The creosote bush is truly the unnoticed elephant in the room. If someone were to weigh the biomass of the desert Southwest, this species would certainly possess the highest percentage of life and we would find that a high percentage of all other life in the desert is dependent upon it, yet its importance in the desert environment goes unappreciated by both scientists and artists alike.
To understand any environment on earth one must understand how the wind works its way through that environment because as the wind works its way through the environment it affects all things and in many ways. While the wind is often invisible, its effects are not; for example, it can scour away the soil from one place and deliver it to another.
The Coso Mountain petroglyphs are the last remnant of a society that started thousands of years ago and lived almost to our present time. And through the artistry and symbolism of these petroglyphs we know that it was a hunter gather society that was based on hunting desert bighorn sheep.
Petroglyphs prove that the beauty and thoughts of the human mind can travel immense distances in time and that the beauty can still be recognized and the thoughts still valued. Having a basic understanding of these petroglyphs will give us a pathway to travel back in time to the environment in which they were made and give us some understanding of it.
In the Mojave Desert you'll find a species of snail that is truly one of the most interesting life forms that live there and yet it is often overlooked or unknown to most people. To start with, this snail has a shiny black body and of course its common name is "white desert snail".
A long time ago, perhaps as much 2000 or 3000 years, an Indian was hunting for bighorn sheep in a land that he'd never hunted before. The sheep sign was getting thicker, it seemed, with every step until he came to the edge of a cliff and looked down and saw a pool of water, where the bighorn sheep had been watering for untold ages.
The desert is full of all kinds of treasures, gold, silver, and other rare elements. Even water in the desert can be considered a treasure and the source of immense wealth. One of the greatest treasures that we have in the desert is art, and we can truly call this art a treasure.
This place name I have heard of more than once, and like so many place names this one has a story behind it. And of course this story is about the coyotes digging holes; so if one understands why they dig these holes in the desert, they will understand the coyote better, and this of course will lead to better understanding of the entire ecosystem.
Optical equipment is not generally viewed as safety or emergency equipment.
Binoculars and spotting scopes can be used in conjunction with one another, but it is best to have both.
Quality binoculars, even if in small magnification can be helpful in identifying objects from a safe distance.
Tricks to getting the most from your binoculars
A good set of binoculars can make a tremendous difference in the way you experience the desert even if you're with a group of people that have a very large presence in the environment.
This subject is rarely discussed and is often overlooked by many who walked the desert. However, the right optics can bestow superhuman powers on almost any one.
While it seems it was a long time ago, I remember it well. It was sometime in August, early in the morning and it was already getting hot. When I left my home in Barstow to go out riding on my brand-new motorcycle, my wife did not ask where I was going because she knew that I didn't know or care. So before long I found myself gassing up in Lucerne Valley where I decided to ride to Newberry.
The Joshua tree like all plants can teach us a lot about the environment that they inhabit, so we must understand the mechanism of each plant to understand them and their environment.
This story’s title is a little piece of folk wisdom my mother would recite whenever my brother and I would act up. Its literal meaning – to take on the persona of the rooster – is a characteristic that holds true in many of nature’s relationships.
The desert Bighorn Sheep are one of the very unique species that we have in the Mojave Desert. They’re the desert's largest inhabitants, but there is much more to the species than just their size. If you have been fortunate enough to witness a large ram scurry up a an impassable mountain side, then you know what I mean.