Architext: Life in Chiricahua

By the mesquite bushes in the blazing sun we set up our makeshift mesh blockades. When a whiptail scurried like lightning on sand, the group would get excited and holler guiding the lizard into the barricade away from their burrows. Cole would dive for the whiptail lizard against the fences setting off a puff of sand. wiping off the sand from the clothes with whiptail lizard in hand, at 60 years old, his youthful exuberance belied his age. Back in new york, he would breed his lizards and write papers with compelling titles like “Morphological Variation in a Unisexual Whiptail Lizard (Aspidoscelis exsanguis) and One of Its Bisexual Parental Species”. Unusual lizard colonies of 3000 specimens without a single male to be found was confounding. It was found after capture, the female lizards in isolation could somehow reproduce themselves. Cole spent his life as a herpetologist showing how whiptails are parthenogenic - cloning without sexual reproduction. In harsh desert environments where species survival depended on mating, parthogenesis provided a way to overcome the hardships in mating.

Midway through my 2 year stint in evolutionary biology research, I went to the american museum of natural history’s southwest research station in Arizona for vacation and to volunteer doing field work. Located in the Chiricahua Mountains of southeastern Arizona, the Station is situated in the heart of the Madrean Sky Island Archipelago, which stretches from the tropical Sierra Madre Occidental up to the Rocky Mountains. The habitats around southwest research station included an elevational gradient from low desert to alpine meadows, rich riparian areas, and a unique blend of Chihuahuan and Sonoran Desert species.

At night I would walk up the hill to my tent, careful not to step on a rattlesnake. By day I would arrange to help biologists. Scientists and students from around the world would come to collect field specimens, make observations of the natural world, and then go back to their research institutions. We would gather in the cafeteria and eat meals together. I befriended the Brazilians. Like their soccer idols, my Brazilian friends had 1 word nicknames Jakare (crocodile) and bisteca (beefsteak). I taught them swears and they taught me ‘vai tomar no cu’ (go take it up the ass) and various obscene corinthian soccer chants ‘poha caralho torsida…’ at night we would take guitar and salt shakers and play music in the starlit canyons.

I can’t remember what our transgression was, but I was assigned with the Brazilians to clean the grease trap of the research station. We had to shovel the gray fat oil grease sludge waste from the kitchen plumbing to make sure it wasn’t clogged. The unbelieveable stench of rotting food deposits at the bottom of the grease trap was punctuated by our English and Portuguese curses.

The head of the station, and the initiator of our grease trap cleaning duty was a native new yorker named Wade. His interest was the horned lizard. They look like clowns with frills and spots. On the desert floor they’re completely camouflaged. I remember ward telling ethnographic stories like, “You know if they have a headache, in oaxaca, they take a horned lizard and put it on top of their head. If you have a molar that’s gone bad in your jaw, and it’s really hurting, you get a horned lizard. You rub it on your cheek and it makes the pain go away. I think the oaxacans believe that since horned lizrds inflate defensively sometime, they can pull out the bad spirits or bad airs that cause the headaches.” Wade spent 30 years trying to understand mating and nesting behaviors of horned lizards. Spending an afternoon catching one in the blazing hot desert with wade was enough for me.

It’s hard to imagine surviving in the desert. But for Geronimo and his tribe of 144 Apaches, in 1884 they did just that by eluding capture by a group of 5,000 US military and 500 indian auxiliaries for 5 months in this area. They broke out of the San Carlos Reservation which they were forced to live in—the barren wasteland in east-central Arizona, described as “Hell’s Forty Acres.” Deprived of traditional tribal rights, short on rations and homesick, the apaches led by geronimo revolted. For decades, Geronimo sharpened his survival skills due to the traumatic event that shaped his life. In 1858, Geronimo came back to his camp to find his wife, mother, and 3 children killed by mexicans. He would spend the majority of his life raiding and marauding northern mexico seeking vengeance. Then in ever-increasing numbers, Geronimo fought against both Mexicans and white settlers as they began to colonize much of the Apache homelands. In 1884 Geronimo and and his tribe walked 1,645 miles (sometimes over 70 miles a day) over five months to evade capture. They chased turkeys into the plains till the turkeys were exhausted then seized them. They smoked wild tobacoo cigarettes rolled in oak leaves. They made quivers for their arrows with the skin of mountain lions hunted by arrows. They hunted buffalo on horseback, using their hides to make teepees. They would crawl long distances with a bush in front of them to hunt deer. They were a proud people deeply in tune with the land who were captured and then imprisoned on reservations. In these canyons their spirits roamed.

Compared to the apaches, field biologists were quite different in their relationship with the land. They extracted information from the desert in a mechanical way. At night, when the desert came alive. I remember hiking out in the darkness to see and record how the bats flutter and pollinate agave plant flowers. For my own entomological specimens to take back to the museum, I set up white sheets with UV light cast upon it which funneled into a jar of ethyl alcohol. The insects would fly to the light slide down the sheets into the jars of alcohol to preserve their DNA for analysis. In heavy rains the spade foot toads would dig out of their burrows. they mate in these conditions, and then burrow back in the soil waiting for the next rain. Since they only mate 1-3 times a year, the toad scientists became very excited when the rain finally came to the desert. I remember driving out in the darkness in the rain with a research group from bristol, england. To find the toads, all you had to do was listen. Male frogs float atop the water and call for their mates. Sexually active males will begin calling once they reach the breeding site, attracting the females towards the pond. The sound is a very distinct explosive grunt or long drawn-out languishing moans. A single call from a male can be heard several kilometers away but not all males will call during breeding but wait for a female to appear and grasp on to them. The process of grabbing onto a potential mate just anterior of the hind limbs is called amplexus. Females choose where the eggs will be deposited while swimming with the chosen male holding onto them. Scientists poached these amorous toads caught in the act for their research.

Back in the labs, us biologists would work to flesh out evolutionary Darwinian origin stories. We would sequence DNA, look at animal morphology, analyze mating behaviours, etc… to piece together how all life was related. For the apache, their origin story was mythic yet no less valid. their stories coded man’s relationship to their world. The world was once covered in darkness. The beasts comprised of dragons, bears, snakes, lions, etc.. warred with the birds led by an eagle. Man was allied to the eagle, but could never prosper under the beasts as the beasts would destroy all man’s offspring. Then one day a woman hid her boy in a cave to evade capture by the beasts. This child, taught by the eagle how to use the bow and arrow, had the courage to confront the offspring-eating dragon. In a duel, the boy bravely shot his arrow through the scales of the dragon piercing its heart, freeing the land for the humans. The boy’s name was apache. And from him descended the proud tribes. The apache lived in equilibrium with the land, taking nothing more or less than they needed.