When I visited this park with my kids, we went to the east unit. Both units are in the greater Tucson area, but both are a decent drive away from the center of town in different directions. So, I was glad to have a chance to see the other side. Although the visitor center is a bit nicer in the west, the east unit has a scenic cactus forest drive where you can easily get out and take a closer look. Both have plenty of saguaro (suh-Wah-ro) to see.
Even after planning, I still check with the rangers for suggestions on good hikes and photo ops. I originally planned to hike McKittrick Canyon, but the ranger suggested the trail at Frijoles Ranch instead, as its shorter and quite similar this time of year. The trail passes two different springs, including the mountainside one pictured.
Guadalupe is large, mountainous and mostly dry, which makes it both difficult to explore and also more barren than many other parks. But that’s what makes the occasional oasis above especially sweet.
While not as long as Mammoth Cave, Carlsbad is larger in terms of volume, and both are World Heritage Sites. The ceilings are often over a hundred feet high, and the Big Room spans over 8 acres, with a mile-long loop to see it. Even after descending 750 feet down the natural entrance, there are still deeper “bottomless” pits below. I was fairly sure I heard faint drumbeats coming up from the darkness, so I asked the rangers. They explained that there were only a few goblins, and that they try to catch them as they’re considered “invasive species”. I finished the hike as quickly as possible and took the elevator up.
While not quite as large as the mammoth site in South Dakota, this is the largest fossil nursery of mammoths in North America. Unearthed by creek erosion, the first bone brought to nearby Baylor University confirmed the mammoth find. There’s now an active dig site enclosed inside a lab building. The rangers answer questions outside, due to Covid. The city of Waco extracts a small management fee, despite this also being a NPS unit.
The ranger explained that there’s some confusion over the term used to describe the mammoths, “Columbian”. First, it’s not Colombian, meaning from the South American country of Colombia. Second, it’s not “pre-Columbian” which is used by anthropologists to describe Native American civilizations in the Americas before the arrival of Columbus. It’s Columbian, meaning found in the Americans, either before or after Columbus visited. It’s not known exactly when the last mammoth was extinguished by humans, but we do know that humans will drive a massive wave of species to extinction with our carbon pollution, unless we confront the crisis now.
Flooding has always been an issue here. French traders established the first trading post near here in 1686, buying pelts from the Quapaw and shipping them down the Mississippi. They build a fort, which is abandoned due to flooding. Then they build another nearby and again move due to flood. After the French and Indian War, the Spanish take over the fur trade and reestablish a fort on the original location. The French get it back and then sell the whole “Louisiana” territory to the US. The post is briefly an important territorial capital, but the Union shells the confederates here during the Civil War destroying much of the town. And what’s left over becomes a backwater as the Arkansas River shifts away in 1912 and the remnants slowly erode into the bayous.
The photo shows the Little Post Bayou in the foreground and the Arkansas River in the background. With climate change increasing flooding broadly, the River has now risen again, reconnecting with the Post. Most of the history is now underwater, including French, Spanish, British, Native American and Civil War battlegrounds. But some foundations remain, along with subtle signs of confederate trenches in the woods. The post is a wonderful place to view wildlife, with many geese, a few deer, a red headed woodpecker, alligators, and a snowy egret on a tiny island in a little lake. The ranger, who loves wildlife, repeatedly assured me that the alligators here were adorable loving creatures and perfectly safe for people. I kept my distance from the large one I spotted.
The bison surprised me as I walked along the creek. Fortunately, there’s a barbed wire fence between us, as they can be dangerous. Unfortunately, the ranger later told me that the bison can easily go over or through the fence. The building on the hill is a one-room schoolhouse.
That there is a preserved tallgrass prairie preserve here at all is a combination of luck and innovation. The Flint Hills here make it substandard farmland in Kansas, so it was purchased by a cattleman who wanted a last stop to fatten up cattle on the local grasses before going to market. He made good money and built a big house. When big agribusiness was buying up all the land, this property had too much house and too little grazing to be profitable enough to attract decent bids. So, the Nature Conservancy takes a look, sees that the land still has the original tallgrass growing here and decides to buy the land for that, despite not buying land with houses by their previous practice. Then, the park service does a deal with them to manage the buildings for visitors, jointly protect the land and also bring back bison. The result is a lovely, quiet, natural place to visit with stone walls, a wooded hill, flowering trees, authentic prairie, historic buildings, a creek, and the occasional one ton American bison.
