Rain

Raindrops in Pothole at Little Ruin Canyon

It has been raining for a few days now. Rain in the desert is a very different experience than I have had in other places. It does not seem to be the damper here that it can so often be elsewhere. It is more of a cause for excitement and renewal. On a very wet day last week I visited two other national park sites, and in each, I was encouraged in some very pleasant ways to enjoy and celebrate the rain.

I made a brief stop at Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site in northeastern Arizona.

Hubbell Trading Post NHS Entrance

It is the oldest, continuously operating trading post in the Navajo Nation. John Lorenzo Hubbell opened his post in Ganado in 1876. It remains an active trading post today, operated by Western National Parks Association. It is a place for nearby residents of the Navajo Nation to get basic supplies and a marketplace to sell park visitors the blankets, rugs, jewelry, and other items created by Navajo artisans.

Hubbell Trading Post

When I entered the trading post building, I was met by a delightful young Navajo woman working for Western National Parks Association, the cooperating association that now runs the trading post.  As I opened the door to let myself in she asked me to hold the door so she could step outside and smell the wonderful rain. She told me that it was such a rare treat to have a rainy day as it is almost always sunny there. As she made her way outside the trading post building, I vicariously enjoyed the way she celebrated the fragrance of the rainy morning.

Above the Door to Hubbell Trading Post

From Hubbell Trading Post, I traveled south and west a bit to Petrified Forest National Park. It was an unplanned destination but when I realized it was only an hour away, I could not stop myself from visiting. Between Hubbell and Petrified Forest I passed through an area of higher elevation and drove through wet snow for a stretch of ten or fifteen miles. It was along that section of mountain roads that I first experienced the sensation of wet sagebrush. The heady aroma was inhaled by my car’s ventilation system and I was engulfed in pungent delight. By the time I arrived at Petrified Forest, I was back in the rain.

Petrified Forest National Park Entrance

I made my way to the entrance station where I was greeted by a ranger who checked my annual pass and then admonished me to not collect any petrified wood during my visit. I assured her I would not and as I was about to put the car back in gear and head along the road she paused and then stated how lucky I was to be there on a rainy day. She told me that the rain really accentuated the colors in the park. I was getting a sense that there was something to this special attitude about the rain. Both women treated the rain as something to celebrate, a notion that buoyed my spirits. I have often countered comments about “bad weather” by saying that weather is simply a fact, and that whether we see it as “bad” or “good” is a function of our attitude. I was so pleased that these two park employees had a really positive attitude about the rain.

Indeed, in Petrified Forest, the colors of the landscape were vivid and had a special shine. My first stops were in the Painted Desert section of the park.

Painted Desert at Petrified Forest NP

In addition to giving the landscape a freshly-scrubbed brilliance, the rain showed itself as the very force that carved this unique area of “badlands.” It was as if I could actually see the individual raindrops joining forces to form rivulets flowing off of and bisecting the soft rock formations.

"Badlands" at Petrified Forest NP

Indeed, the Painted Desert was anything but stark. In the vivid colors, though muted by the overcast sky, I could see that special quality the park ranger at the entrance had alluded to. I was seeing the desert in one of its many spectacular moods.

Painted Desert Rim Trail Wayside

And I had yet to see any petrified wood. I soon crossing the historic Route 66 corridor, marked by the frame of an old car and the abandoned line of power poles.

Route 66 Corridor at Petrified Forest NP

A short distance south of the old highway route I came into the Jasper Forest area of the park and began to see petrified wood pieces scattered on the ground. The wood-turned-to-stone shone with a glow unmatched by any lapidary.

Jasper Forest at Petrified Forest NP

Some petrified logs were even emerging from the eroding layers of earth in which they had been buried for unfathomable time, again revealing the power of the collective raindrops to both change and reveal the landscape

Logs Emerging from Badlands in Petrified Forest NP

Once in the Rainbow Forest section of the park, I was in a magical land of color and form unmatched in my experience.

Stump in Petrified Forest NP

There were entire logs that had been turned to stone some millions of years before me and the variegated colors of the agatized wood were polished and vivid in the rain.

Along the Long Logs Trail at Petrified Forest NP

Here at Hovenweep the rain is has turned the paths to mud in places and softened the dirt roads to the outlier sections of the park to a greasy, impassable slurry. My rainy day venture to the Cajon Group, along the “best” of the roads, one that is gravel rather than mud much of the way, saw the NPS truck sliding a bit on the freshly deposited and liquefied silt as if I were on a sheet of ice. The mud gets everywhere as well, even decorating the vehicle. I must say, my co-workers were proud of my work. Well, at least they noticed.

