BLM Dispatch #10 - Carrizo Plain National Monument - Part 2
The Carrizo Plain is roughly fifty miles long by fifteen miles wide, framed neatly between the Temblor Range to the east and the more formidable Caliente Range to the west. There are just two main entrances to the Monument: from the north and the south, both connected by Soda Lake Road, a bumpy but reliable gravel road that runs straight through the valley.
I’ve spent many lovely nights out there under the stars, mostly during drought years, when the valley choked with dust, Soda Lake was dry, and the grasslands resembled a giant bale of hay.
But in early 2023, a series of atmospheric rivers dropped thirteen inches of rain just as I was working on an essay about the Carrizo for The Enduring Wild. When I visited that April with a botanist, I arrived to a scene that left me stunned. From the book:
The landscape was so incomprehensibly different I couldn’t help but stare in disbelief. Soda Lake Road had become a yellow brick road, and I had wandered into the Land of Oz. I couldn’t figureout where to look, as if my eyes and brain had gone haywire into a hyper state of mesmerizing distraction that left me utterly speechless. It was like taking Dorothy’s first step into the technicolor world of Munchkinland after living in sepia-toned Kansas.
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BLM Dispatch #9 - Carrizo Plain National Monument - Part 1
Last weekend, I guided a group of 20 urbanites out to the BLM-managed Carrizo Plain National Monument for another USAL Project camping trip. We were there to see wildflowers, hike my favorite trails, drive the back roads, and share some epic nightly fires under dark skies.
Except there were almost no flowers across the entire plain, outside of a few scattered lupines, lacy phacelia, and stands of bladderpod giving it a valiant effort.
And the weather! It was like a deranged toddler running rampant after crushing a pack of skittles: loud, destructive, and totally unpredictable. In three days, we received rain, hail, 25 mph wind gusts, overcast skies, and nightly temperatures that dipped into the 30’s.
Wind chill minus a thousand. Muddy shoes. Whipping tents. Campfires traded for huddles around a sputtering stove…
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