“Certain desert areas have a distinctive and subtle charm, in part dependent on spaciousness, solitude, and escape from the evidence of human control and manipulation of the earth, a charm of constantly growing value as the rest of the earth becomes more completely dominated by man’s activities. This quality is a very vulnerable one …. Nowhere else are casual thoughtless human changes in the landscape so irreparable, and nowhere else is it so important to control and completely protect wide areas.”

– Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr in a 1928 survey for the California State Park Commission.

And here I thought almost 5 hours in the car to get from Los Angeles to Borrego Springs, CA, was a long stretch. Take the amount of time – decades and decades – it took to establish the nation’s second largest state park, the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, and the drive was but a blink of an eye. Beginning in 1927, a group of visionaries tried to protect several desert areas for future generations, alert to the destruction of natural habitats by encroaching civilization that parceled up open spaces. Fierce opposition by many interested in economic development stretched out the process across years and years. For once, those concerned with environmental and ecological preservation, prevailed. Since 1974, some 585,930 acres (237,120 ha) of the Colorado Desert, located in San Diego County, are now protected. (For a riveting account of the history of the fight to create this marvel, go here.)

The desert lies along the western margin of the Salton Trough. This major topographic depression with the Salton Sink having elevations of 200 ft (61 m) below sea level, forms the northernmost end of an active rift valley and a geological continental plate boundary (Lots of earthquakes with high magnitudes, every 5 years or so.) (Ref.) 

Imagine a large bowl of badlands, surrounded by mountains, with the Vallecito Mountains to the south and the highest Santa Rosa Mountains to the north. The badlands, ancient lake basins, are the result of both, erosion and sediment deposition over 5 million years. what you are seeing is literally what the Colorado river excavated from the Grand Canyon. The eroded and pretty much plant-less areas make it easy to see the dipping layers of siltstone and sandstone. They are filled with fossils, and populated by big horn sheep, neither of which I glimpsed during my visit. What I did see was breathtaking beauty of wide open land, cloudy sunrise, and the tail end of the wildflower bloom, providing endless delight to the searching eye.

No wonder that eco-tourism flourishes here at this time of year: the population of Borrego Springs, where I stayed, increases by about 580% in peak wildflower superbloom season, an increase from around 3400 long term residents to around 200,000 tourists. According to the government’s park survey, 932 plant taxa belonging to 387 genera in 98 different families documented within the park. The plant family Asteraceae (sunflower) is most abundant with 135 taxa identified. Rodents, hares, rabbits, fox, coyote, mountain lion, bighorn sheep as well as many species of snakes make up the fauna.

The region was home to two Native American groups, the Kumeyaay and the Cahuilla for thousands of years, semi-sedentary residents of certain favored locations or base camps. From there they would travel to outlying areas seasonally to harvest food resources and to avoid inclement weather, like winter snows. Leave it to the forces that be to name the park instead for sheep (Borrego) and a colonizing explorer, military officer and politician, 18th century Juan Bautista de Anza.

The progressive vision to protect open spaces was not matched by progressive visions in other domains either: when César Chávez came to Borrego Springs to support local workers who wanted the National Farm Workers Association as their union in 1966, they tried to chase him out of Borrego Springs by not allowing lodging or camping in the usual spaces. He and the union organizers eventually camped at Borrego Palm Canyon Campground, the start of my hike last week, with a lone supervising ranger defending their rights against the town folks who loathed the idea of unionizing workers. 

The hike, starting at 7 am with an otherworldly light bathing the landscape, went up to the palm canyon, at my speed taking about 4 hours there and back.

That left a spare hour to visit some additional strange sights, before the threatening rain storm set in. (It dropped over 2 inches in 24 hours for the L.A. region.) In reversal to my earlier complaints about the length of time, these 5 hours felt way too short!

The clouds formed an appropriately dramatic background for an unexpected piece of art, a humongous, corrugated steel sea serpent crawling through the desert. I could not but marvel at the strangeness of the sight and, truth be told, at the skill of the designed and steel welded creation by sculptor Ricardo Breceda. However, there was something odd about plopping some 130 creatures in to the landscape, with people and cars crawling around them like ants, with few of the sculptures true to this natural environment. I mean, elephants and camels? Dinosaurs and tigers? The whole thing was the idea of Dennis Avery, the late land owner of Galleta Meadows Estates in Borrego Springs, adding free standing art to his property and, I guess, attracting tourists this way. and if that’s what draws people to the region, exposing them to the barren beauty of the desert for most of the year, more power to them!

Music reflects John Luther Adam’s view of the desert. Quails and sky reflect mine.