When I pulled into Kingman, Arizona I knew that this would be my last chance to fill the gas tank with relatively cheap gas. It was only a Monday, a week before Memorial Day, but the large gas station was still packed with cars, trucks, and RVs. Whatever pinch the escalating price of fuel was putting on our economy, you sure wouldn’t know it by the number of us on the road.

I left the station and merged back onto I-40, westbound, and figured that I would stop once more in Needles to top off the tank prior to entering the vast Mojave Desert east of Barstow. The plan was to rendezvous with my brother (Jamie) and two old friends from my Yuma days (Lin and Mark) at camp around 6 PM. It would be cooling off about then and unloading vehicles and setting up camp wouldn’t be too much of a sweat-fest.

It didn’t take long to get to Needles but you would have thought I had driven clear into the Empty Quarter of the Arabian Desert, except that gas wasn’t as inexpensive as it would be in “the Kingdom.” Instead, it was about two bucks above the Kingman prices. I had expected this but was still alarmed when a quarter of a tank sucked $30 from my wallet. I went into the convenience store and bought a bag of ice to top off my cooler as well. Even the ice was pricy, but then again, you don’t get very far without water, in any of its forms, in this kind of harsh landscape.

As I pulled out from the sleepy little station a grizzled old guy was standing on the corner shouting into the hot, dry wind. My window was still down and I could hear his rant about the impending apocalypse. Since his worldly goods didn’t appear to include a TV, radio, or smartphone, I wondered how much more troubled he would be if he could hear any one of our daily newscasts. In at least that regard, he was probably better off than many of us….

I made it to camp at 6:15 PM where Jamie had chosen his campsite and was unpacking his gear. Mark and Lin were parked not too far away but were out of sight due to the pinyon, juniper, and assorted species of desert scrub vegetation between the two camps. I picked a campsite that was equidistant from the two other vehicles (our 3 different trucks being the only vehicles for miles) and that also had a reasonable amount of shade offered by the P-J trees. How, you ask, does one find shade in the Mojave? Well, in the area in which we were visiting, there are several mountain ranges and even a few hills that are well over 5000 feet in elevation and so the north slopes are significantly less xeric than most of the surrounding countryside and thus support some trees.

By the time Jamie and I had set up our camps, Lin and Mark had already started a small campfire with wood they had brought from Yuma. They had also prepared a Dutch Oven with a stew they had made using wild hog meat they had recently harvested at a friend’s place south of San Antonio, Texas. They invited us to dine with them and said the Dutch would probably be ready just about twilight, or, in another 30 minutes. Jamie had some appetizers (a Greek dish, something wrapped in grape leaves), and, feeling somewhat like a moocher, I suggested that for dessert we could roast marshmallows that I had brought and eat them with Graham crackers and chocolate syrup I had figured would keep better than Hershey bars.

After eating, we kicked back in our cloth chairs and enjoyed the fire, the emerging stars, a few errant bats, and the all-enveloping silence of the desert. In the past, Jamie, Lin, and I had all camped together in Baja, Mexico so those two knew each other. Mark and Jamie, however, had never met until now but, as it turned out, they had a few mutual friends as they had both worked field biology jobs in northern California and Oregon, including both having done Northern Spotted Owl surveys. So, the small world theory turned up once again, not that you would want to test that theory by walking out into the unforgiving Mojave thinking you might just run into an old friend carrying some ice-cold water just for you.

The next morning everyone awoke early and we gathered for coffee and/or breakfast in Lin and Mark’s camp. It had been a peaceful night except that everyone but me had apparently had their slumbers disturbed by the occasional distant whistle of the Union Pacific rail trains and also by the hoots of a Great-horned Owl that had perched on a snag not far from where we all were camped. I guess I must have been really tired as I had uncharacteristically slept without waking the whole night through, and never heard the owl or the train whistles.

After coffee, I took a stroll around the area and counted birds: both Mourning and White-winged doves, Common Raven, Black-throated Sparrow, Juniper Titmouse, House Finch, Woodhouse’s Scrub-jay, Ash-throated Flycatcher, and an unidentified flycatcher species (it had looked like an Eastern Phoebe, but since they are unlikely this far west I chalked it up as mystery bird). When I got back to camp, the others had seen some of the same species but then a few I hadn’t seen including a Lazuli Bunting, Hooded Oriole, and a Western Tanager.

