I had a very strange week in the Sonoran Desert here in southern Arizona in late January, about 3 or 4 days on each side of the Chinese Lunar New Year. For the few months I've been trying to figure out what the devil was going on. Though I was "neat, clean, shaved and sober," as Philip Marlow is described on the first page of Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, my account of what happened sounds like something from an Uncle Remus ride in Disneyland (before the lovable old fellow was "cancelled" there recently). So I think I'll just describe what happened—true story, no embellishment nor exaggeration—and end with some provisional interpretations. Feel free to think whatever you want about it.
It began one morning as I sat in our (east-facing) front courtyard enjoying the early sunshine over Arizona's Catalina mountains: movement between the homes across and up the street, those bordering the Sonoran Desert in which our retirement subdivision sits. Yes; it was a bobcat, sauntering across the front yards, perhaps 150 feet away. A gorgeous animal, tawny gold with the bright black and white stripes on the legs (that you never see adequately depicted in the field guides) and the same color spots on the ears. John Muir often commented how clean wild animals are—always with bright colors and free of dirt or mud. That sure was this fellow. Bobcat sightings are not that rare here, due to our proximity to the desert, so I enjoyed it but didn't regard it as anything unusual.
Until the next morning, when Tammy and I were doing our stretches facing the picture windows looking into our back yard. "Tam! Bobcats, to the right!" I announced in an urgent voice. Yes, two of them, probably mother and yearling, ambling the length of our yard, looking alertly around them as they glided oh so gracefully by. I watched, mesmerized by the two of them and their beauty, while Tam ran for her phone. She got a photo of one looking back at us ("Hey! What's all the fuss? Never seen a bobcat?" it seemed to be thinking) just before they disappeared over the wall into the neighbor's yard.
Wow. Three bobcats in two days; now that was a bit unusual. It won't get any better than this, I thought.
Until the next day, as I sat on a favorite bench ("Ray's laughing place") a ten-minute walk from our home, along a finger of the desert that stretches through the neighborhood. Before me stretched an arroyo some 60 yards across, pretty thick with cholla and prickly pear cacti, palo verde trees, and acacia shrubs. Movement, close to my right. And yes, another bobcat glides into my field of view not more than 10 feet from me. I sit stock still. Directly in front of me, he pauses, catching my scent, I bet. He turns his head, looks straight at me, then leisurely resumes his fluid movement, and disappears into the desert terrain. I sit there, bemused, wondering what I'd done to earn the good will of the bobcat gods.
The next day, I walked my wonted loop through the full-on desert just north of our home, a route that takes me well away from any homes, with nothing but desert for as far as you can see to the north. Someone has thoughtfully provided a crude wooden bench about a mile into the loop, on which I was sitting, drinking hot tea from my thermos. Since we get an average of 12 inches of rain a year here, this desert has a very high species diversity of plant life, compared to the other three deserts in North America. I was straddling the thin bench, facing west with 180 degrees of view from the north to the south, though limited by the cacti and thorny shrubs. Movement to the north amongst the cholla and prickly pear cacti. A glimpse of two large ears moving along, appearing then disappearing amongst the vegetation—a mule deer? No, our deer here are the white-tails from back east, smaller ears. But these ears were huge. A break in the cacti, and I see—what the heck? Loping along, almost the size of a small deer, but no. Loping. A jackrabbit? But the largest jackrabbit I've ever seen, coming almost straight toward me. I'm frozen, steaming cup of tea halfway to my mouth. The creature lopes up within 8 feet of me, and pauses. Wind must be blowing toward me, because he takes no notice of me as he forages around on the ground for maybe 6 seconds. Right in front of me; I'm obviously just an inanimate extension of the bench, though sort of funny looking.
I gaze on the creature, thoroughly mystified as to what species he is. Clearly, he's a very large species of jackrabbit, maybe 24 inches long, with those huge ears, at least 8 inches each. But he's glowing with color and it isn't the color of the Black-tailed Jackrabbit that I'm very familiar with from California. No, this critter is bigger than that jackrabbit, and not grizzled brown and black fur but gloriously white fur—again, spotlessly clean--on his flanks and belly, grading to grey speckled with black on his back. Now, I'm a mammologist, who taught the subject for 32 years, emphasis on California, but this guy was completely new to me. He positively glowed with health and color, and the naked interior of those 8-inch ears was a lovely soft shade of blood pink. The most beautiful thing I've ever seen? Close to it. And 8 feet from me! He soon loped away, leaving me very nearly breathless. I finally resumed lifting my cup the rest of the way to my mouth, gulped the tea down, and poured myself another cup with shaking hand. I didn't have my guidebook with me, so I had no idea what species of jackrabbit this fellow was (turned out to be Lepus alleni, the antelope (or "Mexican") jackrabbit, who's not supposed to be this far north and west). But he had sure given me a treat. I got up to resume my walk, and from the high ground on which the bench sat, I looked across the desert and, believe it or not, I could see him picking his way amongst the cacti as he loped along. Amazing.
