Canyon Country Zephyr page 16

<<Prev                                                   Home                        PDF                              Next>>

A RlDGE IN THE SKY.....Scott Thompson

The Cheatgrass Monoculture

Boot Canyon

I first saw the Chisos Mountains at 4 a.m. in the spring of 1975. They rose like a purple wall above the immensity of the Chihuahuan Desert.

On a winter afternoon in 2001, gazing westward from the Rio Grande River near Boquil-las Canyon, they looked like a long, blue and slate-gray cloud floating above the bosques and low canyon walls along the river. From that distance, the foothills and low mountains beneath the spread-out array of higher peaks resembled a cloud of beige cosmic dust. From the north, near the Grapevine Hills, in the solar intensity of the low desert, the mountains shone amber in the late afternoon light. From that angle the igneous peaks were warped, convoluted, bent, crude, gnarled; hypnotic.

Late the following morning I loped along the Boot Canyon Trail at 6,900 feet, up on the high rim in the center of the mountains. A comforting tangle of Emory and Gray oaks sheltered me; beneath them was a single Sotol plant perched above the trail. Over my shoulder pinyon pines and Alligator Junipers grew up a steep hillside to a rock outcrop

I call the dominant political and economic system the "Cheatgrass Monoculture." Cheat-grass is a relentlessly invasive species of grass from Eurasia that sucks away soil moisture, thus obliterating native species. And when Cheatgrass dies in midsummer it becomes a Eire hazard. That's a fair description of how our mainstream culture is functioning and the future it's heading for.

There is featurelessness all across our country now. A gross example: the restaurants, gas stations, motels, and mega-stores off the exits from the interstates are virtually the same. If you don't read the road signs and aren't familiar with the flora and terrain, you won't know where the hell you are. That's our Cheatgrass Monoculture.

Our politicians are featureless as well. While there is flamboyance in their personal quirks, rhetoric, and marital infidelities ("I did not have sexual relations with that woman"), their policy positions slide along oiled, familiar grooves. To paraphrase William But-

ler Yeats: the best of the Democrats lack all conviction in public (lest they piss off their corporate backers), while the worst of the histrionic right wingers are full of passionate vitriol (which protects rather than threatens their monied backers).

Even the Tea Party, which is cast as revolutionary, features the same peckerwood resentment and entitlement we've always known.

One change: their "N" words for President Obama are "Socialist" and "Muslim" (their version of political correctness).

In using "peckerwood" I mean it in a tragic rather than a disparaging sense. What's tragic is the self-destructive psychological denial this kind of politics employs: that by obliterating social safety nets such as food stamps, social security disability, government-funded health care, and so on, true believers can pretend they are not "the kind of people" who will

at the top. A quarter mile farther along I found a Beargrass agave in a patch of sunlight. What struck me was that Sotol and Beargrass agave are mainline Chi-huahuan Desert plants; up this high they were clearly pushing their luck.

Just afterward the trail twisted to the right, running along an upper wall of Boot Canyon, where I encountered a Ponderosa Pine sixty feet high. At the same elevation. It dwarfed the proliferation of oaks and pinyon pines, even though it was a young tree.

This was weird, because a Ponderosa Pine needs at least ten inches more rain each year than a Beargrass agave. Maybe Boot Springs makes the upper slopes of Boot Canyon a bit moister than the land just outside it; but on the other hand the Ponderosa Pine was on the south facing and therefore drier slope. No way could its location in the canyon explain a differ-

ever need them; that by identifying with the wealthy few and propitiating them with tax cuts, they can pretend that extraordinary wealth might come to them as well; and that they can neglect the poor and the vulnerable all around them, while at the same time believing that they are righteous religious people (perhaps awaiting the Rapture). Wealthy rightists have always understood the psychological vulnerabilities of such people and exploited them to the hilt.

ence often inches in annual rainfall. On a strictly biological basis, the Ponderosa Pine and the Beargrass agave should not have been growing anywhere near each other.

