During its annual wildflower eruption, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in Southern California draws a family who has a few things to learn about the basics of camping, cactuses and ghost flowers. At Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, blooming wildflowers transform the desert landscape in late winter and early spring. Credit... Beth Coller for The New York Times [As of March 16, the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park visitor center is temporarily closed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The park will remain open. Check the website for further updates. ] We sustained our first cactus injury right after we got out of the car. My 10-year-old daughter was skipping around the garden of indigenous plants at the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park Visitor Center in Southern California and then, a minute later, “MOMMMMY!
” from somewhere behind a catclaw acacia. It was not a promising beginning. We had come to Anza-Borrego to 1) see the desert as it explodes into the colorful bloom for which the park is famous, and 2) camp. Like, outside.
In a tent. The first time in my life I had pitched a tent was the night before — in my living room, holding a glass of wine while my husband did most of the work. I love hiking and picnics and walking in the woods as much as the next city-dweller, but I don’t care for dirt, insects or proximity to animals that make noise. But there is still time for my children to avoid the same fate and qualify for the “from a young age” label.
As in: They have been comfortable sleeping under the stars from a young age. Or: They’ve known how to manage a campfire from a young age. At 8 and 10, the window is still open — but closing. And it seemed like there could be no gentler entry to the world of camping than springtime in the desert, among meadows of wildflowers.
CALIFORNIA 79 Hellhole Canyon S22 Borrego Springs Grapevine Canyon NEVADA 78 San Francisco Yaqui Well Plum Canyon Anza-Borrego Desert State Park CALIFORNIA Los Angeles S2 San Diego 10 miles By The New York Times A park of almost 1,000 square miles, which is empty even when it’s “crowded,” seems like one of the last good places to spend a few days in the midst of coronavirus fears. In fact, as travel plans slow to a near halt around the country and around the world, camping seems more and more attractive, even to the camping-averse. So we borrowed a tent from our neighbors and sleeping bags from our other neighbors, left our home in Los Angeles, and headed 150 miles southeast, to the largest state park in the United States. But just because we were ready doesn’t mean the desert was.
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“Anza-Borrego is known for its stunning wildflower blooms, but it’s not consistent,” said Paul Faulstich, a professor of environmental analysis for Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif. During the very wet last year, California had what is called a super bloom — several, in fact. The term is not a scientific designation. As its name would suggest, a super bloom is just a really big bloom — hundreds of thousands of flowers bursting open across massive swaths of landscape, blanketing desert valleys, Malibu hillsides, highway medians.
There were flowers that sound like Harry Potter creatures — bladder pod, brittlebush, lupine — on the coast, and gifts from the occult — desert star, ghost flowers, phacelia — farther inland. Southern California, if you missed the pictures, was awash in color. And Anza-Borrego was the superest of the super blooms last year. But with great blooms, come great crowds.
And great responsibility. “It’s one of the things that comes along with spectacular events: We love them to death,” Professor Faulstich had told me before our trip. “It’s the wildflower paradox: People are so eager to experience the bloom that they trample the flowers and destroy the ecology. It’s a very troubling paradox.
So what do you do? People should educate themselves. Don’t just visit and snap selfies. Engage, learn about the social and ecological communities.
We need to love this environment in order to protect it. ” This year is not expected to be a super bloom year. And on our trip in February, the desert was predictably dusty and muted, but the flowers were everywhere — less of a carpet, more a series of throw rugs. There were the sharp red spiky ones (chuparosas) and the tiny snowflake-looking ones (rock daisies), the stunning lavender ones (wild heliotrope) and the optimistic yellow ones (checker fiddlenecks).
And the bloom had barely begun. They will be even more spectacular in the weeks ahead — the blooms typically peak in March (although experts are quick to point out that climate change precludes the idea of typical anything). Not going in a super bloom year means less traffic and fewer people. It means the gawkers who piled into Anza-Borrego last year and trampled the flowers, shot selfies and turned the whole place into a traffic jam won’t be coming back.
My son, Finn, had the same thought. “Mama, I think it’s better to come to the desert when you can still see the flowers, but there aren’t a lot of people,” he said. But first we had a cactus injury to tend to. When you drive into Anza-Borrego, you wind up and over a mountain, then drop into a giant empty basin the scope and size of which tests superlatives: a thousand square miles that looks like the bottom of the ocean — and in fact was (about 50 million years ago).
Anza-Borrego, and the town of Borrego Springs lodged right in the middle of it, would be our oracle, our gateway to a profound understanding of the natural world. In hindsight, the cactus garden at the park’s visitor center isn’t the ideal place for children to run around. Before my husband and I even stepped foot inside, we heard the unmistakable wail of our daughter, Frankie. She ran over, showed me the tip of her finger covered in delicate silky threads, and bravely began pulling them out.
Then she wanted me to meet her attacker. “It was that one,” she said, pointing accusingly at one of the cactuses minding its own business in the garden. “The one that looks shaved. ” It was a collection of innocent-looking green earlobes: the short, squat, “who me?
