THE SONORAN DESERT
—Land of Extremes
By Ed Lusch
June 2005 Guadalajara-Lakeside Volume 21, Number 10

     By the scorching light of day, deserts seem to be monotonous stretches of sunbaked sand and bleached white rock dotted here and there with cactus, scraggly brush clumps and buzzards circling the thermal uprises, devoid of terrestrial life; barren, forlorn, and ominously forbidding.
     But at sunset, the desert begins to energize with an array of creatures seeking to fulfill their predator-prey-scavenging and browsing relationships. A biologically complex ecosystem emerges to carry forth the desert’s fragile balance of nature and Mexico’s Sonoran Desert, the largest desert in the country, is the most biologically complex of any US/Mexico desert.
     The Sonoran Desert is a vast expanse of arid landscape encompassing 100,000 square miles, which extends from Guaymas on the west coast of Mexico into southern Arizona, southern California, and east into Baja.
     Receiving a sparse two inches of rain or less per year, the Sonoran desert is the driest of all America’s five desert zones. With such miserly rainfall and daytime temperatures averaging 120 degrees Fahrenheit, it would seem to be a most inhospitable place for man or beast but surprisingly is home to more kinds of flora and fauna than any other north American desert.
     This is a land of extremes: blistering daytime temperatures, followed by frigidly cold nights; months of parching drought interrupted by floods from seasonal rains carried up from the Gulf of Mexico. During a brief few weeks of spring a profusion of flowering plants carpet the desert floor in a mosaic of color and green, then vanishes in the shimmering heat from an unrelenting desert sun.
     Standing sentinel throughout this ever-changing panorama are numerous cactus species from the multi-paddled palm cactus to the 60-foot tall Saguaro cactus, the logo of the Sonoran desert. Mexican bighorn sheep, Sonoran deer, Javalina, coyote and bobcat make a living here as does the Sonoran desert’s most recognizable ambassador, the “Chunky” pink-spotted Gila Monster, one of only two venomous lizards found in the world. All these desert-dwellers have worked out ways to survive in this feast and famine habitat. The shy and reclusive Gila Monster for instance, lives in burrows by day and hunts at night, thus avoiding a baking sun. During times of plenty, this non-aggressive but nevertheless potentially venomous lizard stores fat in its sausage-shaped tail and lives off this stored fat during the lean times.
     The native peoples of the Sonoran Desert are called Papago “the bean eaters” a name given them by the Spanish colonists because part of the year when desert foods were scarce, the Papagos survived on their cultivated desert bean crops. The Papagos were one branch of a larger group of Indian people called the Pimans, who originally extended in separate autonomous tribal bands from southern Arizona to the especially non-forgiving environment north of the Sea of Cortez.
     Much of the year the Papagos were hunters-gatherers pursuing deer, bighorn sheep, rabbits, snakes and quail for protein, and harvesting fruits, seeds, roots and pulp from over 40 species of desert plants. Bean crops were their survival food.
     The Papago people placed high value on an ethical code, which included generosity as a foremost tenant. Living in such an extreme and harsh environment, that code also stipulated: “Be hunger enduring, cold enduring, thirst enduring.”
     Like the Gila Monster, the Papagos physiologically adapted to their conditions by storing fat in their body tissues during good times and drawing upon that stored fat during times of nutritional scarcity. Papago Indians now live on reservations and no longer must endure surviving in the desert. But they have paid a price. In Gary Nabhan’s award-winning book, on Sonoran Desert Peoples, he quotes a Papago elder who remembers well the days of desert life:
     Long time ago this was our way of life. We did not buy food. We worked hard to gather for our food. We drank the desert fruit juices in harvest time. The desert food is meant for Indians to eat. The reason so many Indians died young is because they don’t eat their desert food. I worry about what will happen to this new generation of Indians who have become accustomed to food they buy at the markets.
     This wise elder Papago had good reason for his concern. According to Indian Health Services, more than half the adult population of Papago Indians now suffer from diabetes and obesity is an ever-growing concern. To borrow a summation from naturalist-writer David Quammen: “They have been rescued from their hard and primitive ways into a more advanced, more comfortable state of ruined health.” While the desert was a tough landlord, it gave the Papago people what they needed when they needed it.
     The desert no longer gives sustenance and health to indigenous desert people but its cadence of extremes carries on unmindful of the loss of one of its ancestral inhabitants. Its rhythms remain unchanged and timeless, and continue to nurture all those denizens hardy enough to withstand and adapt to whatever the Sonoran Desert sends their way.