Of all the North American deserts, the Mojave is the hottest. In fact, the last time I checked the record book, the hottest temperature measured on our planet’s surface (not counting things like geo-thermal sites or man-made surfaces) had shifted from the blazing sands of the Libyan Sahara to Death Valley, California, which is part of the Mojave Desert.

The Mojave Preserve was established in 1994 and encompasses almost 1.6 million acres. Its terrain and life forms extend from an elevation of 800 feet (near the wonderfully named Zzyzx Springs) to the nearly 8,000-foot elevations of the Clark Mountain Range. Within the massive Preserve, annual rainfall varies from 4 to 14 inches, which allows for plant life ranging from creosote bush, cacti, and Joshua trees on up to pinyon and juniper trees and sagebrush. When the rains are good, wildflowers abound throughout the Preserve. And where flowers abound, so does life on up the chain, including insects and other invertebrates, and then those things that feast on the bugs: herps and birds, which, in turn are eaten by critters like coyotes and kit foxes.

While all of these desert denizens were of interest to us, we came to the Mojave mostly because it can be a very productive place for observing reptiles. Unfortunately, unlike previous trips my brother had made to the Preserve, luck was not especially with us on this particular foray, and we did not encounter quite as many herps as we had hoped. The photographs that accompany this two-part article show a few examples of what we observed. We also saw several whiptail and spiny lizards, but, since they are quick on their feet, they generally don’t photograph well and are not included in either Part 1 or 2.

Of our three nights at the Preserve, we spent two nights at the Hole-in-the-Wall Campground. It is worth noting that the Mojave’s Hole-in-the-Wall should not be confused with the more well-known one in Wyoming, the latter being famous as the “hide-out” for the Butch Cassidy gang of the late 1800s. In fact, it’s hard to imagine how the California Hole-in-the-Wall area could have ever harbored any Wild West outlaws for any length of time, given its lack of surface water for humans and its scarcity of forage for horses. Nowadays, however, the Park Service has provided a few modern groundwater pumps so that desert campers can have potable water if they are foolish enough to venture into the Preserve without their own. But what the Hole-in-the-Wall Campground still doesn’t have is mid-day shade, unless you count the north side of the campground outhouse, which generally is not a place where most people would want to lounge about.

So, for our third day at the Preserve we traded the panoramic scenery of the Hole-in-the-Wall Campground for the more wooded (and, therefore, shady) Mid Hills Campground. Additionally, the Mid Hills Campground is situated at 5600 feet in elevation so the night we spent there was noticeably cooler than the two we had spent at the lower campground.

Our final day at the Preserve was essentially like our first two days. However, that evening, after we had finished the evening’s road-riding, it was cool enough that we decided to stay up a while since it would be nice to have a larger, more robust campfire. Whereas gazing into a night sky full of stars tends to engender silence, staring into a campfire seems to have the opposite effect. 

After starting a fire, we decided it was time for a late dessert, so I went to my cooler and brought back a Tupperware container of Betty Crocker’s fudge brownies (baked a few days before in my toaster oven at home). We peered deeply into the flames while meditatively munching brownies and listening to the simple call of a nearby Common Poorwill. I wondered aloud how much longer there would be room on our beautiful planet for such a humble creature as the little known and under-appreciated poorwill. Matt, a Physics teacher at the University of Washington, suggested that we might very well be able to double our human population a few more times before we feel the pinch.

Now, while a person knowledgeable in physics may have unique insights into the big picture of things, there is no way two field biologists are not going to challenge the notion that we should, or could, allow our population to double even one more time, let alone several. Still staring into the campfire, I suggested that yes, we probably could accommodate many more folks on the planet, but at what cost to the other life forms? Would we be willing to trade our remaining spectacular biodiversity for an Earth merely inhabited by plants and animals that suited our needs? And what would those plants and animals be? Would they get narrowed down to just the crops and to the pollinating and soil organisms that are essential for our crops’ well-being?

As we filled our world with humans, would we have to eventually clear out as many of the other vertebrates as possible so as to make sure that there was space, food, and water for us? I could imagine that while livestock and prolific and hardy “pests” (rodents, for example) might be some of the last terrestrial vertebrates to go, ultimately, we would have to clear the last wilderness and drain the last wetland so that we could plant more crops and pump more water for our needs.

Taken even further, in time, we might begin to figure out ways of making food synthetically, and desalinating the oceans might become economically viable. Who knows, maybe new energy sources (fusion?) would allow for such things? But how sustainable would even that be? How long until a truly devastating pathogen began to work through the monoculture of humans stacked up like cordwood, figuratively speaking?

Because the three of us were intrigued by our hypothetical and free-wheeling debate (never mind that we really all shared very similar values and were in agreement about needing a planet as richly inhabited by as many non-human species as possible), it didn’t take long before we started asking other questions that were both relevant and revolutionary. Although amongst most of the scientists that I know it is taboo to “deny climate change,” there surely must be some who argue that at some level, we’re missing the boat by preoccupying ourselves with the media’s focus on “global warming.” The point being: any species that has managed to change an ENTIRE PLANET’S CLIMATE, just within the past 150 years or so, clearly has reached a critical mass of overpopulation, overconsumption, and an overproduction of waste products. 

Again we circled back and wondered if an old-fashioned, biblical-style plague ultimately would be the event that would finally thin the human herd a bit, a considerable bit. In fact, it got us to speculating that COVID “vaccine hesitancy” might have an eco-radical component to it that is actually a form of social protest, “passive resistance,” and environmental reform. In other words, eschewing “the jab” could be a conscious choice made by an ecologically-minded person to see if they couldn’t help Nature along a little bit in Nature’s inevitable mandate to maintain a biologically sustainable equilibrium – to keep humans not only within the biosphere’s carrying capacity, but to really whack us hard so that the other members of the plant and animal community could also thrive.

Alas, eventually, we all admitted to the futility of trying to predict the future or to trying to solve humankind’s myriad problems. So we let the fire burn down to embers and then killed it dead with canteen water. As I doused the last of the steaming coals, I thought about how this little fire contributed its share of carbon into the atmosphere. I also considered how some day, water might be the most precious substance on earth, and here I was pouring it onto a fire that was unnecessary from the start. I once again had that sinking feeling – there are no solutions, only increasingly more problems.

As I walked toward my cot, I shone my headlamp on the ground before me, taking care not to trip on a rock or step on a rattler coiled and waiting to ambush a careless ground squirrel. About twenty paces from my cot, I noticed a large ant-hill that I hadn’t noted earlier when picking a suitable spot for my slumber. I was surprised to see that the ants were still active since it seems like most ants retreat into their mounds come nightfall. I stepped around the ant-hill and continued on and soon was supine in my sleeping bag and looking up at the stars. The last thought that ran through my mind before drifting off to sleep was: Who will be the last to inherit the earth, ant or human? And what kind of world will be theirs?