December, 1981 $2.00 - Desert Magazine of the Southwest

The late Joseph Wood Krutch
wrote about nature in a personal
and interpretive style.
He made it clear that he saw the
natural world from the viewpoint of a
participant, not from that of a spectator.
In his book, The Voice of the
Desert, he devotes each of the first 11
chapters to a different facet of desert
life. He touches on the desert in
general, desert weather, the saguaro,
mountains, the kangaroo rat and so
on. In chapter 12, he bridges the gap
between the merely factual and the
more abstract considerations of values
and personal philosophy by arguing
for the cause of a land ethic, an idea
first put forward by Aldo Leopold. In
the 13th and final chapter, Krutch
deals completely with the abstract and
speculative realm in a discussion of
what he calls "The Mystique of the
Desert," a term that serves as the title
of this chapter. I thought it was the
perfect conclusion for a humanistic
interpretive work on the desert. I also
felt that it provided me with some insight
into my own attachment to the
desert.
Just before Christmas two years ago,
my Aunt Jane called and invited me to
spend a few days at her home in San
Diego during the holidays. I had
enough free time to drive the 420 miles
from my home in Tucson, Arizona,
spend a couple of days with her, and
make the return trip; so I was glad to
The desert mystique, from Monument Valley
near the Arizona- Utah border.
The eloquent Joseph Wood Krutch.
accept the offer.
The night before I left for San
Diego, I had to drop a friend off at the
airport and I didn't get home and in
bed until 2 a.m. I was up at 5 a.m., so
The mystique of the
desert is the most
powerful of any—its
voice, the most profound
of all.
I could get an early start on the long
drive ahead. At the same time, I
noticed I was coming down with the
flu. By the time I hit the road in the
pre-dawn darkness, I was feeling
pretty lousy. I broke for lunch at a fast
food place in Yuma, 240 miles down
the road and tried to regain my
strength with a couple of cheeseburgers.
Feeling only slightly better, I
set out again, crossing the Colorado
River into California and heading west
through the great Algodones Dunes.
Somewhere out on the creosote bush
flats, west of El Centro, the flu and the
fatigue began catching up with me.
Fortunately, relief was in sight. The
line of blue mountains stretching
across the horizon dead ahead marked
the end of the Imperial Valley and the
great eastern escarpment of the
Jacumba Mountains.
This leg of the trip was always my
favorite. The sight of the Jacumbas
capped with winter storm clouds lifted
my spirits. The Jacumba Mountains
are part of the Penninsular Range
which crosses the nearby international
border into Baja California. From the
base of the mountains, the highway
switchbacks up the steep slopes which
look like tremendous piles of huge
boulders. They should have named
these mountains "the Rockies."
Growing among the boulders are
many beautiful desert plants in a
natural rock garden setting. Two
plants which I found most striking
were the golden California barrel cactus
and a large agave—both plants
Desert 19