Saguaro

Before I left Florida for Utah, I bought a GoPro Hero Black 4 so that I could film the landscapes that I would soon find myself in.  My goal is to document my trips with my writing, photography, and now cinematography.  I am cautious in my approach because I do not want to appear haughty with my expeditions, and I am leery of the term traveler.  I only wish to report what I see to shed light on a particular lifestyle and to debunk any myths that close relatives and friends from home may have about what exactly I am doing.  The GoPro, then, is just another way to share my vision and to add another dimension to the story.

The camera is able to shoot in 4K, but neither my laptop nor my phone can operate with such a high resolution, so instead I shoot in 1080p, the type of image you would get on a high-definition television.  The camera has a clear case that enables you to submerge it into water.  The audio is generally poor as it picks up the wind and the camera rattling inside its case, so when I edit videos I usually overlay the film with a musical soundtrack.  I have a few accessories for the camera such as a tripod that doubles as an extension arm, a chest harness, and a head strap.  Initially I was very self-conscious of putting a camera on my head, but it is an extremely useful tool to capture my point of view of the scenery during a hike, especially when both my hands are occupied scrambling over rocks.   

Another advantage of the GoPro is that it can reach places you wouldn’t want to put your face, such as directly in front of a cactus needle.  After sleeping in the Walmart parking lot in Tucson, I drove to Saguaro National Park to hike in the Sonoran Desert and to see the largest cacti in the country.  Although Saguaro is a nine hour drive from Bryce Canyon, this is the closest I’ve ever been, and my goal to visit every US national park justified the commute.  When I told my coworkers where I was going, they thought I was a little odd——to spend so much time in a car only to see a prickly plant.  This cactus grows only in a small portion of the country, and the saguaro is the ultimate symbol of the American Southwest. My trip would be incomplete without seeing these giants.

A saguaro begins its life as a tiny black seed.  Its chances of reaching adulthood in the dry Sonoran desert are incredibly slim, but if it is lucky enough to grow under the shade of a palo verde or mesquite tree the seed is spared from the worst of the heat.  Temperatures routinely soar over one hundred degrees in the summer, which one would expect, but the desert has a complex climate that surprised me.  When I thought of that ecosystem, I imagined barren lands full of sand dunes, but the Sonoran Desert intersects the Tucson and Rincon Mountains, so the nights can be cold and higher elevations can receive snow.  Not only must the saguaros battle the intense heat, but they must also survive the winter freeze. 

If the seed survives, the saguaro continues growing at a slow rate.  By the time the cactus becomes a teenager, it can be a foot tall.  After a half decade, the saguaro can reach seven feet and then begins to sprout arms after seventy-five years.  The grandest of all saguaros that surpass the age of 150 can be fifty feet tall and weigh over 16,000 pounds.  They usually die around the age of 200.  Their waxy skin withers under the sun, and their woody ribs are exposed. 

Saguaros have a shallow root system buried three inches under the surface, but the roots extend horizontally and their lengths are equal to the cactus’s height.  The infrequency of summer rainstorms undoubtedly kill a fair share of plants, but a saguaro is able to survive with 200 gallons of water per year.  Their waxy skin and pleated shape improve water retention, while the spines provide defense against intrusive animals. 

Despite the thorny deterrents, many birds such as the Gila woodpecker and the gilded flicker carve out holes in the cactus to build their nests and to seek shelter from the summer heat and the winter cold.  Most other animals in the desert only come out at night.  Even the flowers follow this pattern.  During the spring, the white saguaro flowers blossom, but only after the sun has disappeared.  Bats, honeybees, moths, and white-tailed doves feed on the nectar and pollinate the seeds. When tomorrow comes, the flower wilts, only to reopen night after night for roughly one month.  Survival in the desert amounts to taking advantage of minuscule windows of time in which nature eases up on its usual harshness.

I entered the visitor center theater to watch a slideshow about desert life when I spotted a ten dollar bill on the floor.  I looked around to see if anybody was watching me, and I put the money in my wallet.  The slideshow quickly got repetitive with endless pictures of cacti and desert shrubs.  The images were overlaid with narration of a Tohono O’odham Native American.  The Tohono O’odham depend on the saguaros for their fruit, and they respect the desert in which they live. They treat the saguaros as sacred entities, and in many ways their shapes resemble humans, albeit with long, field-goal-post arms and no legs.  

The man speaking over the slideshow was saying that when you die you return to the earth.  If you throw trash on the ground, to his belief, you are essentially throwing trash on your dead relatives. As I composed my own photos and tracking shots through the cactus forest, I watched the ground for rattlesnakes and anything that could stab me.  When you walk in the desert, the Tohono O’odham speaker said, you must be careful:  not only for the spikes that can cut into your skin, but also because of the nourishing bodies under your feet that give life to this harsh terrain.