Well, Big Bend is a strange place. Simply being there can trigger episodes of anxiety, as it did in a friend of mine years ago when we drove over Panther Pass and curled down into the Chisos Mountain Basin. Much of this feeling is explained by the place's geological incongruities, but gawking at this out-of-sync Ponderosa Pine, feeling spooked myself, gave me yet another explanation.

The climate in the Chisos Mountains during the last ice age, ending about 11,000 years ago, was colder and wetter, enabling Ponderosa Pine to grow all over these mountains. Today they survive in only two micro-pockets, the one in Boot Canyon and another on a north-facing slope near the top of Pine Canyon.

They're time capsules from the last ice age.

Boot Canyon is also a micro-pocket, or microrefuge, for Arizona Cypress. One of those mothers is over a hundred feet high, where the trail crosses the center of the canyon. Not far from that Ponderosa Pine. They grow on a nearby, north-facing ridge as well. Arizona Cypress is also found in a few isolated canyons in southwest New Mexico and Southeast Arizona; it's common in the Fronteriza Mountains of northern Coahuila in Mexico, forty miles in a beeline southeast of Big Bend.

There is featurelessness all across

our country now.

A gross example: the restaurants, gas stations,

motels, and mega-stores off the exits

from the interstates are virtually

the same.

But what convinced me that "Cheatgrass Monoculture" is a viable metaphor (it was the last straw, I guess) is that the cap and trade climate bills that have thus far gained traction in Congress were either proposed by multinational corporations or had the fingerprints of corporate lobbyists all over them. I'm convinced that even if Congress had passed a cap and trade bill it would have been ineffective in curbing global warming. It would have been surgically precise, however, in shielding energy companies from tumultuous change and protecting the profitability of the global growth economy.

That's mongo featurelessness.

What is the problem at the base of all this? Simple: multinational corporations and key wealthy elites dominate our government or, at a minimum, exercise gross undue influence over its key processes. And through the most sophisticated public relations techniques and advertising ever known, they shape our collective cultural, political, and economic agenda so that it functions to perpetuate their own interests. They have succeeded in keeping the public divided and confused, leaving people numbed out on television and consuming the planet's natural resources like they're lines of cocaine.

Energetic political activism in recent decades has done little or nothing to alter the economic basis of our society, upon which the Cheatgrass Monoculture thrives. The purveyors of its wealth and power have snuffed out such activism with brilliantly cohesive and subtle counterstrokes. We shouldn't have been surprised: never in history has a society offered the super-sized golden hog trough that ours does. I guess a lot of people feel like every planet needs one.

In spite of the Cheatgrass Monoculture's domination, an alternative paradigm has grown up in special places and it's seeming insignificance maybe an adaptive advantage. To explain, I need to take you to a biological island of peculiar beauty in the heart of Big Bend National Park.

Energetic political activism in recent decades

has done little or nothing to alter

the economic basis of our society,

upon which the

Cheatgrass Monoculture thrives.

At last count there was a lone packet of 225 Quaking Aspen trees near the top of the highest peak in the Chisos range. Another microrefuge.

(See Roland Wauer, Naturalist's Big Bend, 1980, pp.36-38; Janice Emily Bowers, Shrubs and Trees of the Southwest Deserts, 1993; Francis Elmore, Shrubs and Trees of the Southwest Uplands, 1976).

Microrefugia and Economic Change

The history of climate change through the ice ages shows us a great deal about how plants and animals survive in adverse circumstances. There are two essential strategies, which I believe also apply to human political environments.

