The Chihuahuan Desert

Yucca in boulder,
Devil's Hall Trail

The long, early part of the Devil’s Hall Trail took us through terrain that retained many of the characteristics of the Chihuahuan Desert with its agaves and yuccas and thin desert grasses. Since I had not yet matured enough as a naturalist to be in love with the desert ecosystem, I had to concentrate to prevent my imagination from carrying me away into memories of wetter and greener places. However, I was very interested to learn the reason that the Chihuahuan Desert is a desert. Although in past ages the Guadalupe Mountains and surrounding area were a verdant forest, the climate has changed considerably, and today the mountains of Mexico have turned the land south of the Guadalupe Mountains into a desert. Mexico’s Sierra Madre and Transvolcanic Mountain Ranges impact the climate by depleting the moisture from Pacific air masses by causing them to rise and cool high above the mountain tops, where the moisture falls as rain before it ever reaches northern Mexico and western Texas. During the summer months, the North American Monsoon System delivers an abundance of rainfall to the mountains of coastal and central Mexico, but precious little of this moisture ever reaches the Chihuahuan Desert.

I still have vivid memories of the rains during my summers in the mountains of central Mexico in the late 1960s. We lived in the high country southeast of Morelia in the pine forests of the Transvolcanic Range. The rain would fall for a short time almost every afternoon during the monsoon season which the locals called the “aguas”. As the sun warmed the air after a rain, you could smell the pine needles that covered the wooded mountain slopes. The mountains were beautiful, but the native campesinos and peones who called them home lived in poverty. They scratched out a meager living growing corn on small plots and collecting pine resin which they sold for a pittance to the El Pino Company. I lived with my intrepid American companions in a different mountain village each summer during my late high school and early college years. We had little more comforts than the locals, residing in small rooms with dirt floors in buildings that were typically connected to a crumbling church or school. The group consisted of a few student workers, a civil engineer, a 4th year medical student, a nun who was a trained nurse, and our leader Father John Manchino, a former aerial gunner in the US Air Force turned Roman Catholic priest. The local people were warm and welcoming and so incredibly generous that you had to be careful not to admire anything they owned, because they would give it to you even though they could not afford to. Father John had a passion to improve the lives of these impoverished people who were sadly neglected both by their government and their church. Within a few years he had rebuilt several villages, installed water systems, a new church, a new school, and two new clinics with electricity and resident doctors. Father John was nothing like today’s stereotypical idea of a Catholic priest, and he was often perceived as an eccentric because of his intense passion for his work. When he died several years ago in my hometown of Helena, Arkansas, I recall hearing one of the townspeople comment that ‘he was just a crazy old man who lived alone on Columbia Street’. It is strange how so many of the world’s best people fade away unnoticed and unsung. I count it a great privilege to have been his friend at least for a short time. The world could use a few more eccentrics like Father John.

When I think back on my days as a mountain dweller in Mexico, I recall the day we were traveling by mule up a steep and precipitous trail toward a remote village high in the mountains. I remember pausing on the mountainside long enough to watch a massive cloud bank collide with a high mountain top and roll in slow motion into the deep canyon in front of us. After we reached the top the trail near a high waterfall, we had an even better diversion. To get an exciting view of the waterfall from its crest, our native guide held the ankles of each of us Gringos who trusted him enough to be lowered flat on our bellies to the dizzying brink of the falls. From that precarious vantage point we could watch the stream roll over the stone ledge beside us where it became airborne and soared all the way to the canyon floor below. It was a wonderful time of life when we were young and indestructible and unafraid. Father John was older and more cautious, and despite the fact that he had grown accustomed to heights during his days in the Air Force, he declined the opportunity to enjoy the view of the falls as I would have today. Sadly, I will probably never again do anything as exhilarating and exciting as the things I did during my summers in the mountains of Mexico.

Over 40 years have passed since my youthful adventures, and as I stood on the slopes of the Guadalupe Mountains looking south over the vast expanse of the Chihuahuan Desert’s harsh terrain, I realized that I had drifted back in time for moment, taking comfort in the vivid mountain images of central Mexico. But I was about to say that such picturesque mountain vistas in coastal and central Mexico are created at the expense of the lowlands to the north, where a large part of Mexico and the entire west Texas landscape from the Big Bend to the Guadalupe Mountains are subjected to harsh arid conditions. The evaporation of moisture in this environment greatly exceeds the amount of annual rainfall, consequently succulents such as the prickly pear, cholla, ocotillo, yucca, sotol, and agave dominate the Chihuahuan Desert, and they also populate the lower reaches of Guadalupe Mountains National Park. In contrast, the higher elevations of the desert, such as the Davis Mountains north of Marfa, Texas and here in the Guadalupe Mountains, form “sky islands” that receive considerably more rainfall than the adjacent desert lowlands, and they support quite different ecosystems which include an abundance of conifers and hardwood trees. The high country of Guadalupe National Park supports a variety of wildlife such as elk, mule deer, mountain lions, black bears, turkeys, golden eagles, and peregrine falcons in a forest of ponderosa pine, Douglas fir, white pine, and aspen. This ecosystem is a vestige of the life that prospered in the cooler and wetter climate that the Guadalupe Mountains enjoyed as recently as 15,000 years ago during the last ice age.

As we hiked our way up the Devil’s Hall trail deeper into the arms of the Guadalupe Mountains, the desert began to give way to the Bigtooth maples with their bright yellow and red autumn colors, and we found the Texas madrone growing in abundance. Common evergreen trees that caught our attention were the Alligator juniper with its bark that resembled the rough scales of an alligator and the occasional stately pine that grew upright and erect on the sloping canyon floor. In this transitional zone these trees were oddly mixed in with desert vegetation such as the yucca and agave. We spotted a few other desert residents including a large collared lizard (Cratophytus collaris) hanging out on the canyon wall sporting its distinctive black band around its neck. We also saw a surprisingly beautiful pitch black-colored grasshopper which exposed bright red wings as it jumped from place to place. This may have been a variety of lubber grasshopper common to Texas, but I do not recall seeing the fine yellow markings that are characteristic of this species. The lubber is practically indestructible and its bright red wings send a signal to predators that this grasshopper will be a highly toxic meal.

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