I've been to the desert.
I worked on a crew for the Army Corps of Engineers, doing population density surveys and radio-telemetry tracking on desert tortoises in Southern California's Mojave Desert. The military has to monitor the populations of threatened and endangered species on their bases.
We worked at Joshua Tree National Park and Twenty Nine Palms Marine Corps Base (USMCAGCC). We were based out of Champaign-Urbana, IL, with offices at the University of Illinois.
When I was in the field, for two months, in July and August, temperatures were up to 115-120 degrees F. Our crew worked from April to October. I worked during the hottest part of the job.
I carried two gallons of water with me starting out at dawn, every day, and drank a quart of water every hour, in the field. By 1 PM, drinking a quart of water in one quaff would open up the sweat glands, that were already restricting perspiration to retain water, in the heat. It seemed like the water that I drank came right out my pores.
I maintained water discipline.
We walked about ten miles per day, starting out at dawn, six days per week. It's not the ten mile days that strain the tendons in your knees so much as it is the sixty mile weeks. A day off improved my knee joints tremendously. I walked about 500 miles in nine weeks with temperatures over 115 degrees F every day.
I lost twenty pounds. Half of that weight came back in two weeks after returning to Illinois. Water weight.
It was so bright in the desert that it seemed bright even with our sunglasses on. Sunglasses were not optional.
The ground heated up to 150 degrees F in the afternoon. This would cause heat sores to develop on your lower legs. Most of us also got blisters on our feet just from the hiking.
We'd go to bed at 9 PM and get up at 4 AM. One day, we worked only during the morning, because our radio battery went dead. We went back to our house by 11 AM. When were were told that we were done for the day, two of us took about two steps in the living room and then lied down and slept on the floor. Just like that, we were out. We were beat.
Every day we radioed the control room on the marine corps base to get in: "Roger Bearmat, this is NR2-Alpha requesting permission to enter Sand Hill." Sand Hill was a part of the base with an old, unused airfield, where we worked. It was flat with creosote bushes, Joshua Tree yuccas, Mojave yuccas, cholla cactuses, and sage bushes. We could see mountains all around us.
Bearmat controlled everything on the ground, and in the air, at the base. We called in our general position every hour. The day when our radio went dead, they sent a large Chinook helicopter out to find us, doing a search pattern until they saw us. Then they broke off. We had to go back to our house before we could tell them that we were off the base.
This is when unmanned drones were first being used. They would practice finding us with their drones while we worked. You would hear a slight whine from the engine and then the drone would fly right over you. Then you would never see it again.
We had satellite GPS units to get a fix on desert tortoise positions when we radio-tracked them. Every morning we tested the unit at the vehicle. But, we never wrote down the coordinates of the vehicle, to get back! I developed an uncanny ability to remember the direction and distance of the vehicle, even if we were miles away. It was like we were on the Moon and it was the Apollo lunar module.
Desert tortoises are about a foot long. They have underground burrows that can be five feet deep and are big enough to turn around in, sometimes very big. Rattlesnakes sometimes share their burrows, so we had to be careful when we looked for tortoises in the burrows and measured the depth of the burrows. We used metal mirrors to reflect the sunlight into the burrows for a look, to verify that we found the tortoise with the radio transmitter on it.
The first time that I saw a rattlesnake in a burrow, I could feel how serious the situation was. We would be working with the possibility of rattlesnakes in the burrows. We had to keep track of the location of the vehicle and maintain water discipline.
One time, I was measuring a burrow and I saw a deadly Mojave rattlesnake enter the next burrow that I was going to measure. It was a big one. It cruised in a smooth arc into the burrow, hunting in the early morning. I went over to look into the burrow just as it came cruising back out. It stopped and flicked its tongue. Mojave rattlers are slightly green. They produce a neurotoxin that can kill a person. This rattlesnake was active and unconcerned with my presence. I thought about taking a photo, but then decided to just walk away.
I learned the names of the many different kinds of lizards that we saw. Kangaroo rats made tracks in the sand.
One day, when we were working in a remote area at Joshua Tree National Park, I accidentally discovered a walking meditation. I was putting red flags with long, slender, little metal rods in the ground, every place where there was tortoise poop.
We counted 6,800 tortoise poops on the base and the park and measured how far they were from the transect line and what leg of the transect it was, and recorded how old they were, in a system of five age levels. I liked to say, later, that we spent one million dollars to show that there were more tortoises where the freshest tortoise poop was mostly at. We showed that there were the same number of tortoises on the base as the last time they were counted.
So, I'm searching for tortoise poop at Joshua Tree and flagging it when I find it, and I was thinking about a very attractive woman who was a friend of mine who did not want to be any more than friends. I thought, "I'm just going to have to let that go." It was a deeply felt realization.
Every time a new thought came into my head, I intentionally let it go. This went faster and and faster until Whoosh!, I got sucked up right into the present moment, like getting sucked into a movie or a basketball game. I felt immense joy. My coworkers were dragging, and wanted to go home and take a shower. I walked by, just beaming. They noticed. WTF. I just said that I was glad to be there.
It was like everything that I was experiencing was super charged with energy. I thought, "Who has been right here and seen what I am seeing? Nobody. We are out in the wilderness." I maintained water discipline. I flagged more tortoise poop along the transect line.
Jerry Garcia had died that day, nearby, in Rancho Mirage, CA, and people were spontaneously gathering to mark the occasion, outside, all over Southern California.
I was able to repeat the experience the next day, but it was not as intense.