Desert home

    Photo Credit: Tom Talbott, Jr.

The swarm of bees is still there this morning, hanging pendulous from the branches of the mesquite like a giant oriole’s nest, each bee perfectly still and in alignment with its neighbor, wings all pointing down like the hair on a sleeping cat.

Judging by its diameter around the branches, the mass must be layered five or ten bees deep. I wonder what the ones at the bottom feel like, with the weight of their hive-mates pressing down on them. And what would it take to disturb them? As the sun touches the cluster—dappled light filtered through the mesquite leaves—they do not seem to be in any hurry to move. Though the surface bees are awake and stretching now, only scattered bees are leaving and just as many returning; the whole bee-mass seems to be steaming slightly, like a pot just starting to come to a simmer.

The whole thing looks more like some kind of organism than a collection of single insects. A very small furry sloth perhaps, hanging two-legged from a forked “V” in the mesquite. As the day-breezes pick up, the solid blob sways a little—it’s loose, but has weight to it, like a wadded-up piece of cloth that might unfurl to stream out in the wind at any moment.

They arrived late yesterday afternoon, all at once, the swarm a diffuse blur overhead, more sound than substance. It circled, then descended into the bush on the other side of the truck, collecting itself somehow into this compact cluster, hundreds of bees compressed into a ball, a foot-and-a-half long and maybe eight-inches in diameter at its thickest. Though we had seen the swarm arrive—and stepped into the screen room just to make sure it knew we would give it room to pass—we only discovered the bee-ball later, at bedtime, when they had already gathered in for the night.

I go back in the trailer for an hour to do food prep for the day while it is still cool—keeping our tiny fridge closed during the hot part of the day is essential to it actually doing its job—but when I come back out the bees are in pretty much the same state. I don’t know why I expected them to be up-and-at-‘em at first light. Maybe I am taking that whole “busy as a bee” thing too literally. But here they are, with the sun well above the horizon on its fast-track up to the very tip-top of the blue sky, still clinging to their branch like teenagers in bed on a school day.

I take another break from bee-watching and finish the food prep and find duct tape to help Tom tape some popsicle sticks where the latch for the cargo door on the trailer catches so the latch will make a tighter seal and keep the bugs out. This ingenious use of the materials-at-hand works, though we think we will have an even tighter seal if we buy another box of popsicles. Perhaps two boxes…

After all this, it is getting on toward 9:30 and now it is definitely hot, but the bee-blob hasn’t budged. The whole outer layer is doing a slow churn, and the ball looks a little expanded with the bees moving about, but I am starting to think that this pot may not boil while I am watching it. Here and there all over the cluster, a few solitary bees are vibrating wildly, their whole bodies shaking furiously as though possessed by the spirit of God. For a moment, that one bee is all soul, fur flying, lungs flapping in the wind, wings and legs and stripes a dizzy blur. Then it disappears into the slow-moving mass and the day snaps into normal mode again.

I leave once more to put the lentils and rice in the solar oven (which already registers 400 degrees inside) and when I come back the spirit has spread; now there are bees vibrating in multiple places at once, and the whole bee-ball is awake and moving restlessly; individual bees look like they are searching for something, the slower ones nudging and nosing their neighbors, the vibrating ones trampling over the others in their hurry. On the underside of the ball, the lowest bees hang loosely—some just by their front legs.

Lunch comes and goes, and while Tom is doing the dishes, I check back again. Still there! Though now the mass is drooping seriously, dripping like a softened candle under the weight of the clinging insects. They are still moving on the surface, but there don’t seem to be as many coming and going. The whole thing looks heavy and tired under the hot noon sun—which may be mostly a projection on my part. How long are they going to stay? I wonder, thinking of the Far Side cartoon in which the Joneses feign death to get their houseguests to leave. These bees don't seem like they would notice if I was alive or dead, so I resort to knowledge as my offensive strategy, and go to find one of the few books I brought with me, which just happens to be Hoyt's The World of Bees.

According to Hoyt, when a bee colony decides to swarm, they fly in tighter and tighter circles, and usually settle somewhere on a tree limb. If the queen is with the cluster, the cluster will hold and grow. It will be a huge, seething, dripping, shapechanging mass of bees, wonderful to see…and may remain for anything from fifteen minutes to several days. During this time, scouts are sent out…on the lookout for the perfect home.

