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Tucson Audubon Society Sunday, May 8, 2005 (Vol. 12,
Issue 18) May 4, 2005 - The EXPLORER sent staff writer Laura Marble to the Tucson Audubon Society's 35th annual Institute of Desert Ecology to bring back a close-up account of the four-day event, which gives participants an in-depth introduction to the Sonoran Desert through nature hikes, outdoor lectures and hands-on experiences with desert creatures. The institute's curriculum focuses on the desert's ecosystems, and days are chock-full of lessons about how the physical characteristics of desert plants and animals relate to the physical characteristics of their harsh environment. Days start early and end late with optional activities including owling, backlighting for insects and gazing at stars. All meals are catered, and participants sleep in their own tents or campers. University of Arizona credit is offered to institute graduates. The institute is held each spring at Catalina State Park. This year, it was held April 14-17, and the fee was $375, with discounts for Tucson Audubon Society members. For information about the participating in the institute next year, call 622-5622. Wednesday bedtime, 11 p.m. What an idiot I was for playing Wilderness Girl, for recklessly pitching my tent in the boonies of Catalina State Park's group gathering area because I required a pristine view. Now it's 11 p.m. and my flashlight has died. The moon is a useless sliver, and I'm separated from my bedding. The site of this year's Institute of Desert Ecology looks nothing like it did six hours ago when I set up camp. Then, it was scrub. Now it's Tent City. I could wander around this encampment all night and never find the pillow that has my smell on it. I'm lost. I'm disrupting campers. I think I hear a snake. I tromp back to my Toyota Echo, curl up in the back seat, pull my laundry bag over my feet and call it a day. Thursday breakfast, 7:15 a.m. Morning has broken like the first morning. I slept fitfully, last night, dreaming about an alternate nighttime scenario in which all 50 of the campers I'm about to spend four days with were awake together in a cozy Victorian house, with vacant mattresses adorning a darkened room. Then I realized I was actually in my Echo, shivering, and I had no more layers of clothing I could scavenge from my suitcase for warmth. And I was too cold to sleep. So I'm tired this morning. I sip coffee as a chipper woman welcomes me and a crowd of other breakfast eaters to the Tucson Audubon Society's 35th annual outdoor Institute of Desert Ecology, a camp for adults who want to learn about the Sonoran Desert. I'm here as a journalist, and this has got to be the coolest, albeit coldest, assignment I've ever had. Others are here because they have wildlife-oriented jobs and their workplaces have sent them, or because they're Tucson Audubon Society members or adventurous retirees. A few have come from other states. Many are of a breed that I don't quite understand, a breed that carries field guides in satchels and gets kicks out of scrutinizing flowers or birds and categorizing them, and also identifying them, sometimes in Latin. A camper of this breed interrupts our speaker. She's spotted a flaming red songbird in a nearby tree. She's dying to know what it is. I'm bemused, and intrigued, by her curiosity. It's a pretty bird. Isn't that enough? What's the use of knowing its name? Thursday herpetology class, 8:55 a.m. The flaming red bird, it turns out, was a vermilion flycatcher. Also, as it turns out, that's the Tucson Audubon Society's mascot. The lizard guy teaching my first Sonoran Desert class is Cecil Schwalbe. Actually, he's a herpetology guy, which means he also claims amphibians, including an exotic 5-foot-long earthworm-like creature that we don't get in Arizona. But he goes around catching lizards with a lizard lasso, and for that reason I see him as the lizard guy. Before today is over, we will have studied under the lizard guy, a bug guy, a rock guy, two bird-and-plant guys and a mammal woman. Before four days are over, we will have studied under each of them twice, having rotated among them in small groups. Most of them have doctoral degrees. Cecil is fascinated with scaly creatures, enough that he's been bitten more than a few times. He co-wrote an authoritative book on Arizona's venomous reptiles, which poison control workers immediately referred to when he called to report his Gila monster bite. Unfortunately, his book said anyone who gets bit by a Gila monster deserves it. Cecil likes slippery creatures, too. He tells us, with wide eyes, that the United States has 200 species of amphibians, and 90 of those species have no tails, and of the 90 tailless guys, 25 are found in, of all places, the Sonoran Desert. "When I heard that, it blew me away," he says. "How can a place so dry have so many species of amphibians?" Thursday free time, 1:30 p.m. Good news: I found my tent. It was right where I left it. Solar showers are a tradition at the Institute of Desert Ecology, and I'm oily and dust-caked and sweating through my slept-in clothes, so I'm eager to support tradition. It's an ordeal, though. First, you have to find a tall, muscular person to lift the black plastic water container to the overhead reservoir. Then, as one staff person advised me, you "hang onto your soap." I rinse like a mad woman, afraid that the reservoir will dry up and leave me frothy. There's ample water, though, and despite my best efforts at drying inside the circular nylon shower curtain, I remain