ANN ZWINGER: A DESERT WORLD 415 Ann Zwinger © 1925) ‘Ann Zwinger , who graduated from Wellesley College, is an artist and historian who teaches at Colorado College. Her books include Run River Run: A Naturalist’s Journey Down One of the Great Rivers of the West (1975, winner of the John Burroughs Medal), Wind in the Rock: The Canyonlands of Southeastern Utah (1978), and Downcanyon: A Naturalist Explores the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon (1995, winner Western States Book Award). Her writing has also appeared in Audubon, Smithsonian, and National History. She is the recipient of the John Hay Medal of The Orion Society and the 2006 Frank Waters Award for lifetime achievements as a writer, teacher, and naturalist. A DESERT WORLD “A Desert World” (editors’ title for this unnamed piece) gives us a rare opportunity to “sit” in- side a woman’s head as she looks out from a prehistoric cave on the Utah desert and meditates on its strange, haunting beauty. She outlines the gifts that the land has given her and suggests to us the larger implications of the lessons she has learned from the desert. Implicit in all she says is a plea to preserve what is there in front of her—the beauty, the astonishing array of life, the lessons about adaptability, the secrets of the desert’s night life. This short meditation was one of 21 contributions made by writers in 1996 to help preserve the wilderness in Utah; the collection, Testimony, was presented to members of the United States Congress. Senator Bill Bradley had this to say about the book: “If writing itself can be an act of public service, then this collection is it.” ‘The clamshell opening of the cave sits a cou- _ ibly reassuring and ponder what I have come ple of hundred feet above the floor of the to understand about people who tracked Great Basin Desert, where once the waters of these threadbare desert lands and my own the Great Salt Lake sparkled and flickered, necessity for clear horizons and long vistas. where once a prehistoric people made a living Out here there is an order, a cause and effect and shared in the bounty of a wetter climate. _ that is logical and persistent. The sun always This cave was not a permanent residence but rises in the east. fa temporary one, utilized by archaic peoples Insights into this beautifully attuned on their never-ending rounds of hunting and world to which I am not adapted make the gathering and fishing. I sit cross-legged, gaz- fine-tuning of those small creatures that hop ing out upon a vast landscape, reflecting on a and stalk, scurry and slither in the deserts lifestyle so different from mine. * objects of respect from which humans ean ex- During good growing years, when Indian tract survival skills and medical miracles: a populations were small, archaic life was good, kangaroo rat and a black-throated sparrow for there was enough to eat. When times were that survive well without free water; special- bad and populations high, resources sparser ized toads that dream away the cold times ‘ ‘and harder to find, life became poor to des- burrowed far underground, metabolism erate, But out of these periods of stress came slowed almost to zero; cactus wrens that innovation, invention, and change. I,twentieth- preadjust their clutch size to the soon-to-be- century woman, rest here, settled in the silt of available food. I tally the physiological ad- centuries, rolling the toothpick thigh bone of a justments of blood and urine, hearing and ‘mouse in my fingers, ind this thought inered- seeing, of adaptations in behavior that make416 CHAPTER 10 . wv NATURE AND THE ENVIRONMENT life in the desert not only possible but possi- ble with verve, qualities seen and unseen that spell not only survival, but survival with zest. contemplate plants that can withstand salt- laden soils and those that cannot and their different modes of photosynthesis. I number the ingenious seeds that germinate under precise regimes and their measured se- quences: time to remain dormant, time to sprout, time to flower and set seed, time to dazzle the desert. Utah's Great Basin Desert rims with good health and good spirits and a vibrating heat that locks in the marrow against a cold and lightless winter. Scanning this irreplaceable desert below me, which has exacted its own tributes of this slow-boned human, memories come crowding to my mind of the gifts these desert years have laid on my doorstep, a mosaic of experi- ences made up of sprigs of creosote bush and sagebrush, an owl feather and a grasshopper wing, and a chip of obsidian tied up with gy song of a spadefoot toad, my own medicine bundle for my own ceremonies of passage The desert grants each of us our own tinder standings, charges us with the preservation of its messages. “To the west a single thin cloud hangs oygy the evening mountains, a vasa murrhing cloud illuminated from beneath. Alone in ihe sky, it incandesces as I watch, then fades, ends still glow while the middle darkens ty absorb the mountains beneath. ‘The eky behind the mountains segues to, pale steely blue, without warmth, bending up. ward to dusk. Where the sun has departed, the sky bleaches. Dust spirits sleep. A Cyclops ‘moon rises to the east. The wind abides. §. lence streams from the mountains. Black feathers of darkness drift downward, and the desert comes alive.