My Work

Rain in the high desert is an all encompassing, multi-sensory experience. The sounds and sensation of walking in mud made of fine red silt causes one to tread cautiously and to enjoy the slurping of feet as they are extricated, at least somewhat, from the earth’s sucking grasp. With each step, your feet get a bit heavier, as you become an active part of the soil transport process. The mud remains on boots and stains the cuffs of khaki pants as if being branded by experience. I won’t mention the permanent relationship it has with carpet fibers.

Footprints in Mud, Little Ruin Canyon

Then there are the scents.

Big Sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata)

Of all the scents resulting from desert rain, most powerful and evident is that from the sagebrush. The volatile oils in big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) are water-soluble. The upshot of this is a quick change in the air when it rains, or when it snows. The heady aroma of sage permeates the air, and at times, can make one feel light-headed. Whether walking on the mesa or in the canyons, the scent of sage is inescapable in the rain. Sagebrush is powerful stuff. We don’t know if the ancestral Puebloans at Hovenweep used it as food or medicine, though it has frequently shown up in studies of middens and fire pits. It is very likely that sagebrush was used for fuel. Navajo people have used sagebrush in numerous ways. Medicinally it has been used to treat corns, stomachaches, headaches, fever, and to ease childbirth. Sage tobacco has been uses by the Navajo in a wide variety of rituals. It has also been used to make dyes (wool can be colored yellow, green, and gold with the leaves and twigs), leaves have been used as a toilet paper, and the branches have been used to make fire drills. Scientists have identified antimicrobial qualities of the essential oils in big sagebrush. With its powerful aroma, sagebrush has always made its presence known. Perhaps that has led to its many uses.

In addition to the sage, the musky smell of cliffrose and the sweetness of the rabitbrush are accentuated by rain.

Cliffrose (Purshia mexicana)

Rabbitbrush (Ericameria nauseosa)

The rain also replenishes the land. In an area with an average of just less than 11 inches of precipitation annually, rain is a rare treat. It removes a pervasive layer of dust from the plants and rocks, giving a cleansing and polish to the landscape. And the rain resupplies the canyonhead seeps and springs while filling potholes on the canyon rims. Some potholes are very short-lived, others are more permanent, providing breeding areas for all manner of insects, amphibians, and other organisms.

Potholes Above Little Ruin Canyon

When looked at from so many persectives, rain in the desert is by no means a burden. It is essential to the survival of all desert organisms and, for me, rain calls attention to the true beauty of the land.

Rainbow at Sunset on the way to Blanding

Quiet

The experience that many have while visiting Hovenweep National Monument is one of quiet. The other morning I was doing my routine check in the campground and had a wonderful visit with two people who had stayed for a couple of nights. They described how they had enjoyed the silence that was broken only by the sound of the wings of the male mountain bluebird that regularly visited their campsite. Perhaps it is more apt to say that they had visited his place for a short stay. As the sole campers, their experience of quiet was accompanied with a sense of human solitude. 

Unidentified Bird on Ruin at Cajon

Respondents to a 1999/2000 visitor study conducted here by researchers from Northern Arizona University claimed that the most enjoyable parts of the trip to Hovenweep were seeing the ruins, interacting with the knowledgeable and friendly staff and experiencing the solitude and tranquility of the surroundings. In their responses to an open-ended question regarding their suggestions for park managers, visitors noted time and again that they found the quiet and out-of-the-way nature of Hovenweep to be a real asset. The quiet and solitude tends to give visitors a sense of extreme remoteness. Collectively, these qualities provide for a high-quality experience in which people feel as though they are able to make their own discoveries regarding the lives of the ancestral Puebloans who built the Hovenweep Towers about 800 years ago. 

Ruins at Cajon

The notion of quiet is important enough that the following guiding principle has been included in the recently completed Long-Range Interpretive Plan: “Strive to preserve the natural soundscape, the dark night sky, and the viewsheds -all integral parts of the Hovenweep experience - whenever an interpretive medium or type of installation is selected.” Similarly, one of the park’s national significance statements documented in the interpretive plan is:

             “The park’s perceived remoteness and uninterrupted horizons lend

a sense of discovery to visitors’ experiences. The shallow canyons,

spring alcoves and structural remains of Hovenweep enable visitors

to more easily envision the life of ancestral Pueblo communities and

their relationship to the natural environment.”