But my strange week in the desert wasn't over, by any means. A couple of days later I made my weekly car trip to Sabino Canyon, on the other side of the Catalina mountains. On the walking road into the canyon, you pass a hill to the east, then dip down a long descending stretch of road. Atop the hill is a rugged stone structure, used for water storage in the past. Because my good wife and daughter #3 tell me I need to get some "cardio" workout in my walks, my routine is to walk to the low point of the road, then turn around and vigorously walk the 300 feet or so of elevation gain to the trail leading to the hill, then another 400 feet of elevation gain to the top. No, 700 feet of elevation gain is not a lot, but vigorous walking—and doing the whole thing twice—gets my heart beating faster than usual.
At the top of the hill, beyond the stone structure there, I typically sit on a rock overlook and enjoy the view. The canyon and Sabino creek stretches far to the northeast, between high sloping walls on either side, stately saguaro cacti strewn over the hillsides. To my east the creek flows down the canyon and away to my right, where it empties into the basin on which Tucson sits. A picturesque dam interrupts the flow of the creek just below me.
As I approach "my" rock this day to drink tea and munch a granola bar, I notice something on the rock. It's a roadrunner, the iconic desert bird, a large specimen, about two feet long counting tail, with dark brown-black coloration, and crested head. He (probably, from his coloration) appears to be enjoying the view before him. He doesn't dash away as I approach, as all other roadrunners have. As roadrunners should. Rather, he placidly turns and gazes up at me, some 10 feet away. "Uh. That's my rock?" I stupidly inform him. More gazing at me. I take another step. He calmly gets up, hops over to another rock some 6 feet to the right but with a short palo verde tree providing him some privacy, sets himself down on it, and resumes his contemplation of the view. Ignoring me.
I make some racket getting onto my rock (it's a pretty good fall beyond the rock, and I've got to be careful as I stow my hiking sticks and get out my thermos and so on). Doesn't bother my neighbor a bit. We sit there together, sharing the view, about 6 feet from each other. This is very strange. Definitely not roadrunner behavior. Any more than my mystery jackrabbit was acting like a jackrabbit should. The bobcats? They're pretty blasé—top predator and all that—and generally not that spooked by humans. Though not typically such close humans as me on the bench at Ray's laughing place several days before.
I'm feeling weird, sitting there with my roadrunner neighbor atop the hill in Sabino Canyon, remembering my bobcat and jackrabbit experiences just days ago. And I remember sinologist Mark Elvin's 2005 Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China. That book contains Hangzhou nature poet Xie Lingyun's "Living in the Hills," in which he lists the large mammals abundant and frequently encountered around Hangzhou Bay in his day, the early 400's AD (aka CE): gibbons, badgers, tigers, wolves, bobcats, two species of bear, jackals, big-horned sheep, elk, and muntjaks. Xie Lingyun's list would have been even more extensive, of course, during the Neolithic, four thousand years before, when "civilization" had not yet so seriously impinged on the original wildlife.
Elvin observes: "All these species, without exception, seem to have vanished by (our) modern times (from the Hangzhou region)…It would be a folly to overromanticize this fifth-century world. Tigers and wolves are dangerous. But human beings grew up for several hundreds of thousands of years with animals all around them (culminating in the Neolithic hunting-gathering-gardening period). A strange silence has fallen (in the ensuing millennia since the end of the Neolithic). An emptiness. One cannot help wondering what the long-term implications of this are for the balance of our minds."
The "strange silence" which has existed since the end of the Neolithic between humans and our fellow creatures, according to the American historian Lynn White in a pivotal 1967 essay, is grounded in the view of Abrahamic religions as expressed in Genesis 9, verses 2 and 3 (I give the original King James translation, not the "revised"):
"So God created man in his own image…And God blessed them, and said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth on the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea-- into your hand are they all delivered. Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you" (italics and boldface in the preceding paragraphs are mine).
It dawns on me. Somehow, for some or for no good reason, it seems I've been granted a week in the Neolithic, when we humans still had an unusually close association with our wild neighbors, our fellow inhabitants of this good earth. Before the "fear and dread" of humans came into being. It's been thrilling. Sitting there on my rock with Sabino Canon stretching before me, I smile. Then laugh. My roadrunner neighbor doubtless hears the laugh, and stirs a little uneasily, but doesn't move, continuing his amiable contemplation of the view.
I drink my cup of tea, finish my granola bar. "See ya later," I say, softly, to the roadrunner. He doesn't acknowledge me. I gather my hiking sticks and quietly leave, awed by this curious week I've been given in the Neolithic, smack in the middle of the Chinese Lunar New Year.
Make what you want of it, but it was quite week.