Desert-bound

Arms outstretched, tall, proud.

Guardians of the desert.

While I promised to write posts every Monday, I’m about to head off to Nevada, Arizona, and California to teach a field course called Desert Ecology. This means I won’t be posting for a few weeks. But it also means I will have lots of content for when I do return, since I will be packing watercolours and sketchbooks.

This field course has been offered for decades, and I was one of the instructors back in 2019. We tried to offer it part-way through the pandemic, but plans were dashed, much to the disappointment of students and instructors. Needless to say, there is a lot of excitement about this year’s trip! We’ll be landing in Vegas, and doing a road trip to various desert ecosystems, including lots of time in the Sonoran Desert, and we’ll end in the Mojave Desert. We watch, study, learn, and be fully immersed in desert ecosystems. We camp among the cacti, gaze at the milky way, watch birds, scorpions, and marvel at the landscapes. It’s a transformative and immersive experience for all.

Among my favourite species in the region is a keystone species in the Sonoran desert: the Saguaro cacti. These are truly incredible – symbolic of that part of the world, and numerous species depend on these cacti for their own survival. They do stand tall, very tall, and I am quite excited to be in their midst again.

See you all later in May! Stay well.

© Christopher M Buddle 2023