Writing by Daniel Grant
Epiphany 2: Shoe Soles and Cattle Guards
Other Writing:
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» Twin Rocks
Epiphany 1: The Salty Ghost
I scan the shimmering horizon of Owens Lake—or the salty ghost it has become—for signs of life, and drift upon a backhoe silhouetted against the Eastern Sierra, kicking up fine dust that disappears into the wind.
Owens Lake sweeps me up in its simplicity; its white flats seem larger than life, filling the valley like the sound of the white rumble of jets overhead, merging imperceptibly with the timeless rippled sands of a desert defined by its stubborn disregard for moderation.
In this landscape of age and agelessness, I find it difficult to see things as they could be instead of as they are, and even more difficult to say which is better; deserts have a knack for making the foreign seem mundane.
I wonder why I have such a visceral initial reaction to a place in which I have never lived. I have never inhaled the cloud of toxic dust that tears through the valley when the wind blows, nor have I experienced the green, orchard-filled valley that had its place when the lake was full many decades ago. Now, the lake’s appearance makes its surrounding communities seem dormant and forgotten, about to be swept up in the rippled sands of this or any other desert. The only water now is pumped in a loop through black, snake-like hoses to sprinklers which resemble mushroom-shaped aliens dampening the dust. Even though the water naturally belongs in these many pools, its fragmented appearance makes it seem foreign—a small sip to quench a vast thirst. Ever since the 1970’s, most of the water has been diverted from the lake to Los Angeles through 2 enormous aqueducts. Recently, Mike Prather and the rest of the Owens Valley Committee have challenged this, initially hoping to bring more water back to Owens Valley through negotiation with the City of Los Angeles. But when negotiation failed, the court kicked in.
So I push myself to get past what’s in front of me and imagine what the lake could be had the negotiations between Owens Valley and the City of Los Angeles been settled without broken promises, bruised egos, and a capricious court. The answer transcends the barren appearance of the Salty Ghost. But what I took away most from the conflict between these two dry valleys is the need to find the common language of water. I think that the dichotomy between Owens Valley and Los Angeles has permeated into our language when we talk about water, so much so that a court must supplant negotiation to settle conflicts, neither side fully content with its decision. Throughout the negotiating process, the Owens Valley appeared to be a forgotten place.
But Mike Prather tells a story that goes beyond aesthetics, and makes the Owens Valley more complex than what meets the eye. Ironically, this land is as artificially dry as Los Angeles is wet. In fact, Owens Valley could become more like Los Angeles if the lake remained full, first undergoing overgrazing, development, and then perhaps urban sprawl, posing a whole new set of problems if water became suddenly abundant. With water comes the inexorable choice to use it with care or to waste it where it doesn’t belong. I can’t see the Owens Valley changing its ways that quickly.
After an exhausting long-fought battle, the court gave Owens Valley some of its water back, enough to keep the toxic dust grounded. And however dry and neglected this place may seem at first glance, it is not forgotten anymore. There are more battles to be fought and less water to be fought over, but right now Owens Valley is in a strange balance, like the salt-encrusted rocks hardened on the playa floor.
Yet the fact that people live in Owens Valley gives me hope. Hope that they continue to be remembered but remain humble. And hope that Los Angeles, however glitzy and overgrown it may be, remembers its humble roots as a desert town defined by its water. Only then can these two valleys speak a common language.
No, I still don’t admire the Salty Ghost. But neither do I wish its waters back—at least, not for now.
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Epiphany 2: Shoe Soles and Cattle Guards
Walking the public ranchlands of the Northeastern Nevada desert, I find it difficult to find a place where cattle haven’t left their controversial and indisputable mark upon the landscape. Ironically, by virtue of America’s obsession with the quintessential “Western” culture, filled with cowboys and the rugged freedom that these lands afford, originally native grass-filled hills have become defined by thundering hooves, watering troughs and fences. Although this destructive mark is made physically by cattle, their presence is more symbolic of the debate that I’ve experienced between pro-grazing and anti-grazing advocates. In fact, cattle’s presence stands in for a larger issue at stake—whether and how we incorporate a sustainable land ethic into the desert ranching community in an environment which appears unsuitable to sustain this kind of life in the first place.
John Marvel, executive director of Western Watersheds Project and the Smith and Boies family ranches have differing definitions of sustainability on public lands. Marvel sees these lands as sustainable only when ranching ceases to exist, opening the lands to the public exclusively with strict preservation in mind. Marvel, if he had his way, would want to designate all public land as wilderness so that human presence did not disturb the natural ecosystems that exist. But regardless of this radical idealism, the idea of abolishing all grazing on public lands would have its consequences too, just manifested in other ways. The beauty of public lands is that they are an embodiment of the balance between freedom and responsibility, and that balance applies to all use of public lands, be it ranching, agriculture, or recreation. So instead of fighting over what these lands should be used for, we should focus on how we treat these lands within the economic and practical means that are available. The holistic management practices that I learned through the Shoe Sole group showed a step towards this goal.
The responsible rancher is connected to the land in a way that I haven’t understood until I heard him or her talking about the land they manage. I was struck by the staff at Conttonwood Ranch’s immense knowledge of the interconnectedness of a willow re-introduction effort to beaver habitat and ultimately to the longevity and sustainability of an ecosystem, known broadly as holistic management. It is this awareness that makes sustainable ranching possible if it promotes a land ethic that ties the prosperity of the land to the prosperity of the ranch, and visa versa.
Part of Cottonwood Ranch’s understanding of holistic management is its concept of economic sustainability, which promotes the rugged “Western” cultural ideal as a means to land stewardship. The Ranch splits its income between guest services and raising cattle. Guests flock to the ranch in order to live and experience that ideal, going on cattle drives and learning about the ranch’s practices. With this income, the ranch can invest in holistic land management as a strategy to both make a profit and develop its sustainable land ethic.