I’ve been wondering about how the US might atone for the Native American removal policies, and when I see all the giant corporate agribusiness land owned by the 1% around here, I wonder if maybe a tiny portion of it might be given over to a large tallgrass prairie bison ranch managed by the descendants of the Native Americans who owned the land and had it stolen. I’ve eaten commercially raised bison, and it’s at least as good as regular steak. What’s more, recreating the original ecosystem also would support additional species, like the Prairie Chicken that used to live here abundantly. While it might appear to be a net economic loss in terms of land use, adding more product diversity is good for the economy overall. Maybe throwing in some housing would be fair too.
I’m obviously not much of a photographer, but I like this one. The tallest dunes here are over 700 feet, but they’re dwarfed by the surrounding mountains. Since I camped at Piñon Flats in the park, I was able to take this just as the sun came over the mountains, which added shadows for contrast. I hiked into the dunes before dawn and along the creek, but it’s not easy to take an interesting picture of so much brown sand, even in such a beautiful, surreal landscape in the moonlight. The dunes and the neighboring preserve are basically all wilderness, easily hiked into, and our footprints quickly disappear.
Whenever I wander into any wilderness, I always wonder about what we value. I have both a BS & MBA in business, and I worked in HQ at a Fortune 100 financial firm for a couple decades. And it seems to me that capitalism is terrible at valuation. One problem is that the first business to claim a resource is often just the first idea that comes along. There may be a better and more profitable use for a resource, but the quickest way to make money is typically the one that’s chosen. Another problem is that business people aren’t very innovative. If they see one business is successful in an area, then they will often just copy that idea. Economically, we’re far better off with a diverse set of competitive products and services than with a small number, because then we’re more resilient to market changes. But short term thinking dominates, which leads to over-investment in a few businesses, rather than a broad, diverse range of businesses.
It doesn’t take any special training to see this. Drive through most towns and see the same chain restaurants everywhere. Look at how similar most vehicles are or how all the fields in an area grow the exact same crop or raise the same cattle. Business is mainly herd behavior, and few want to risk money to develop a completely new business. Capitalists need tax incentives to change. Traditional car companies killed the electric car, then ignored Tesla, and now are demanding that the government build a charging network for them to compete. Who knew America’s largest and oldest corporations were such whiny cowards who need taxpayer handouts before they will adapt?
Why do I think about valuation in the wilderness? Because if the first guy to find this place had owned a cement company, he would have started carting off these dunes to make concrete. And then other concrete material suppliers would have copied him, lowering profits to nearly zero. And the wilderness would have been gone before anyone bothered to think whether there were any other better uses. The same is true of forests, wetlands, prairies, rivers, valleys, mountains and oceans. Capitalism rewards the first, fastest, cheapest exploiter for destroying wilderness, and penalizes long term thinking. Because time is money.
I don’t always plan my schedule well enough. I made it to this park about 30 minutes before closing, but just after they closed the volcano road to the top, which is why I took this photo from near the visitor center. Sometimes parks will let you drive out before sunset on your own after the visitor center closes, but apparently the volcano road is narrow and restricted to hikers for the last couple hours of daylight. I should have checked the hours more carefully, and I should have planned an extra day or two on this leg of my trip. I actually had to postpone two planned stops until next time in order to get back on track. I think volcanoes remind me of devastation more than renewal, so I tend to de-prioritize them when planning. Oh well, sometimes we need to admit our mistakes, so we can do better in the future, if we still have time. There’s a broader lesson in that.
Like much of the west, wildfires have burned large areas in and near the preserve. I didn’t see any wildlife, so we’re obviously failing at the “preserve”. As we irreparably damage the environment with climate pollution, the snowpack diminishes and living things die. Many people enjoy seeing national parks that focus on geologic wonders, culture and historic sites. But it is the wildlife that draws me most. Even besides the massive carbon burning that dooms most life on earth, we destroy habitats and hunt species to extinction.
As I drive across the country, I pass through forests I know will burn, I cross rivers and valleys that have been sucked dry, and I know that no matter how unseasonably hot it is, it will only get worse for the rest of my life. Once maybe we could have pretended that we wanted to live in harmony with nature, but now that the climate crisis is upon us and we’re still not doing anything about it, we should at least be honest enough to admit what we’ve done wrong and that collectively we’re too short-sighted, corrupt, selfish, ignorant and stupid to do anything about it in time. What makes me most sad is to listen to people who claim to care about nature, while they drive around in a big rig that is contributing to mass extinctions.
The caves were closed by Covid, but I enjoyed the hike and wildlife. There’s a private site nearby that apparently is still conducting “ice cave” tours. I’m happy to leave the bats alone underground and not risk introducing fungus or disease. I suppose it’s ironic to have the cave closed here when Covid likely originated from a bat cave in China. But the larger problem is that climate change is spreading more diseases globally, affecting both us and other species, so we need to be more responsible.
I should add that beyond the borders of the monument, there are both wilderness and conservation areas protected in El Malpais, meaning badlands.
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