These scouts do their ‘wagging’ dance when they return…the same dance they do inside the hive to tell their sisters where a new source of nectar is to be found. When the scouts return they dance for whatever discovery they have made. And their excitement is in direct proportion to the mental misgivings they have in regard to their find. It if is adequate and that is all, the dance is done pretty listlessly. If it is perfect…the dance will be done with great enthusiasm.

And here’s the really amazing part. Other bees go to check out the places being danced for most vigorously. Half-hearted dancers stop and go to see what the more enthusiastic bees are so delighted about. Pretty soon the dancing for the one becomes nearly unanimous. This is when the swarm takes flight.

2:45. I check again. The sun is a big hot hand over the whole sky, pressing relentlessly. It is too bright, too exposed, even in the shade. The swarm has continued to sag, and it now looks disturbingly like a dead animal—perhaps a tiny goat hung by its hind feet for butchering. I can’t get the image out of my mind and the squirming insects now look like maggots on a rotten carcass rather than the beautiful gold-furred divinities of the dawn. Bees are coming and going regularly, a handful at a time, and there are several bees “dancing” at once. I try to see if the direction of their dances coincides—maybe several point in the same direction? When I turn to look in that direction the first thing I see is our nearby yurt and screen room. Huh....... Surely they aren't thinking about staying......here! 

The wind has really picked up, and the lengthening strands of bees flap with an elastic weight like the sagging flesh on the back of an arm. The tarps on our trailer that shade its sides are threatening to set sail in the strong gusts, so we decide to take them down for the day. Just as we have removed the tent poles, at 2:59 pm, we hear a sudden roar, and peer out from under the partly-dismantled awning to see the whole swarm up in the air again, swirling in a fast circle over the cluster-site. Once every bee is off the branch, the circle widens and lifts and then slowly gyres toward us; then slowly spins over us as we huddle under the fabric; then slowly drives off toward the yurt (Keep going! Tom mutters); then slowly surrounds the top of the yurt (Keeeep Going…..!); then finally—to our immense relief—heads slowly on up the slope. The last we see, they are circling in a slow bee-funnel toward the top, disappearing over the ridge in a whirl of unseen sound. 

The driveway seems suddenly very quiet and very still. We breath a sigh of relief at their decision, and continue to tie up our awning and think about supper. I hope they like their new home as much as we like ours.

Hoyt, M. (1965) The World of Bees. New York: Bonanza Books.

Day 178-224: Cascabel finale

I have been struggling to figure out how to write about our time in Cascabel, and in the end, I have decided to keep it simple.

There is so much I could talk about. There is the community history, things like Jim and Pat Corbett’s work in the 80’s that began the Sanctuary Movement. There is the commitment of the Saguaro-Juniper covenant to conduct human activity in partnership with everything else that lives here. There are projects to restore native grasslands. There is the hermitage program which supports solitary retreat in desert wildlands. There is the community center built by volunteers from recovered materials, and the community garden with its cadre of fun-loving gardeners. There is the eclectic mix of people who live lives that are both highly independent and closely associated. Amongst those people, there is enough creativity, advanced education, and international experience to start a small college. And most important, there is the land itself that grounds everything else—the San Pedro River Valley, a rare, vital, relatively-intact, desert river ecosystem, whose miles of willow-cottonwood forest and mesquite bosques provide food and shelter for a staggering number of local animals as well as being an essential migratory corridor for many of the birds who summer in the Pacific Northwest.

Like I said, there’s a lot. But whenever I try to focus on any one of these things I find myself caught in generalizations or comparisons, or tangled in some kind of “educational” language that does not do justice to my actual experience.

So in the end it comes down to this: that both Tom and I came away from the last seven weeks with a deep affection for this place—the people and the land—that is like the bonds we feel with our family and friends. This affection comes from something greater than the accomplishments of the people or the beauty of the plants or the variety of the birds. It comes from the spiritual soul of this place—the wholeness of it, the spaciousness, the vast wild network of creatures connected to the vitality of the community.

   If I am still—

   if I let my hands rest, my heart broaden

   to the width of the valley, to the height of the mountains,

   then on to the next range beyond,

   to the cities, the rivers, the sea,

   then I too may find my place here,

   if I can stop grasping long enough

   to remember how to be vast.