Mr. Marvel is pressing a lawsuit against the BLM for having lax standards for holistic management on Boies Ranch land. The irony is that if John Marvel wins the lawsuit, it would set the Boies’s back in their progressive goals for the ranch. I think it would be helpful for both Western Watersheds and the Holistic Management team to see that holistic management and litigation can coexist--even complement one another--to inspire a sustainable land ethic. Litigation should be used sparingly to keep irresponsible ranching practices in check and appeal to the structural adjustments that need to be made, and holistic management provides a positive alternative that appeals to an individual connection with the land. It will take some give from both sides, and this is the biggest obstacle which I foresee in bringing this collaboration into being. Right now, deadlock seems to dominate the discussion, both sides feeling threatened and neither side willing to give in. Until both sides see a common goal, deadlock will continue to dominate.
Much of the criticism Mr. Marvel has for the ranching community is that they are severely out of touch with the land. But I saw something different, and I wonder whether the desert can become, if not ideal, at least a tolerable place for cattle to graze. Ranching on public lands is here to stay. Here’s to the same for a responsible land ethic.
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Untitled
A day, like a year, recognizes imperfection.
Light overlays shadows in cracks and crevasses.
And when night falls, shadows become the light, all equal, like justice.
Each day, cracks and crevasses remain remnants of imperfection in the light, and equal
with the rock in the dark.
They are expected and remembered, but not dwelled upon.
Morning.
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Untitled
Last night, in the beam of my headlamp, the glint of an ancient chip caught my eye. And then another. And another. I rushed to pick them all up, a field of them; as if they would run away if I weren’t quick and dexterous. Soon enough I had a pile of blood and bone-colored chips on a pedestal of sand. I slept an ancient sleep.
This morning I awoke to my footsteps surrounding this pedestal, a size 8 tread. My first reaction was to gulp—how many stories and artifacts have I covered or uncovered with my heavy footstep? And then I realize: before, these chips were inanimate, catching only the drifting sands. Now they are animate, catching my drifting imagination.
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Untitled
An imbricated lacolith
That lacks a certain clang,
Or dare I say a hogback
When music turns yardang.
I wish this fateful lacolith
Could play in harmony,
But when I oolite it
I hear cacophony.
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Twin Rocks
On the winter solstice, the birth of creation, the sun casts a sliver of golden light upon a meticulously chipped spiral in the sandstone. Every day, Puebloan people chant the course and position of the sun on its yearly cycle across that spiral and make etches into the stone to communicate the day’s significant events in the form of rock art. “This is where I am today,” they say. The awareness of time and place is striking to me, coming from a world of mindless routine and instant gratification. When I forget the distractions of the day and tune into the rock art myself, I begin to adopt this awareness. I see and hear thousands of chiseled symbols in the stone: snakes, desert bighorns, a sipapu, the hunt, and the evolution of life. Fires crackle, hushed voices and a whistle pierce the ground and air. Yet I don’t experience a deeper sense of tradition and ritual which guided the way the Puebloans saw the world. I may have seen the Puebloan experience a little more clearly, though, through observing Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement.
The day before, I struggled to get past the distractions of camp life, email, and presidential politics which mattered to me but didn’t matter to the place I was in. My initial impulse was to compel each carving to animate its own story, complete with a plot and characters—an explanation of why it existed. The carvings did not move. They seemed etched irrevocably into the cool stone walls of a cave that was once a home.
Yom Kippur was a strange convergence of events a day after trying to make sense of these carvings in caves. I had been debating whether to observe the most holy day of the Jewish year out here in the desert, with no services and routine to adhere to. Nevertheless, I decided to take the plunge and saw it as a new experience in a new place. Jewish tradition runs in cycles with time carved out each year for reflection of one’s actions over the past year. Fasting is intended to facilitate this kind of reflection.
It’s possible that the act itself of observing and reflecting on Yom Kippur brought me closer to understanding the daily awareness with which the Puebloans led their lives, and it’s possible that it didn’t. But it was really in retrospect that I recognized the coincidence of Jewish tradition with Puebloan tradition which really led me to see the parallels between the two.
Joe Pachak, a local archaeologist and artist who adeptly interprets rock art and ancient culture, described the symbolic act of rock art to the Puebloans. To them, the act of piercing the patina wall was akin to piercing the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem with a prayer to God: A blank slate. The act of starting anew. It was the archetype of holiness, of being born into the earth which resonated between the two traditions. It was the act of reflecting without performing, communicating without an audience in mind. And it was the consciousness it took to align the twin rocks, spires aligned with the sun throughout the course of the year, and recounting that position and events associated with that position in a meaningful way.
Every year, Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is a little over a week before Yom Kippur. The act of Tashlik, of casting rocks into a stream, each representing an aspect of one’s life that they want to improve upon in the coming year, is a way of starting anew. It is a tradition built into the cyclic calendar much like the serpent-like sipapu carving of emergence into the earth.
The cycles, traditions and attention to subtlety and detail of the landscape were a foundation of the culture of the ancient Puebloans. With the distractions of technology and politics, it’s easy to see the carvings etched in the patina walls of a desert canyon as archaic and obsolete—an exercise in imagination and wonderment of civilizations long gone.
But the strange coincidence of Jewish tradition with Puebloan tradition that I experienced told me otherwise—that the awareness of time and place cultivated by the ancient people through their rock art and symbolic alignment with the sun is as relevant today as ever, not just in a religious sense, but also to an individual connection with the land. It is the simple act of saying, “this is where I am today.”
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