Over the course of the 4 full days and nights that we would spend in that very beautiful camp and the surrounding environs, we would add several other species to our lists including Scott’s Oriole, Say’s Phoebe, Rock Wren, Lesser Goldfinch, Brown-headed Cowbird, Phainopepla, Loggerhead Shrike, Horned Lark, Northern Mockingbird, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, Warbling Vireo, Cassin’s Kingbird, Western Wood Pewee, unspecified female hummingbirds, a species of swift, Red-tailed Hawk, American Kestrel, and of course, plenty of Turkey Vultures. So much for the so-called “lifeless desert.”

Not to be out-done, we also had an impressive display of reptiles in and around camp, as well as many reptile species were seen just off the roads as we toured the Mojave and took in such sites as the Kelso Dunes; the Joshua Tree forest; the section of the Preserve that included cinder cones, lava flows, and a lava tube; and the rock formations in the Hole-in-the-Wall area. Among the reptiles we saw were: Western Patch-nosed Snake, Western Whiptail, Desert Horned-lizard, Desert Spiny Lizard, Common Side-blotched Lizard, Mojave Fringed-toed Lizard, Zebra-tailed Lizard, Long-nosed Leopard Lizard, Common Chuckwalla, and a Desert Iguana.

When we were not simply enumerating species, we watched them engage in the behaviors of their own kind. There were the camp fence lizards, blue-bellies as some call them, so nick-named because of the deep blue scales on their throats and the sides of their bellies. At one point when I joined the crew at a mid-day shady spot, they were all watching two large, black-hued fence lizards (coloration can vary on many species of reptiles depending on their background). Before long one of the lizards began the “push-ups” motion that is so typical of the species and I suggested it was courtship behavior by the male to attract the nearby female. Jamie, who is an actual professional herpetologist, corrected me and said that since both specimens sported blue throats - that meant that they were both males. So, it was actually a territorial behavior between rivals and not a courtship display.

Such is the joy of the natural world; one is always learning. And in the hot season of the Mojave, there is plenty of time when the only real choice for a biologist is to sit in the shade and watch the animals as they live their lives and take note of their behaviors. I hasten to add though, that one doesn’t live by nature study alone. No, it takes other activities to enrich our lives and so we spent a fair amount of heat-of-the-day moments playing cribbage and/or reading books. And when it comes to the latter, the subject matter was diverse with topics ranging from a true story of Antarctic exploration, to a history of early American ornithologists, to Homer’s Iliad; never mind the many field guides we brought and used for identifications as well as to read for pleasure.

Eventually though, it was time for the four of us to return to Yuma, Willow Creek, and Lakeside. I retraced my Monday’s I-40 route since it was the most expedient way back and, as much as I loved the trip, I was ready for a shower and the comforts of home. About the time I got near Kingman I flipped off the CD player and tuned into the FM radio. At first, it was the same stories from when I had driven out: global inflation, the proxy war in Ukraine, the baby formula shortage, but at some point, when the news anchor repeated the top story of the day, it was about issues pertaining to the aftermath of the Uvalde mass shooting in an Elementary School. Ugh, it had happened again. I listened until I couldn’t take anymore and then opted to drive a very long way in silence.

When I got to Pinetop late Friday afternoon, the town was just starting to get busy with Memorial Day visitors. I didn’t want to be back on the crowded roads during the holiday weekend so I decided to make a stop at the grocery store to stock up on a few necessities. While standing in line at one of the self-checkout stations a guy, maybe a bit older than me, was talking loudly to himself and it was easy for those of us around him to hear his expletive-filled tirade about the government and the CIA and various random objects of his ire. I turned around to tell him to “cool it,” but then saw his bugged eyes and the spittle on his lower lip and figured maybe, just maybe, he was a shell-shocked Vet who was best left to his own private demons.

My life has been very easy. As a retired biologist, I chase lizards and birds around for fun. I’ve just come from America’s hottest and most “barren” desert. Throughout human history, many a wise person has spent time in the world’s deserts seeking inspiration and understanding. I could certainly do a better job at trying to follow in such footsteps, even if those footsteps were just ephemeral tracks left in endlessly shifting sands.