sweaty. I've found the only humid spot in the whole Sonoran Desert. I should notify Cecil's amphibians. Thursday entomology class, 2:20 p.m. I think you could best describe Carl Olson as a one-man environmental advocacy group for bugs. His uniform, here at the institute, is a bug T-shirt. He seems to believe that every sin Americans commit against life can be traced back to a bad attitude about our co-inhabitants with six or more legs. Our solution for everything is "Kill it," he says. Got a mountain lion? Kill it. Got a terrorist? Same thing. "Americans have no feeling for life," he says. "And it all started with the bugs." Carl is gushing about exoskeletons, this afternoon, pointing out how useful they are for desert dwellers because they hold in moisture. Kind of like solar showers. But life is full of tradeoffs, Carl says, and for armored arthropods, the tradeoff is that it's hard work growing new shells. As I stare at a collection of bug exoskeletons Carl brought to class, I remember a story that the writer Tom Owen-Towle told about another kind of arthropod, lobsters: "When a lobster becomes crowded in its shell and can't grow anymore, by instinct it travels out to some place in the sea, hoping for relative safety, and begins to shed its shell. It's a terribly dangerous process - the lobster has to risk its life, because once it becomes naked, vulnerable, it can be dashed against a reef or eaten by another lobster or fish. But that's the only way it can grow." All the sudden, I feel a kinship with Carl's bugs. Thursday dinner, 6:30 p.m. I'm camped out by a plugged-up gopher hole, sitting in wait. Earlier today, the mammal woman, Ronnie Sidner, said this gopher may poke its head out today as the sun goes down, or tomorrow as day breaks. She said furry critters are elusive in these parts, and this gopher hole may be our only chance for a wild mammal sighting. I'm spent, and it's just dinnertime. I'm grateful to sit quietly. Was it only this morning that I was figuring out a dunking bag is not a bag you dunk, rather it's a bag you hang in a tree once it's holding your drying dishes, which you dunked? Was it only this morning that Cecil got me all excited about lassoing lizards? Two campers pass my gopher spot on their way to dinner. "Good luck," one calls. She's heard about this elusive mammal. Ronnie walks by me on her way to dinner. "This is when he's supposed to come out, right?" I ask. "I've got you sitting here thinking that," she says, pokerfaced. "I made it up, actually." Friday pre-breakfast snack, 5:30 a.m. Someone saw the gopher's hole unplugged this morning. Friday entomology class, 6 a.m. My sweet dreams, this morning, were interrupted by a cowbell. I listened with sleepy interest to the 5 a.m. music until I realized it was meant to rouse me from my toasty cocoon. That sleeping bag, last night, was dreamy. I've never been so aware of the luxury of a fully furnished tent. It's much better than an Echo. Carl is holding a velvet ant that he has found on our chilly, pre-breakfast bug walk. It has thick tufts of yellow and orange fur on its back, and is rather beautiful up close. A fellow camper clarifies, for me, that a velvet ant is really a wasp, and that sends Carl on a tirade about the American media's sorry treatment of Africanized honeybees, like one he was wearing on his T-shirt, yesterday, that had a cartoon skull for a face and bore the label "killer." Carl asserts that journalists get all hyped about "killer bees" because they want people to watch "Fear Factor." Carl has an intriguing affinity for insects with antisocial mannerisms. He's spoken admiringly, for example, about little black beetles in this desert that keep bullies away with a repugnant quinone stench that emanates from their rears. A fellow camper asks Carl, "Do you ever get tired of being an apologist for some nasty-ass bugs?" Friday birds and plants class, 8:45 a.m. Linwood Smith, one of two bird-and-plant guys, has us huddled in a precarious position, after breakfast, with a thicket of cacti at our backs and blazing, undiffused sunlight just in front of us. "Boy, talk about a captive audience," he says. We're engaged with Carl's lesson, but our eyes are darting all around, too. Peripherally, we're looking for Carl's stinky bugs and Cecil's lizards, and the Tucson Audubon Society's red mascot bird. Linwood directs our thoughts to a mesquite grove we saw just down the hill. It was peculiar. The trees were a picture of health, bursting with green, except for their outer branches, which were downright dead. Those mesquites, he explains, are rugged survivalists. They know what to do when drought sets in and sunlight scorches the desert floor. They pare down to keep thriving. They self-prune entire branches. Back in Missouri, where I come from, I never heard of trees cutting their losses with such surrender. I'm impressed. Linwood leads us to a prickly pear cactus, which he calls "the epitome" of resourcefulness during times of drought. After other plants have slowed down their photosynthesizing for the summer, he says, or have entirely shut down - some do that - the cacti keep plugging away. Quietly, without flashing showy foliage, they keep converting scorching sunlight into energy all summer long. Their secret is in how they ration their vulnerability. At night, they open up, so they can replenish their entire supply of carbon dioxide for the next day's work and release a day's work of oxygen. When day breaks, they become impermeable. You've got to respect the cacti. Friday herpetology class, 11:05 