Artist Adventurer Author Obi Kaufmann’s latest exploration — on foot – takes him deep into California’s remarkable desertlands
A friend returned recently from Indiana, a state blessed with oceans of corn and solid people and decidedly Red State politicians, and he mentioned an experience he’d had there in a small town’s motel breakfast room.
He noticed a young woman at a nearby table looking at the foil ketchup packet she was opening.
“Ewww,” she exclaimed, “it’s from California!”
and dropped it like a moldy lemon.
It was a reminder about the risks of holding opinions of places we haven’t really explored. California’s bounty of tomatoes – more tons of tomatoes than any other state – are actually grown by farmers in staunchly Red counties, working alongside migrant labor from over the border.
We all hold notions that aren’t firmly anchored
in what the naturalist calls ‘ground truth’, which you can only get by actually standing in a place and carefully observing what’s there.
Say “deserts” and most of us are likely to conjure images of empty sand dunes and sterile badlands. But, as author, artist and keen nature observer Obi Kaufmann shows in his latest hand-illustrated and thoughtful atlas, California Deserts, that would miss just about everything there is to know about them.
And he would know. Kaufmann is unique in that he actually walks into and through the California he describes, ground truthing.
For starters, Obi tells us California actually has four deserts, each distinctly different. They run north to south along the entire 780 mile length of the state’s eastern border: the Great Basin, Mojave, Sonoran and Colorado. As Kaufmann discovered, they contain wildly contrasting environments, many changing dramatically within only a single day’s walk.
And while the desert can be a hostile, humanly dangerous place, they also harbor nearly unbelievably varied life forms, unique to each.
In them you’ll find seven species of rattlesnakes, and five types of sand dune — some which began forming nearly 10,000 years ago. California’s deserts contain rivers and many types of fish, as well as hot springs, caustic salt flats, cinder cones and towering peaks.
Seagulls nest in the desert, and migrating hummingbirds overflying them survive on the desert Ocotillo’s long red flowers and rich nectar.
Some parts are below sea level while others are so high they get snow.
The deserts are also dynamic and changing. They bear the imprints humans have left over the past 12 thousand years, from ancient petroglyphs to more modern artifacts, like bombing ranges and pit mines, waterworks, farms and subdivisions.
And then there’s the climate.
To be a desert, you can’t have rain, or much of it.
To officially qualify as a desert, the US Geographical Survey requires that a place get less than nine and a half inches of water from the sky, per year. For perspective, in place like Chicago, or the Carolinas, or California’s north west coast, that much rain can fall in just 24 hours.
California’s deserts exist because of California’s long spine of towering mountains. The Sierras and other ranges force moist clouds moving in from the coast to climb higher and higher until they drop their precious cargo. And on the eastern side the now dry air sinks into what is known as a rain shadow, and forms parched deserts.
What Kaufmann found in these deserts is life, an amazing assortment of highly adapted creatures. They come equipped with special features or behaviors that let them survive oven-hot to freezer cold temperatures, scant water, and other-worldly doses of killing ultraviolet rays from the sun. Desert plants, he explains, have found three different strategies to survive: there are the escapers, the evaders, and the endurers.
Time and again he shows that the desert is not what it seems.
Even what appears to be vast expanses of lifeless desert floor is actually a unique biologic living crust, a community of fungi, lichens, microorganisms and algae, that shelter and protect nutrients and seeds beneath it from the harsh extremes. Broken by cars or offroad vehicles, it can take up to three decades to recover.
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Kaufmann the artist captures the deserts in hundreds of on-the-scene watercolor paintings. His deft hand and knowing eye manage to convey not only wild beauty but some of the essence of his subjects. They come out lifelike, not frozen like a photograph or artificially posed. Feathers bend in invisible wind, flower petals sheen with morning light, landscapes shimmer with heat and shade, the pygmy rabbit’s fur is soft, the raptor’s gaze holds our own, and a palm oasis goes ablaze in hazy flame.
Deserts is Kaufmann’s latest book on what we may be tempted to call the ‘real’ California. He’s written five books on California’s elemental nature over the last seven years, each from the perspective of a walking observer who’s undaunted by trackless wild places, and is methodically inclined to explore vast distances afoot, in person.
For his Coast book, Kaufmann covered every mile of the state’s Pacific shoreline on foot.
He’s done the same with California’s Watersheds, and Forests, and having now concluded Deserts, is next planning to explore California’s long, intimate relationship with Fire.
“Each (book),” Kaufmann says, “represents a different aspect of California’s more-than-human world; a geographic guide to conservation and to the deep ecology of natural features through time, with specific deference to where and when we are in the twenty-first century.”
His books don’t need to be consumed cover to cover — they’re designed to be dipped into and explored. They offer rich amounts of information, with varied but encompassing glimpses of the features he observes from place to place, with maps and charts, and how all the parts work together.
Kaufmann slides back into geologic time and then forward to modern superbloom-seeking tourists. His writing drifts from analytic detail to meditative reflection, from native guide to 21st Century natural philosopher. Apparently, walking through California leaves lots of time to contemplate and understand, not simply record, his topic.
In fairness, Deserts is not a casual book.
At 578 pages it probably contains more detail than most might want to know. On one level it’s daunting, not least because it shows us just how much there is we know nothing about.
But Kaufmann manages to avoid the scientist’s trap, and instead of simply cataloging and itemizing, gives us approachable ways of understanding and appreciating the varying facets of place: how the various characters in the desert landscape interact and support each other, the effects of simple drops of water, and the beauty of their absence.
Deserts is also an exploration of the future, Kaufmann says, and he attempts to bring into focus the big questions, such as what saving nature actually means.
In this peculiar time when even table condiments can be politicized, Kaufmann continues his marathon expedition to meet California on foot, and share in unique detail what he uncovers.
“This book is shot through with hope,” he writes.
“It has to be. On the trail, hope is the best tool there is. Hope is not empty. Hope is actionable. Hope drives the heart forward, assists in finding solutions, and guides the unfocused mind when panic sets in.“
In Deserts, Kaufmann invites and challenges us to “embrace that supposed emptiness… entertain a stripped-down vision of Nature uncluttered by biomass and humidity, and walk into the apparent void.”
It’s a trip, he shows, that’s well worth taking.
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Hi, I’m a naturalist and nature writer, discovering wonders on the trail and people making a difference. Some of my published articles are at www.stephennett.com, my photographs at www.stephen-nett.pixels.com and I share wonders on www.findingcalifornia.com, with guides and tips for introducing children to their natural world at www.stephennettkids.com.
If you liked this article you can help keep me walking by signing up to become a Medium member. It’s just $5 per month, gives you unlimited access to all of the stories on Medium, and if you sign up using my link, I’ll receive a small honorarium, at no extra cost to you.
I also freelance write stories about people doing good and creative things in nature, looking for solutions and creators. I post some of them here.
NOTE: The images in this article are copyright by the artist and author Obi Kaufmann and used by permission. Find all his works at Heyday Books.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Aaron Doucett on Unsplash