Spring in Alcove at Hackberry

I was sitting on a bench for quite some time today, beneath a juniper tree, overlooking Little Ruin Canyon. I expected to encounter the pair of visitors who had begun hiking the two-mile loop trail about an hour earlier. I somehow missed them but had a fine time nonetheless. It was a beautiful high desert winter day with an air temperature in the sunshine in the mid-50s. In the shade of the canyon’s north-facing slope, a bit of the snow that had fallen a full two weeks before lingered and as soon as you are out of the sun a significant chill sets in. The sky was clear and there was visibility of a good hundred or more miles. There was much to see but I was overwhelmed and calmed by the quiet. The only sounds I could hear were the occasional riffle of the wind, the raspy voice of a raven flying overhead,  and the frequent clicking calls of the many juncos feeding beneath the junipers, sage, and rabbitbrush. I could also hear the whisper of their wings from time to time.

Raven Flying Over Little Ruin Canyon

From my perch I had a view of Stronghold House and Unit Type House across from me on the canyon’s north rim.

Stronghold House

Unit Type House

To the west I could see the Twin Towers, Hovenweep House, and Hovenweep Castle as well as Tower Point.  Beneath Unit Type House and Stronghold Tower I could easily see the rubble piles, all that remains of the structures that were built on the talus slopes descending into the canyon.

Twin Towers

Hovenweep House, Square Tower, and Hovenweep Castle

Tower Point

I was really struck that the quiet at the heart of my experience, that same quiet that is so important to our visitors, belies the experience of the ancestral Puebloans who built these marvelous structures and lived here centuries ago. Population estimates vary widely, from approximately 100 to nearly 600 residents of Little Ruin Canyon. Nonetheless, had I been here 750 years ago, before the 23-year drought began in 1276 that eventually contributed to the people’s departure from this area, the canyon would not likely be a quiet place, nor one where solitude would be experienced.


Visiting Little Ruin Canyon in the days of ancestral Puebloan residence, one would observe an amazing bustle of activity. Winter might be somewhat quieter than other times of the year. Farming seasons would be much busier. Much of the activity would center around producing the crops that sustained the people. It is estimated that it took four to six acres of land per person to produce enough corn and other crops needed for survival. Men would be working the fields on the mesa top or on terraces in the canyon. They might be planting corn or squash, perhaps beans. They might be carrying water from the seeps at the canyon head or from reservoirs behind dams above the canyon head. Of course, they would be involved in harvest. Women would be engaged in the near constant chore of grinding corn and other seeds for storage and immediate consumption. Rather than quiet, one would likely hear the grinding sound of stone on stone as manos are dragged across corn set in the metates.

Metates at Cajon

There would also be a great deal of gathering activity. The ancestral Puebloans utilized many native wild plants to augment their harvest for food as well as for flavorings, dyes and paints. Some community residents would be gathering clay from the canyon bottoms while others might be making that clay into pots for cooking, storing grain, and other utilitarian, decorative, or ceremonial uses.  The sound and smell of the fires used to cook or to fire the ceramics would always be present. Similarly, we would be hearing the chopping of juniper with stone tools, wood that would be used for fuel or as a building material. Masons would be building new structures or repairing the existing ones. Another sound of stone on stone would come from those shaping sandstone pieces for the intricate structures, perhaps chipping hand and foot holds into the canyon wall, or grinding various rocks and minerals, such as iron, to make paints for decorating pottery, plaster for covering walls and floors, as well as for rock paintings.

Detail of Masonry at Horseshoe

Iron Concretion at Cajon

The sounds of footsteps, perhaps even the echo of small rocks or pebbles falling to the canyon floor might indicate a member of the community carrying pots of corn to granaries built into alcoves in the canyon walls. Another sound would be created by the sliding away of a stone door panel that was used to tightly seal the granary, protecting that the valuable food supply from destruction by rodents. 

Granaries near Tower Point

If visiting the Square Tower Community in the year 1260, we would, no doubt, hear the sounds of turkeys, an animal the people had domesticated, primarily to make warm clothing from the feathers. There would also be dogs. We might hear the sound of a ceremonial foot drum emanating from a kiva, sounding as it it were the heartbeat of the Earth itself. Archeological evidence suggests there are more than two dozen kiva depressions in Little Ruin Canyon. Add to that number the dozen towers and some 200 rooms in Little Ruin Canyon and it is clear what a busy place this was. It was a place filled with life, the challenges presented by the high desert, as well as the joys and successes of successful dryland farming. The sounds became still around the year 1300, but the echoes of the people remain.

Ladder Emerging from Reconstructed Kiva at Edge of the Cedars State Park

Alas, it is 2010 and Hovenweep is quiet. My imagination, however, is filled with new observations, experience, and knowledge. In my mind's eye, Hovenweep continues to be a vibrant, peopled landscape, filled with marvelous stories to tell.