a.m. Cecil has a Gila monster in a lizard headlock, this morning. Its back feels like a slinky, beaded purse. He has a rattlesnake with him, too, that he wrestles with, and we all get to shake its rattle. He also comes with true stories about a creepy Sonoran Desert lizard that squirts blood from its eyes. I'm most impressed, though, with his desert tortoise. Like the cacti, it shows admirable resourcefulness living on parched earth. It only pees during the rainy season. Friday bedtime, 9 p.m. I found my tent again tonight. That's twice in a row. A new friend offered me his flashlight after we returned from an organized night hunt for bats. I told him Wilderness Girl could make do without one. It's been another full day of nature walks and lectures. Today we had two hours of free time, tomorrow we have none. Sunday, we take a leisurely hike and go home. I don't want to go home. Saturday breakfast, 8 a.m. I'm eating breakfast with another new friend. She has cool dreadlocks, and I admire the way she keeps tying her dress shirt around her head and using its collar as a makeshift bonnet. She calls it her desert adaptation. I tell her that I think the Sonoran Desert is ripe with metaphors for living. She nods. "I think the reason people study these things is to learn about themselves," she says. Saturday wrap-up session, 5:30 p.m. Our last Sonoran Desert class has arrived too soon. We're seated together in the open, all 50 of us, soaking up a pristine view of the desertscape we've come to know. I don't see any critters beneath the desert scrub, but I know they're out there - the stinky bugs with armored backs, jackrabbits with heat-radiating ears, amphibians snuggled into riparian mud holes, desert-adapted kangaroo rats that don't drink water even if you offer it to them. I see a bird, though. It's a vermilion flycatcher. It makes a streak of vibrant red across the evening sky. I see it before others do. "What do we have here?" our speaker asks, turning to acknowledge the visitor stealing his thunder. I'm impressed with how he doesn't skip a beat. "This is to remind you that this institute was sponsored by the Tucson Audubon Society," he announces, turning the program over to the bird. My mind wanders as I stare out at the Catalina Mountains. I think about Carl, curly-haired Carl with his goofy bug shirts, who announced brazenly that Americans disrespect life, and that this stems from our treatment of bugs. I think about my perplexity, two days ago, with why anyone would want to memorize the Latin names of birds. I think about war times, about how they say it's nearly impossible to kill someone who has a name. Saturday graduation party, 7 p.m. Many campers prepared skits for our outdoor dinner program celebrating our graduation from the institute. I'm part of a troupe that is going to sing an alphabet song featuring concepts we learned at camp. L is for lizard noose. S is for scat. We put it together an hour before. The poetry people have the stage now. They ambitiously authored a haiku collection. One poet introduces his haiku by repeating an anecdote told by a writer he admires. The writer, Edward Abby, was once asked by someone to identify a bush. When he spoke, he spoke carefully. "No man knows the name of the bush," he said. "Some men call it creosote." Before sitting down, the poet points out that human beings have words for identifying the living things of the Earth, but those living things have different ways of identifying themselves. His haiku goes like this: Birds, bats and reptiles, Butterflies and minerals, The names we give things. Sunday day hike, 7:30 a.m. I got the best compliment I could imagine, this morning, given how enamored I am of my budding vocation as Wilderness Girl. "You look like you've been lassoing lizards all your life," a fellow camper told me, as we began our capstone day hike up the Catalina Mountains. I love carrying a lizard lasso, a ludicrous contraption composed of a 10-foot pole and a teeny-tiny noose dangling at the end. I'm a good wrangler, too. So far I've examined three lizards up close, and I had a whip-tailed lizard in the air before it whipped its head around and wiggled free of captivity. The latest news is that I'm lost again. It's not the moon's fault, this time, or my flashlight's, or my own. I'm lost, along with two good friends I've made and expect to keep. Two fellow lizard lassoers. We're lost because we're so engrossed with the scenery around us that we keep wandering off the trail. We're looking for the plants and critters that we have names for, and wishing for a vocabulary to describe the rest. I think the point I was missing, back when I was perplexed with people who want to attach Latin words, or any words, to every pretty bird, is that it's often a sign of their affection. Once you've really looked at something, once you've become engaged with it and have grown to respect it, you want to know its name. And once you've learned its name, maybe you want to find ways to live peacefully with it. There's a plant in the Sonoran Desert called blood weed. It looks rather boring, with its faded green stem and tiny white flowers, but as soon as you pick it, your fingers turn bright red. This fascinates me. What possible use could a drab desert inhabitant have for a blood-colored dye that it harbors in its stem? No one at the institute seems to know, so I keep wondering about this amusing little plant. Before yesterday, it was just a weed. Copyright © 2005. Northwest Explorer. All rights reserved.
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