One is the microrefugia, or micro-pockets, exemplified by the Ponderosa Pine, Arizona Cypress, and aspen at Big Bend. (See Thomas Lovejoy and Lee Hannah, Climate Change and Biodiversity, 2005, p. 389). Another example: 32,000 years ago, while most of North America was underneath massive ice sheets, Big Sagebrush survived in the Ajo Moun-

<<Prev                                                   Home                        PDF                              Next>>


	<<Prev Home PDF Next>>

	A RlDGE IN THE SKY.....Scott Thompson The Cheatgrass Monoculture Boot Canyon I first saw the Chisos Mountains at 4 a.m. in the spring of 1975. They rose like a purple wall above the immensity of the Chihuahuan Desert. On a winter afternoon in 2001, gazing westward from the Rio Grande River near Boquil-las Canyon, they looked like a long, blue and slate-gray cloud floating above the bosques and low canyon walls along the river. From that distance, the foothills and low mountains beneath the spread-out array of higher peaks resembled a cloud of beige cosmic dust. From the north, near the Grapevine Hills, in the solar intensity of the low desert, the mountains shone amber in the late afternoon light. From that angle the igneous peaks were warped, convoluted, bent, crude, gnarled; hypnotic. Late the following morning I loped along the Boot Canyon Trail at 6,900 feet, up on the high rim in the center of the mountains. A comforting tangle of Emory and Gray oaks sheltered me; beneath them was a single Sotol plant perched above the trail. Over my shoulder pinyon pines and Alligator Junipers grew up a steep hillside to a rock outcrop I call the dominant political and economic system the "Cheatgrass Monoculture." Cheat-grass is a relentlessly invasive species of grass from Eurasia that sucks away soil moisture, thus obliterating native species. And when Cheatgrass dies in midsummer it becomes a Eire hazard. That's a fair description of how our mainstream culture is functioning and the future it's heading for. There is featurelessness all across our country now. A gross example: the restaurants, gas stations, motels, and mega-stores off the exits from the interstates are virtually the same. If you don't read the road signs and aren't familiar with the flora and terrain, you won't know where the hell you are. That's our Cheatgrass Monoculture. Our politicians are featureless as well. While there is flamboyance in their personal quirks, rhetoric, and marital infidelities ("I did not have sexual relations with that woman"), their policy positions slide along oiled, familiar grooves. To paraphrase William But- ler Yeats: the best of the Democrats lack all conviction in public (lest they piss off their corporate backers), while the worst of the histrionic right wingers are full of passionate vitriol (which protects rather than threatens their monied backers). Even the Tea Party, which is cast as revolutionary, features the same peckerwood resentment and entitlement we've always known. One change: their "N" words for President Obama are "Socialist" and "Muslim" (their version of political correctness). In using "peckerwood" I mean it in a tragic rather than a disparaging sense. What's tragic is the self-destructive psychological denial this kind of politics employs: that by obliterating social safety nets such as food stamps, social security disability, government-funded health care, and so on, true believers can pretend they are not "the kind of people" who will at the top. A quarter mile farther along I found a Beargrass agave in a patch of sunlight. What struck me was that Sotol and Beargrass agave are mainline Chi-huahuan Desert plants; up this high they were clearly pushing their luck. Just afterward the trail twisted to the right, running along an upper wall of Boot Canyon, where I encountered a Ponderosa Pine sixty feet high. At the same elevation. It dwarfed the proliferation of oaks and pinyon pines, even though it was a young tree. This was weird, because a Ponderosa Pine needs at least ten inches more rain each year than a Beargrass agave. Maybe Boot Springs makes the upper slopes of Boot Canyon a bit moister than the land just outside it; but on the other hand the Ponderosa Pine was on the south facing and therefore drier slope. No way could its location in the canyon explain a differ- ever need them; that by identifying with the wealthy few and propitiating them with tax cuts, they can pretend that extraordinary wealth might come to them as well; and that they can neglect the poor and the vulnerable all around them, while at the same time believing that they are righteous religious people (perhaps awaiting the Rapture). Wealthy rightists have always understood the