The Bench Beneath the Juniper

The Way In

It looks to be another cold, clear day here on the mesa top. It’s day three of my adventure at Hovenweep National Monument. So far I have been taken to all but one of the sites here in the park (the main area where the Visitor Center, Campground, and staff housing are located and four “outliers”). I have learned how to check the campground to see if any campers have used the area and how to collect fees from the lock box there. I have also learned the routine for cleaning the campground comfort stations. The campground at Hovenweep, by the way, is a great little spot. It's quiet and peaceful with nice views of the mesa top and of Little Ruin Canyon. There is also a sweet little amphitheater where campfire talks and gatherings take place during the busier times.

Hovenweep Campground

Entrance to Hovenweep Amphitheater

Hovenweep Amphitheater

Each of the cultural sites in the park: Square Tower Group, Horseshoe and Hackberry, Holly, Cutthroat Castle, and Cajon include various structures, mostly at the head of a canyon, built in the thirteenth century by ancestral Puebloan people.

Hovenweep Castle and Square Tower

In addition to my orientation to the campground routine and visits to the cultural sites in the park I have also learned how to pick up the mail from the postal service drop box at the intersection of two county roads, have begun to learn the routine of opening and closing the Visitor Center (not to mention the unruly safe), done a good bit of reading of park-produced and other literature to gain an understanding of the place, and even had the chance to welcome and orient a couple of visitors. I work another “closing” shift today so will spend the morning out in the park and will attend to the Visitor Center desk this afternoon and have another go at the close-out procedures. So far, so good.

Mailbox on the Mesa

This all speaks to routine but not the place. I don’t know if I have the words yet for the place itself. Awesome, grand, spectacular, sweet, and “really out there” come immediately to mind. This place feels very remote. The park is only forty-two miles from the town of Cortez, CO but being on the mesa top there is little immediate evidence of other people around. There are occasional oil tanks, windmills used to pump water for free-ranging cattle, horses, and sheep on the surrounding Navajo Nation and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land. A few ranch homes dotting the expansive landscape. Nonetheless, the openness of the land and the harshness of the environment give a feeling of being very isolated. Visitation is low, we had ten visitors yesterday and five on Monday in the snow, so a sense of quiet rules as well, adding to the perceived isolation.

Free-Range Cow

Free-Range Horses

Free-Range Raven

I find myself particularly drawn to the plants here. For me, they provide a much –needed anchor of knowledge as well as a “way in” to understanding this place. Terry Tempest Williams, one of my literary sheroes, wrote a wonderful piece about her experience as a naturalist from the Great Basin traveling to the very unfamiliar Serengeti Plains of Africa. In the essay, “In A Country of Grasses” she states: 

“For a naturalist, traveling into unfamiliar territory is like turning a kaleidoscope ninety degrees. Suddenly, the colors and pieces of glass find a fresh arrangement. The light shifts, and you enter a new landscape in search of the order you know to be there.” 

In that kaleidoscopic fashion, the plants here in the high desert, the great sage plain, imply the possibility that I will come to know and understand this landscape. The plants, for me, also are a bridge from the familiarity of home to the unknown here. On first assumption, one might call Hovenweep a cultural site (if one subscribes to that long-standing split between culture and nature, consciously or not) because it is characterized by ancestral Pueblo structures. For me, I first see the arid-land vegetation here, some of it very similar to the plant makeup in parts of Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, also, surprisingly to some, an arid environment. And then, upon encountering the ruins and contemplating the lives of the people who built them about eight hundred years ago, it becomes evident to me that the story here is of the land and its inhabitants, and how they co-evolved. The plants hold a story of the harshness of the landscape, the extreme conditions the people faced. The plants also hold a story of ways in which they were used by the human inhabitants and the rest of the more-than-human world here at Hovenweep.

On first glance, any area could have plants similar to those in the Indiana Dunes due to the fact that there are more than 1,100 species of native plants in that small park along the southern shore of Lake Michigan. As a matter of fact, the biodiversity of Indiana Dunes is unmatched by most of the units in the National Park System. In exploring the arid high desert environment of Hovenweep, I find order in comparisons of this place with the foredune and dune complex ecosystems at home. The high desert and the dunes are each ecosystems with very limited access to water and extreme exposure to unobstructed sunlight. The irony of this in the Indiana Dunes is that the dunes are within view of Lake Michigan but similarly parched and dry. With its almost-purely-sand that stands in for soil, the dunes have virtually no water-holding capacity.

