun,

but they are closed,

will store their brilliance

and open their fingers

 only in darkness

when the desert has cooled,

when the universe becomes a plant.

and “Near Cartago, California: Population 75”

Salt flats, fields of uncommon snow

blush at the edges,

brine shrimp wriggling pink.

Not a mile away

from the turn-off to Death Valley 

Joshua trees suddenly jut up,

old men with arms linked,

standing too close to each other,

grousing in the sunlight.

And as I write this, the sky refuses to clear, so I continue going through my mother’s postcards, envisioning her delight… and loving that she, an intrepid adventurer, taught me to appreciate desert life.

TREE TALES

“Look at the trees,” my father always said when an argument (usually precipitated by him) became loud and quarrelsome at mealtime. So we would pause and look out at the grove of pine trees in the backyard. Sometimes the sight of the tall, cheerful pines had a calming effect, and, more than likely, the harsh tenor of my father’s voice caused us to cease fire. As I grew older, I discovered that my father’s command carried a note of wisdom, and trees/forests became retreat places for me where I could “perceive tongues in trees…”* 

Yesterday, at lunch, a good friend brought us a copy of an article about trees in the March issue of The Smithsonian magazine that became last night’s reading. It’s an amazing article about the tree whisperer Peter Wohlleben, a German forester and author of The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate, and while I’m not convinced that trees really do talk to one another, I can imagine them sharing conversations. I believe the explication about their connecting by way of underground fungal networks through which they share water and nutrients, and send distress signals about drought and disease — mycorrhizal networks, the tree experts call them. According to Wohlleben, they also communicate in the air through pheromones and other scent signals, including scents through their leaves. 

Through further studies of trees in Hummel, Germany, Wohlleben was convinced that when a tree is cut, it sends out electrical signals like humans enduring wounds to their bodies! Although scientists aren’t willing to concede that trees possess a form of consciousness, writers like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, have attributed emotions and consciousness to trees, and I love all mythological stories about them talking to each other.

This is only a mention of the Smithsonian article, but it’s worth a good read — as is the book Wohlleben wrote about trees in which he features them talking, crying, panicking, mourning — all these human characteristics that he creates for them to illustrate the rights of trees to grow old with dignity and die a natural death, rather than a death imposed upon them by tree cutting.

I can identify with his sentiments, perhaps harking back to my father’s command to “look at the trees” which, as far as he imagined, preferred to provide us with an example of dignified silence in times of stress.

Last year in my book of poetry, Let the Trees Answer, accompanied by photographs of trees beloved by me, I attributed consciousness to many of the trees Dr. Victoria Sullivan, Karen Bourque, and Joel Fontenette photographed. One of my favorites is the Joshua tree, which I have written about many times after visits to my daughter’s home in Palmdale, California.

The poem ends with:

A few years ago I saw scarred arms

after a spring without rain

and a winter without frost,

deserted by orioles and wood rats

and their kind that lived

thousands of years ago

threatened by climate change…

spaces in the West no longer sacred,

the Mohave gaunt from too much light,

wind blowing through skeletal trees

and fading indigo in the sky,

white-capped Joshua trees

once thriving in seasons of health —

the golden air of California — 
destroyed.

After a long sunset, appearing again

with wider horizons, taller stalks,

higher manifestations of life…

angular and mysterious. 

Photograph by Joel Fontenette, Palmdale, California

*As You Like It, William Shakespeare

SNOW, WILDFIRES, AND PHOTOGRAPHY

In a preceding blog, I wrote about plans to fly out to California to see my younger daughter Elizabeth, 52, receive her RN pin from Antelope Valley College, and I’m now in the desert country of Palmdale, California, a few days past the graduation ceremony. The night before my departure, fires raged in southern California and snow began to fall in southwest Louisiana! During the early hours of December 8, I began making frantic calls to the airport, to a motel in southern California, and to the California Highway Department, to see if Interstate 405, a major artery leading out of the airport, was open. The preceding day wildfires had edged the city of Los Angeles, causing this highway to close. “The 405,” as native Californians call it, connects to Hwy. 14 and Antelope Valley and a closure could have meant being stranded at LAX. Despite the uncertainty about the wildfires and falling snow, we decided to wing it. “Wing it” involved a delay at the Lafayette airport because the plane from Houston had to be de-iced; and upon arrival in Lafayette had to be de-iced again. You guessed it — we missed our connection. We sat in the Houston airport until 6 p.m., climbed aboard a United Air flight to LAX, and finally arrived at our motel in Palmdale at midnight, Louisiana time. I’m beginning to realize that I’m no longer a happy air traveler.

Joshua tree

However, Elizabeth now has her nurse’s cap, the fires have moved to other points in southern California, and we’ve begun to explore plant life, searching for several trees that will be included in my forthcoming book of poetry entitled Let the Trees Answer. The biggest find is that of ancient Joshua trees, and my grandson Joel photographed one for me to include in the book. We also visited Prime Desert Woodland Preserve, Lancaster, CA, 100 acres of untouched high desert, with two miles of hiking trails that showcase a diversity of desert plant and animal life. We were able to get shots of the Western Cottonwood tree to accompany one of my poems. The site had a plethora of desert plant life, and we trekked the dusty trails long enough to photograph all the trees I’d hoped to find while visiting southern California.

Western Cottonwood

Grandson Joel, 14, loves to take photographs, and I’ve included several of his subjects in this blog to encourage his interest. Joel was diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis shortly after he visited me in Tennessee when he was seven, but he’s a cheerful trouper — plays basketball, swims, is an active member of a church youth group, is teaching himself to play a guitar using an “app,” attends “Elizabeth’s Home School,” and is a whiz with electronic equipment. He also spends time teaching Zeke, his African gray parrot, to talk; however, Zeke only talks when we try to watch a movie or television show. 

Joel at his mother's graduation

Temps have remained in the 30’s and 40’s here in Palmdale, but we’re still enjoying the abundant light from sunny skies that I’ve enjoyed periodically for the 34 years I’ve been coming out to this place my father once called “Diddy Wah Diddy.”

VISITING IN DADDY WAH DIDDY

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.

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.