   Of all the places I could be

   how did I end up here, in this moment?

   I mean in this very moment—

   at sunset, the cusp of night reaching out over the wide valley;

   the white cliffs at my back and the rangy peaks of the Galiuro Mountains

   pushed up in the distance; the whole wide green body

   of the valley laid out in-between in low rolling hills

   of creosote and saguaros; the little houses of people I know

   folded into them like nuts spotting a batter;

   and below, the cottonwoods assembled along the river

   like cows trailing loosely toward fresh pastures.

   The sky is about to reveal its stars.

   The moon is a ghost disk in the periwinkle wash.

   The barest threads of clouds mottle the air from east to west,

   and here I am—

   here I am with nothing but the wind

   and all this space

   to speak with.

Day 178-216: Cascabel, part 1

Two years ago in April, Tom and I rented a 100-year-old stone cabin in Cascabel, Arizona, in the San Pedro River Valley, a couple hours east of Tucson. To the uninitiated this might be considered the middle of nowhere. The nearest grocery store is 45 minutes by car, the best road here is unpaved, water is scarce, and a census might have to include cows to break 300.  It didn’t take long, though, for us to realize that Cascabel is actually somewhere, and not only that, it is somewhere special. Even after just a week we knew that we wanted to come back. It took us two years to do so, but on March 1st we arrived for a seven-week stay.

Downtown Cascabel

There is so much to say about this place—both the land and the community— that I get tongue-tied just thinking about it, so I am going to come at it through the back door. Instead of painting the grand picture, I am going to start with some humble bits, sidling up to it with a little whistle, as I have seen some people here approach a cow they needed to move.

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After having been in the desert now for the last four months, we are getting used to the "don't touch that" rule, whether it is the furry-looking cholla cactus, or the cat-claws of the acacia, or the long spikes on the mesquite trees. It seems best to just assume that rule applies to all plants and, well, pretty much anything that moves. Having grown up in the soft-and-friendly Pacific Northwest, I like to touch things, and I have to be reminded to keep my hands in my "Haydn-pockets" here.

Every Wednesday there’s morning coffee at the community center, followed by a work party at the community garden. Our first Wednesday here, the guy who sits down at our table is recovering from a scorpion sting on his foot. I am talking to someone else and can’t hear the details, but the length of his story and the size of his gestures suggest that he has been in a lot of pain.

I heard about fire ants on my previous visit, so I am careful to avoid ant mounds when I am walking. When we are visiting a neighbor here, looking at the native grass plantings he is tending in his restored pasture, I stop for a closer look at some unusually large black ants swarming in and out of a hole in the ground. "Oh, those,” he says, telling me the name, which I can’t remember now. “Don't mess with those, their bite is way worse than a scorpion sting!" Move along, in other words. Maybe over by that prickly pear cactus or in that stand of velcro grass. Or in a patch of that bristly plant with the yellow flowers that someone warned me would give me hives if I touched it without gloves.

Javalinas look like small, vertically-flattened, pointy-toed pigs that wander around in packs looking for mud. Mostly they seem interested in hiding, and the few times I have seen them it was from the rear as they ran hysterically away from me. But one woman mentions that she doesn't like to walk along the river in a place where the javelinas gather, not so much because they are dangerous, really, but because "javelinas don't have a sense of humor." Woody, the ranch's herd manager, tells a story of one angry javelina waking him up from a nap in the fields and chasing him into the stock pond. His description of the smell of the sludge he stirred up from the bottom of the pond when he fell in made me think that being bitten by the javelina might have been preferable.

After moving cows one day we sit in a little house next to the corral having cookies and cheese and I notice a good-sized spider (a solid inch in diameter with all the legs pulled in) on the wall over our host. Spiders aren't a trigger for me the way snakes are, but I think she might like to know about it so I mention it. Oh yeah. That guy is just a baby. It is deadly poisonous, of course, and moves really fast, so I am waiting until I can focus on it to catch it.

Oh, and I have now seen my first rattlesnake. I should have been forewarned, as Cascabel means “rattle” in Spanish, and refers in this case to the tail-end of a rattlesnake. Sure enough, our first night here I “discovered” a good-sized rattlesnake coiled up by the end of our trailer, and get my first lesson in snake catching and moving.