Indiana Dunes from Cowles Bog Beach

For each of the first high desert plants I have met here at Hovenweep there is a closely related companion species in the dunes. The land here is dominated by big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata). In some spots, it seems to be the only plant, in others it is accompanied by Utah juniper (Juniperus osteosperma) among other species. It seems that once the temperature hits about 50 degrees f. the wonderful smell of the sagebrush is released from the shrub and perfumes the air. My anchoring plant in the dunes is beach wormwood (Artemesia campestris), a resident of the area just behind the first row of dunes beyond the open beach. It requires very little organic matter to grow and can tolerate extreme heat and dry conditions.



Big Sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata)

If I were walking inland from the Lake Michigan shore, I would be likely to find creeping juniper (Juniperus horizontalis) hugging the sand in a fashion that would allow it to conserve precious moisture. Here at Hovenweep, Utah juniper (Juniperus osteosperma) is a very common species. It can also hug the ground or boldly stand upright. It seems to be absent in areas that are heavily grazed. I would bet that either the cattle love the juniper and have consumed most of that resource, or that sage is more tolerant.

Utah Juniper (Juniperus osteosperma)

The canyons that cut through Cajon Mesa, the areas so critical to the ancestral Puebloan people who inhabited this area some 800 years ago, are home to a few stately Fremont cottonwood trees (Populus fremontii). The cottonwoods thrive in the canyons because that is where precious water is more available. The ancient ones of Hovenweep knew this, choosing the canyon heads as their preferred locations for their dwellings and other structures. In the dunes, eastern cottonwood (Populus deltoides) is a fordune tree, occasionally able to take hold, at least briefly, on the open beach. The waxy leaves protect the plant from the devastating evaporation of moisture and the flat leaf stems, being able to turn in even the lightest wind, allow this tree to grow and thrive under extreme windy conditions so common on the Lake Michigan shore. The wind in the canyons of Hovenweep can also be extreme. Cottonwoods are very well adapted for life here.

Fremont Cottonwood (Populus fremontii)

I was thrilled to see some residual fall colors, dusty red and brown leaves caught in a pocket of sand and twigs on the trail.

Residual Fall Colors

These were the leaves of threeleaf sumac (Rhus trilobata), also called skunkbush because of the not-so-fragrant leaves, and lemonade bush or lemonberry because of the sour taste of the fruit. I was excited to learn that Pueblo people today make a soup or stew from the ground berries with added cornmeal. Indiana Dunes is home to five species of sumacs (staghorn, smooth, winged, poison, and fragrant). Our fragrant sumac (Rhus aromatica) is the sand dune species. The others are found in somewhat more inland areas of the park. It is the closest companion to the threeleaf sumac of Hovenweep. I would also question the choice of the term "fragrant" to describe it. Odiferous may be a more appropriate term. Or skunkbush. I have never found it a pleasant smell, though a distinct one. Nonetheless, like the threeleaf sumac, fragrant sumac is an arid-land species and one of the plants here that provides me with a sense of familiarity and home.

Threeleaf Sumac (Rhus trilobata)

As one would expect in a desert environment, there is cactus here at Hovenweep. Most prevalent here is the common pricklypear (Opuntia erinaceae). I have also encountered the claret cup cactus (Echinocereus triglochidatus). Prickly pear cactus grows commonly in the Indiana Dunes. The pricklypears in both locations have similar qualities, habitat requirements, and unique adaptations. Our local species (Opuntia humifusa) can be found in the very dry areas behind the foredune, often in association with boreal remnant species like jack pine (Pinus banksiana) and arctic bearberry (Arctostaphylos uviursi). It is this diversity of southern and northern species that makes Indiana Dunes such a unique and valuable ecological oasis. The species of cactus at Hovenweep link me to home.

Common Pricklypear (Opuntia erinaceae)

It is no surprise that I gravitated toward plants when getting to know a new place. As a budding childhood naturalist, plants were my first real subject of study. I inherited my love of plants, particularly woodland spring wildflowers from my mother. She nurtured and allowed for that love as well. She tolerated and eventually embraced my fascination with wild edible plants. I can not see an elderberry bush blooming in the spring without thinking of how much she enjoyed making elderberry blossom fritters using a recipe from Euell Gibbons' Stalking the Wild Asparagus, a treat I had first introduced her to. Knowing the Indiana Dunes as well as I do, and having a strong, lifelong affinity for plants, it is no surprise that I would find solace and familiarity in them here at Hovenweep. They are the seemingly random pieces of glass in the kaleidoscope and help me to find the order I seek. For this I am grateful and comforted. Home, for me, is also a homing ground, the land to which all is compared. Here in this new and seemingly unfamiliar place, plants are a wonderful way in. I greatly look forward to the things this place can teach me.