The Sonoran Desert

We do not know why we like deseit. But we know from the records left in our books and our language that this feeling is recent in our minds and hearts and that our acts constantly belie our words and feelings.

For Americans, this change in attitude probably first occurred in the 1890s among a select and cursed few. For Mexicans, this change may never have occurred. Their attitude may have been a constant that avoids the prickly question of like and dislike and simply takes things as they are.

This time the desert is a dry slab knifed by mountains, a hot pan spreading across southern Arizona, deep into Sonora, embracing Baja, and probing fully and with caution into the polluted air of California. The mountains run roughly northwest by southwest with valleys of soil between them that have been ground down by the hand of time from their flanks. There have been accidents, and this is the result.

They say that between 650 million and 250 million years ago shallow seas ebbed and flowed across southern Arizona. No one really remembers. There was a great continent called Pangaea, and force ripped it apart 225 million years ago, and the land throbbed with volcanoes, earthquakes, and dances of the Earth's crust. The troubles continued. Maybe 35 or 25 million years ago the ground exploded, and thousands of cubic miles of rock roamed up from the depths. This energy declined, and then 15 million years ago the crust of the desert began to pull apart, and rows of mountains separated by valleys filled with eroded soil gave the land a new look, one the men of science called Basin and Range.

In the eastern portions of this desert, the peaks have pine, spruce, Douglas fir - all survivors of a kind of climatic holocaust that occurred about 10 thousand years ago. The valleys themselves seem to deny the word desert at first, at least by our normal standards. There are too many trees mesquite, ironwood, paloverde - and the ground teems with too many plants. Huge cacti saguaro, hecho, organ pipe, cardon tower over everything else, the largest cacti on the face of the Earth.

But the rains do not lie, and this desert drinks from 11 inches of rain a year down to two or three and in some years, none at all.

The life witnessed here has come almost always from elsewhere. Many are extensions of the tropics the cacti, for example and in this place they must outwit a world so dry that the air seems like sand in the mouth. The cacti store moisture in their flesh until the rains come again.The trees, they drive deep into the Earth. Living mesquite roots have been found at more than 150 feet below the surface.

In summer, the soil temperatures can soar to 160 degrees or more, and little or nothing stirs in the midday heat. The coyotes bed down until the cool hours near dusk. The birds go quiet. The rattlesnakes are not out and about; the ground heat would kill them in minutes. Some animals the kangaroo rat and possibly the Sonora pronghorn never drink but are able to find moisture in their foods. Most simply evade. The Gila monster, that poisonous symbol of this desert, spends 98 percent of its time underground. Essentially, it does not live in the Sonoran Desert, it merely surfaces at those fine momentswhen the temperatures are mild, and the living is pleasant. This baked but sacred ground is the place often scorned or feared, the place where early priests found Satan everywhere and where earlier Americans found many, many gods. For thousands of years, it has been a theater for invaders invading plants, invading animals, invading Homo sapiens with various baggages of beliefs. It is one of the world's many stages, and, like any stage, it tolerates performances but is resistant to any permanent occupation by the players. Here the cast is always killed that is part of the play.

This is my desert. It prompts no clear agreement on maps, but is called the Sonoran Desert with various academic quibbles about its exact borders. But it truly exists, and anyone can visit it. It is not always a pleasant place. But it is very, very beautiful, and few who feel its lips on their mouths can ever leave it. Anymore than they can permanently remain truly in it. The desert is everywhere now, it is in millions of minds, and they will not let it go. It is for sale; one can own it. Put it on a shelf and admire it. We rub our fingersContinued from page 17 across lacquered skulls. We no longer permit follies such as the wild wandering of Coronado. We insist on permits, master plans, environmental-impact statements. We favor fine photos of places without houses or people. We wish to belong. Strike roots.

We lack the capacity. Think of 100 million years, fix the image firmly. It is not a possible thought for us. Try thinking of 800 years, centuries spent never stirring from one spot. That, too, is impossible. Consider spending one single year in one place and living with what that place offers up. This, too, is impossible. We are different from the things we admire in and of the desert, and that is why we will never really belong here.

The Sonoran Desert: Arizona, California, Mexico, photographs by Jack Dykinga, text by Charles Bowden, published by Harry N. Abrams Inc., New York. The full-color 168page tour de force of the stark beauty of the Sonoran Desert is available from Arizona Highways for $49.50, plus shipping and handling. To order, call Arizona Highways toll-free at 1 (800) 543-5432. In the Phoenix area, call 258-1000.