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Position: 35°10’37.9″N 106°27’59.9″W
Besides a penguin and a current, Alexander von Humboldt gave the world the Naturgemälde, a theory of ecology based on altitudes. Over five years, Humboldt and his buddy Aimé Bonpland explored and measured every square centimetre of South America they could. They floated the Orinoco and scaled the heights of the volcano Chimborazo in the Andes.
Humboldt’s ‘Paintings of Nature’ concept precipitated out of his fastidious data gathering. Temperature, moisture, pressure, and a passel of moxie led him to the conclusion that plants thrive in biomes controlled by their surroundings and the elements. That the same plants can be found all over the world in similar climatic[1] conditions supported his idea that Earth’s resources are intertwined with the riches of nature spread across the planet. He also realised, 224 years ago, that humans were similarly enmeshed in a vast system that they could bend to their will. Thanks to Alex and Aimé, climate change is not a new concept.
Winds
The Sandia Mountains’ biome is dry and dusty, so imagine our wonder at how green things have become recently. Spring in the Mountain West comes in like a lion and, like an escaped convict, heads out on the lam. Temperatures in the past couple of weeks have seesawed from freezing to the mid-70s (F). Three days of rain, snow and 30 knot winds last week demanded we keep an eye on the rickety backyard fence to make sure it remained upright, lest Bodhi escape or the coyotes come calling. It’s nothing that a drill and some three-inch deck screws can’t fix, but those thin planks are all that stand between us and the raw, naked wilderness behind the house.
California, where I worked for many years, turns green in springtime. For about three weeks the dun, rocky hills sprout plants and wildflowers and come alive. New Mexico is similar, but not the same. At least in this neck of the arroyo. Looking up at the steep face of the Sandias, the round, moulded rock faces in the foreground light up with lemon-lime lichens. Below them in the dips and crags, blackened and ashy sagebrushes are slowly raising their branches with verdant growth. Stands of grey rabbitbrush are coming back to life. The wildflowers haven’t blossomed quite yet, but there is enough pollen around to believe it won’t take long before they do.
Prickly
Off in the distance, landscape trees, too far away to identify, are filling in brightly. Further out, the long ribbon of cottonwoods fringing the Rio Grande are busy pushing last season’s brown, desiccated leafy remnants from their twigs with a sense of urgency. It’s too early for prickly pears, but their paddle-flat cacti are looking swell. It should be a good season for the mule deer. And any natural-food-gatherers wandering through the hills in September or October.
Photos
About halfway up the little arroyo we follow to get to the main wilderness trail is a large bush mobbed by little black moths, no doubt eating every fresh sprig the plant can muster. Of course, by the time I get my camera ready they’ve flown in every direction other than where my lens is pointed. But in their spirit, here are a few photos of spring in the high desert.
[1] Arguably, pre-Humboldtian science can be described as ante-climatic and everything since anti-climactic.
