The Hour of Land by Terry Tempest Williams

Author:Terry Tempest Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780374712266
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

DAY NINE—PURPLE NOTEBOOK

Purple prickly pear mountain range after range grackle sheen rock roots of trees berry cries of curve billed thrashers mockingbirds mimicking bluebonnets in wind dinosaur plum footprints fossils and shells left inside limestone yellow contrast with red violet blue the veins of bat wings transparent in moonlight purple ink with stars a meteor streaking words

I have been thinking about bats, because we have not seen any here, not one. This is the price of coming to Big Bend in winter. It’s too cold, the nights belong to stars. Most of the bats are in hibernation, asleep in a cave or crease in a canyon wall. Even so, I imagine seeing any one of the twenty-two species of bats recorded here, particularly the small pipistrelle with its black mask, eyes to ears, and its reddish to light brown fur and dark wings. We know them in Utah as vesper bats, who offer high-pitched prayers at dusk. Two pennies rubbed together as a copper screech will draw them close.

In caves high in the Chisos Mountains near Emory Peak lives the endangered Mexican long-nosed bat. It is found nowhere else in the park. In the heat of the summer, this bat will swoop down to a century plant that grows for a hundred years and then blooms once in its lifetime. At dusk, the Mexican long-nosed bat drinks the precious nectar.

The Colima warbler also resides only in the Chisos after migrating seven hundred miles in April from Colima, Mexico. Birders will climb the arduous South Rim trail to get a glimpse of its white eye-ring and yellow rump in the otherwise gray bird. In 1977, an Aztec thrush was sighted in Boot Canyon, a rarity reserved for the highlands of Mexico, where the elusive songbird keeps its own counsel.

Who knows what other species come and go without notice? The trail we walked up this morning to see Balanced Rock did not reveal the mountain lion’s rosette tracks we saw coming down. We were followed. They say those who live among tigers wear masks on the backs of their heads when they walk, giving the big cats behind them their own sense of being watched.

* * *

Desert strategies are useful: In times of drought, pull your resources inward; when water is scarce, find moisture in seeds; to stay strong and supple, send a taproot down deep; run when required, hide when necessary; when hot go underground; do not fear darkness, it’s where one comes alive.

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