psychological vulnerabilities of such people and exploited them to the hilt. ence often inches in annual rainfall. On a strictly biological basis, the Ponderosa Pine and the Beargrass agave should not have been growing anywhere near each other. Well, Big Bend is a strange place. Simply being there can trigger episodes of anxiety, as it did in a friend of mine years ago when we drove over Panther Pass and curled down into the Chisos Mountain Basin. Much of this feeling is explained by the place's geological incongruities, but gawking at this out-of-sync Ponderosa Pine, feeling spooked myself, gave me yet another explanation. The climate in the Chisos Mountains during the last ice age, ending about 11,000 years ago, was colder and wetter, enabling Ponderosa Pine to grow all over these mountains. Today they survive in only two micro-pockets, the one in Boot Canyon and another on a north-facing slope near the top of Pine Canyon. They're time capsules from the last ice age. Boot Canyon is also a micro-pocket, or microrefuge, for Arizona Cypress. One of those mothers is over a hundred feet high, where the trail crosses the center of the canyon. Not far from that Ponderosa Pine. They grow on a nearby, north-facing ridge as well. Arizona Cypress is also found in a few isolated canyons in southwest New Mexico and Southeast Arizona; it's common in the Fronteriza Mountains of northern Coahuila in Mexico, forty miles in a beeline southeast of Big Bend. There is featurelessness all across our country now. A gross example: the restaurants, gas stations, motels, and mega-stores off the exits from the interstates are virtually the same. But what convinced me that "Cheatgrass Monoculture" is a viable metaphor (it was the last straw, I guess) is that the cap and trade climate bills that have thus far gained traction in Congress were either proposed by multinational corporations or had the fingerprints of corporate lobbyists all over them. I'm convinced that even if Congress had passed a cap and trade bill it would have been ineffective in curbing global warming. It would have been surgically precise, however, in shielding energy companies from tumultuous change and protecting the profitability of the global growth economy. That's mongo featurelessness. What is the problem at the base of all this? Simple: multinational corporations and key wealthy elites dominate our government or, at a minimum, exercise gross undue influence over its key processes. And through the most sophisticated public relations techniques and advertising ever known, they shape our collective cultural, political, and economic agenda so that it functions to perpetuate their own interests. They have succeeded in keeping the public divided and confused, leaving people numbed out on television and consuming the planet's natural resources like they're lines of cocaine. Energetic political activism in recent decades has done little or nothing to alter the economic basis of our society, upon which the Cheatgrass Monoculture thrives. The purveyors of its wealth and power have snuffed out such activism with brilliantly cohesive and subtle counterstrokes. We shouldn't have been surprised: never in history has a society offered the super-sized golden hog trough that ours does. I guess a lot of people feel like every planet needs one. In spite of the Cheatgrass Monoculture's domination, an alternative paradigm has grown up in special places and it's seeming insignificance maybe an adaptive advantage. To explain, I need to take you to a biological island of peculiar beauty in the heart of Big Bend National Park. Energetic political activism in recent decades has done little or nothing to alter the economic basis of our society, upon which the Cheatgrass Monoculture thrives. At last count there was a lone packet of 225 Quaking Aspen trees near the top of the highest peak in the Chisos range. Another microrefuge. (See Roland Wauer, Naturalist's Big Bend, 1980, pp.36-38; Janice Emily Bowers, Shrubs and Trees of the Southwest Deserts, 1993; Francis Elmore, Shrubs and Trees of the Southwest Uplands, 1976). Microrefugia and Economic Change The history of climate change through the ice ages shows us a great deal about how plants and animals survive in adverse circumstances. There are two essential strategies, which I believe also apply to human political environments. One is the microrefugia, or micro-pockets, exemplified by the Ponderosa Pine, Arizona Cypress, and aspen at Big Bend. (See Thomas Lovejoy and Lee Hannah, Climate Change and Biodiversity, 2005, p. 389). Another example: 32,000 years ago, while most of North America was underneath massive ice sheets, Big Sagebrush survived in the Ajo Moun-

	<<Prev Home PDF Next>>