Microwunderkammer

 Parental Artifact #23–Anza-Borrego State Park

OK, so this is a little bit more nebulous than an artifact. I can’t hold it in the palm of my hand, and I can’t properly say that it is something I own (especially since I no longer pay taxes in the State of California). But, all the same, it is something that my parents gave to me and my brothers.

Anza-Borrego State Park can be readily defined. It has boundaries, it contains geographical and geological and cultural features that can be enumerated. The topological map seems to encompass all of it, flattened into two dimensions and given coordinates. Most geographies will note its features, and as I stand on its sandy soil or varied rocks, I can experience it in two dimensions, like an ant crawling across the surface of a wrinkly map. Some knowledge of geology adds a third dimension, as alluvial fans fill deep basins and faults plunge far into the earth. A little more knowledge of geology brings a fourth dimension, time, and the landscape becomes a snapshot of a vast opera of orogeny, metamorphosis, erosion, deposition, uplift and earthquakes.

The geographies of many indigenous peoples have an additional dimension, one that is like the deep time of western geologists, but thick in the air and as real as—or, on a personal level, more real—than the forces that turn mountains into sand dunes. It is a slurry of history, memory, experience, and lore that is every bit as real as rocks. This dimension is evidenced by place names. Western place names are about people, animals, or features—the park has Font’s Point, Palm Canyon, Coyote Creek, and so on. In contrast, in the indigenous geography, places are named after what happened that one time at that place. The past becomes a permanent part of the present, and time and geography get mixed into a chunky stew at places like “That wash where the VW bottomed out and we had to dig it out” or “The place where we filled bags with sand for mom’s cactus garden.”

That geography of memory is the Anza-Borrego State Park that my parents gave us. We started going there almost every winter for a few days’ vacation sometime in the 1970’s. There were things we could count on. Fried bread from the Coleman stove for breakfast, a hike up a wash or canyon or drive to see some unusual plant during the day, a lunch break of crackers and cheese and fruit and precisely divvied up chocolate, a return to camp for dinner, then reading in the light of the Coleman lantern, with planning what the next day’s adventure would be. We had a few guide books but Lindsay’s “The Anza Borrego Desert Region” was the go-to.

The trip I just took there, with my brothers and a group of friends, is quite similar. Some of the hardware is different (I have the old Coleman stove, but we used my middle brother’s newer stove; the light at night was provided by LED’s), but the rhythm is the same. We were only there for one full day on this trip. In the light of the lantern on Monday night, we consulted Lindsay (now in its sixth edition, though we still had the first), and we decided to try Hellhole Canyon for our walk the following day.

The map and the guidebook say Hellhole Canyon; in the geography of memory, it’s the one where mom tore her jacket on the tangle of catclaw that filled canyon, the one where we hiked down from the top that one time, the one where dad dropped us off and we walked all the way down the California Riding and Hiking trail, and much more. The memories were thick enough that they stepped on each others’ toes, and our memories argued amongst themselves about whether we could go down the canyon from the top to the bottom, or whether we ever actually did such a hike. We were pretty sure about tearing garments on the catclaw trees though.

So we parked some cars at the bottom of the canyon, then drove in others up to the top and started hiking down. After a couple of miles, the canyon grew steeper. And steeper. And steeper still; to keep going meant a lot of scrambling over huge boulders and the occasional short slide down a dry waterfall. Eventually I was sent on ahead to scout, and after a couple hundred meters I concluded that it might be doable but given the composition of our party, it should definitely not be attempted. So, we enjoyed the vista and declared lunch (crackers, cheese, an orange, and some chocolate). Sated, we turned back, and after a few hundred meters of scrambling over and around and under boulders, the canyon mellowed out and we had a pleasant walk back to the cars.

Brother Mig and I still had itchy feet, and there was about an hour and a half of sunlight left; so, from the cars at the bottom of the canyon, we decided we would try to reach at least as far as the palm oasis. It was some VERY brisk hiking, and some scrambling over boulders, but we got there and it was lovely. There was no surface water but the palm grove was thick and lush, and the palms shared the damp sandy soil with sycamores and willows. The oasis is such a surprise, a place of peace and fullness in the desert landscape, that it was tempting to linger too long there. Our return pace was even more up-tempo, with pauses to take in the fiery colors of the sunset as we zipped across the wash.

Nothing stays the same forever. The USGS topo map for Hellhole Canyon is pretty far out of date, not showing the highway or a couple of the trails. The first edition of Lindsay’s book is mostly up to date, but floods and fires rearrange things. The terrain of boulders differed from that in our memories, perhaps due to flash floods, and we encountered almost none of the catclaw that was so thick in previous visits, possibly owing to a fire of which we saw evidence.

But, walking through the landscape, I have changed it in my memory. I can now name new places—the place where we talked about gardens, the place where we had to squeeze under a boulder, and the dry pool where we had a delightful lunch. The geography of memory in Anza-Borrego is an especially rich inheritance from my parents, and dozens of its canyons and washes are full of things I can see that are not on any map; and with every visit I burnish and refresh and remodel this geography, and will hopefully continually to do so every chance I can.