A few weeks ago most of the community gathered for a memorial service for a very dear friend of theirs who recently died. After a spacious hour of silence, meditation bells, and remembrances we sit for potluck lunch. The woman next to us asks us how we are doing here, and we tell her how much we are taken by the valley, to which she responds, “Well, with the warmer weather, you will need to watch out for the Kissing Bugs." Kissing Bugs! What? No one told us about Kissing Bugs. Turns out these are stink bug look-alikes that hide behind your cushions and come out at night to bite you while you are asleep, attracted evidently by the smell of your breath. Their saliva has a little anesthetic in it so you don't even feel them when they "kiss" you and they are able to fill to exploding on your blood like a leech. Great. Bed leeches.

The next Wednesday I am back at the community garden when someone walks by the young man who is helping with our tomato transplanting team. "I hear you got hit by a burn worm," he says in the sort of somber tone you might use for someone who has had a limb amputated. Burn worm?!? What now? Turns out these are some kind of caterpillars (also known as mesquite stinger caterpillar) covered with stinging hairs, that fall out of the trees and feel, as the unfortunate young man reported, like four bee stings at once. At least now I know how to treat it, which is to apply duct tape to the burning spot and then rip it off to pull the little stinging hairs out of your skin. This is also supposed to work with cholla glochids, though my previous experiences with sports tape make me wonder if this cure might add insult to injury.

I say all this to emphasize how amazing this place is. That even though the list of poisonous, prickly, and painful things to be avoided is longer than our trailer, I still wake up every day feeling like I have landed in paradise. Perhaps the threat of harm makes me pay more attention and take less for granted. Perhaps there is a kind of awe at the lengths things go to survive in harsh environments. Perhaps there is a longing to be as at home in this wide, arid land as the creosote bush and the cactus.

All I know is that this land feels deeply, vibrantly alive—an understated aliveness mirrored by the people who choose to live here. I have experienced a profound gentleness in many of the people here, coupled with a willingness to act decisively in service to what they believe in. There is a commitment to being partners with the land, rather than the land being a possession or only a means to making a profit. These ideals seem to arise at least in part from the desert itself, which is absolutely unforgiving and absolutely itself, while also offering an intense spiritual aliveness.

Not everyone who lives here ascribes to these ideas. There are many different faces to Cascabel, and what you see depends on where you stand and who you talk to. What is clear to us, though, is that we are here to learn—about generosity, about community working together, about how to live in challenging circumstances, and most of all about the land.

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Tom and I are staying at a ranch which is the central location for Saguaro-Juniper, the cattle-raising part of this community, and have parked our trailer amidst the welter of houses, trailers, corrals, sheds, horse trailers, trucks, and the kind of equipment and raw materials that accumulates on every farm. We feel so lucky to be here. To the west we can walk to the San Pedro River and can get to an area where the riverbed has year-round water. To the east we can walk for miles out into the saguaros and creosote bush of the desert. Our hosts are some of the original founders of this community and it has been a pleasure to get to know them and hear their stories.

This is also the location of the Sweetwater Center, the organization that I am volunteering for while we are here. I am helping with some pasture improvement projects as well as caring for two new plantings of pollinator plants. What this really means is I do a lot of weeding, which is something with which I have loads of experience. I am surprised at how much I am enjoying it. I think it feels good to just do something familiar, simple, and rote after six months of so much change.

When I am not weeding or walking in the desert with Tom, I have been immersed in the busy social life of this community. Coffee gatherings, Quaker meeting, potlucks, horseback riding, folk dancing, meditation group, writing group, road cleanup, cheese making, game night, celebrations of all sorts of things, committee meetings, mesquite-pulling work parties, conservation work, and tending the community garden all somehow get squeezed into the short weeks around here. The result of that, though, is that after only six weeks here, I have met just about everyone who lives along about a ten-mile stretch of the dirt road.

There is so much more to say about this place, but it will have to wait for another post. I am still digesting the incredible vastness of the desert, the life-giving presence of the river, the principles of the people who have been drawn together in community, and the work of the organizations that have formed around the intention of tending this valley and its inhabitants.

In a week we will pack up our trailer and move on. We aren't sure where we are headed or what the next five months will hold for us. We don't know when we might come back here. But the people and the land are in our hearts now and give us strength. We feel different after being here—a little more relaxed, a little more aware, and warmed by many memories.