POTM...*: Islands in the Sky

(*Photo of the Month)

The Bible says that when Jesus Christ returns, those who believe or have believed will rise from the earth to ‘meet him in the air’ (1 Thessalonians 4:16-18). Frankly, I hope I get the chance to meet Jesus on top of one of these.

They’re called sky islands – small mountain ranges, or sometimes even singular mountains, that rise up out of the high, flat deserts of southwestern New Mexico, west Texas and southern Arizona. We were blessed to work with a wonderful church in Las Cruces, New Mexico earlier this year and last, and were introduced to them at that time. From any open promontory around the city, sky islands could be seen in nearly every direction; notice numerous of them in the distance in the photo above. (Click the photo and it will enlarge. Black Mountain is the one centered.) And so, hiking in our free time became a curious passion, and we enjoyed many excursions to their lofty, slightly cooler trail systems. Even in such an arid, desert environment, many of them had springs flowing all year at high elevation; the water was always a surprising delight to find, surrounded by an oasis of green and quickly disappearing into the sandy, granitic soil. We found ourselves musing upon the historical and natural drama that must have taken place at that spot over the years.

Florida Mountains, from Las Cruces, 60 miles distant

One of the most curious things about desert sky islands is that their upper habitat differs so markedly from their base that it can host plants or creatures typically found hundreds and hundreds of miles further north. Ascend some of them, and one can move from creosote and mesquite scrubland to grassland to pine forest and finally to conifer/aspen woodland all within a three-mile trek or less. Additionally, some sky islands can even have species completely unique to that range, maybe even found nowhere else on earth, just as happened in places like Australia, Madagascar and New Zealand, or other smaller isolated habitats like Hawai’i and the Galápagos. It’s what biologists call endemism or speciation. In this way, sky islands may more accurately be referred to as habitat islands.

Potrillo Mountains

Some are volcanic in origin, others the eroded remnant of earlier and vaster ranges. Some have produced minerals by ancient or modern mining efforts, and others have been void of the same. Some were used as hideaways for native tribes seeking refuge or hideouts for desperados escaping capture, others have hardly had foot stepped on them in their history. Or at least not human foot. One just northwest of Las Cruces contains one of the largest discoveries of in situ prehistoric animal tracks in the world, a place called Prehistoric Trackways National Monument, in process itself of being incorporated into the newly established Organ Mountains -Desert Peaks National Monument.

Here’s an effect I think is quite cool, though, and I remember first seeing it while traveling Interstate 80 in Utah between San Francisco and Chicago. If you’re hiking or driving in the flat desert, and your weather and perspective are such that heat mirages appear between you and the sky island, the range seems to float above ground as in some Tolkien fantasy.

Over our time serving the Las Cruces church, I had occasion to write several blogposts on experiences hiking in sky island ranges, among them June 14 2014 and March 27 2015; if you’d like, click on the bolded dates to take you to a couple of them. (In case you’ve forgotten or never knew, everything bolded in these paragraphs and appearing in blue font is a link to another place of possible interest.) The photo to the right is from the top of the sky island nearest Las Cruces, Picacho Peak, just west of town; in the photo, the range in the distance is the Organ Mountains, lovely, and the city of Las Cruces lies in the Rio Grande Valley between.

~~ RGM, November 5, 2015

POTM...*: Meet the Organs

(*Photo of the Month)

OK, I’d like to introduce you to something most of you are not likely to have seen before, the rugged Organ Mountains just east of Las Cruces, New Mexico. (Let me know if you’ve seen them!) Gail and I have been coming down here for several days each month to work with a church of fantastic people, and a collateral blessing has been our opportunity to gaze upon this vista many times each day. In fact, I’ve come to consider them one of the top mountain views I’ve seen in the United States, right up there in my estimation with Colorado’s Maroon Bells, Wyoming’s Tetons, and Washington’s North Cascades. I think the reason I like them so much is that they always look different; the varying crag or cloud shadows, light angles, cloud cover, and particular vegetation catching the sun assure that they never look the same five minutes from the time before. It’s almost kaleidoscopic. We took this particular photo one day our last time here on our way to an evening hike.

This is a very interesting part of the country, barely forty miles from the Mexico border. Throughout southern New Mexico and elsewhere, small mountain ranges rise up in profusion out of the vast flatlands of the Chihuahuan Desert, the third largest desert in the Western Hemisphere, shared with Arizona, Texas and Mexico. The small ranges are called ‘sky islands,’ a very fitting description, towering over the lowlands around them, possessing much cooler temps, higher precip, and extremely different flora and fauna than that found on the desert floor a very short distance away. The Organs themselves are a range less than ten miles long from north to south, and perhaps three wide east to west, with a maximum elevation of only about 9000 feet; but standing at any high point in Las Cruces, which is itself about 3900 feet above sea level, one can scan a 360-degree panorama and see numerous sky island ranges like them at varying distances – the Dona Anas, Robledos and Potrillos among them. The name is given to this range for its supposed likeness to organ pipes, a stretch to be sure but a classy thought!

So far in the Organs themselves, we’ve been able to hike the Dripping Springs, Aguirre Springs and Soledad Canyon areas, seeing cool plants and animals endemic to these kinds of habitats. (Aguirre Springs is where we snapped the photo of that Mexican Screech Owl that was my photo of the month back in June.) And since it’s all a new habitat to us, we find ourselves enjoying it immensely. Additionally, and also new to us, the extended area contains thousands of acres of pecan trees and chili fields nestled along the Rio Grande Valley.

Finally, and interestingly, since beginning to come down this way early in the year, the Organs and several surrounding but separated sky island areas have been incorporated into a brand new national monument, the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument, designated May 21, 2014. This always seems a controversial thing locally as the government assumes land, but it truly is a unique and lovely area worthy of some kind of recognition.

So we gaze upon their beauty often. You should have heard the people coming into church last Sunday morning, “Did you see them today on the way here?”

Shout for joy to God, all the earth! Sing the glory of his name! Say to God, “How awesome are your works!” (Psalm 66:1-3)

Shout for joy, you heavens! Rejoice, you earth! Burst into song, you mountains! For the Lord comforts his people, and will have compassion on his afflicted ones. (Isaiah 49:13)

~~RGM, September 8, 2014