” beavertail cactus. We were there to meet with Sally Theriault, a state park interpreter. (Her title confused me, too, until she later explained that she “interprets nature for people who visit Anza-Borrego. ”) “A few weeks ago, we had a hiker who fell into a beavertail cactus.
Her whole side body was covered in spines,” Ms. Theriault told us. “I gave her a bottle of Elmer’s Glue and a Popsicle stick. She covered her skin in the glue, and once it was dry, she could peel the spines right off.
” Once the cactus trauma abated, we joined Ms. Theriault and a dozen visitors at a place called Yaqui Well for a flat, gentle hike — the kind that wraps around small, sloping hills, abuts a shallow canyon, and rewards its guests with an otherworldly view of the desert at the finale. But before we begin our hike, Ms. Theriault reminded us of a few ground rules.
“Nothing comes into the park, nothing goes out,” she said. “And no ground fires. ” Finn is someone you can count on to be contrarian, and true to form, asked, “What if you start a campfire in a fire pit but you leave ashes behind? ” Ms.
Theriault was ready for him: “You have to take your ashes with you. And you cannot leave any firewood. Even a piece of wood will bring in different microorganisms, which could be damaging. ” Our group ranged in age from 5 to more than 70 years old — a thoughtful, slow-moving army of sun hats, neck flaps, cargo shorts and sensible hiking shoes.
We were a vision of greige. “Today, we are looking for signs of life and death,” Ms. Theriault said as we embarked on our journey. The hike was only two miles but would take roughly two hours since we would be stopping every few minutes to learn about the local flora.
Ms. Theriault was an erudite teacher. From somewhere in the front of the group: “Are the barrel cholla related to the saguaro cacti?
“” “Oooh,” Ms.”
Theriault said. She stopped walking. “Now that is an interesting question. I wonder if they might be the same genus.
” I had apparently and unwittingly wandered into AP Botany: The Study of Anza-Borrego. I was better equipped for an audit. I hung back and started chatting with a fellow hiker named Alice, who was there with her husband and two young boys. They were visiting from Orange County in hopes of seeing a modest bloom.
Ms. Theriault pointed out plants as we passed: Agave (“very painful”), Gander’s cholla (“the most populous in this desert”), and beavertail cactus (“he looks friendly, but each dot is a cluster of spines” — Frankie looked at me; we had learned that one the hard way). “The Teddy Bear cholla is known as the jumping cholla because it has a way of attaching to people who swear they didn’t touch it,” Ms. Theriault said.
That’s absurd. Who could brush up against a cactus without knowing it? I looked down and saw two cactus balls latched on to my sneaker and affixed to my sock. The desert was reminding me in whose backyard we were playing.
Respect. “What pollinates the flowers? ” Finn had worked his way to the front of the line. “Bees, hummingbirds, bats, and moths, mostly.
” “If you get stuck in the desert, what’s the best thing to eat? ” This was Frankie. I looked at my kids, eager and enthused, delighting in their exploration of the desert. Teacher’s pets, I thought.
“A rabbit,” said Ms. Theriault to their horror. “Or the beans of a mesquite plant. ” We had arrived at the culmination of the hike — all of the Anza-Borrego desert unfurled before us, rocky and craggy and unforgiving.
It was like discovering Mars. It was late afternoon. Thanks to the mountainous horizon, the sun goes down fast in the Anza-Borrego desert. I could see concern morphing into deep concern on my husband’s face.
It’s one thing to put up a tent in your living room with a glass of wine. It’s entirely another to do it in a desert. We had to find a spot, pitch a tent and feed two hungry children — before dark. At Ms.
Theriault’s suggestion, we headed to a sweetly named place called Plum Canyon, which was apparently perfect for camping: quiet, flat, with a potential smattering of wildflowers. I can’t confirm any of that because, in our haste to beat the sun, we took at least one wrong turn and ended up in the less-comfortable-sounding Grapevine Canyon. We found a spot, emptied the car, unrolled the tent, set up the cook stove and unpacked the cooler. Finn noticed that we were near one of the few highways in Anza-Borrego.
Alas, we repacked the cooler, closed up the cook stove, rerolled the tent, filled up the car and kept on. A short while later, we found a clearing big enough for a tent, a place for dinner and a modest game of soccer. Our little patch of Anza-Borrego even came pre-decorated with a yellow brittlebush and pretty red chuparosas. The tent was pitched, the quesadillas were cooked and the air mattresses and sleeping bags were rolled out.
Once the stars — so, so many stars and shooting stars! — blinked to life, we settled into our sleeping bags, and Devin read “The Hobbit” to the children. At last, we were camping. No one camps in a desert to get a good night’s sleep — and ours felt more like trying to rest on a pile of rubble during a windstorm.
Nevertheless, 5 a. m. eventually came, and with it, this question from my husband: “Did you forget to inflate the air mattresses? ” “They can be inflated?!
” Generously, my camping skills are a C minus. Hiking, on the other hand, was a different story. After pancakes (that tasted vaguely like quesadillas) and instant coffee, we were on our way to Hellhole Canyon. It’s a nearly six-mile, out-and-back hike that will reward you with blooms, views and ultimately, a real desert oasis.
We shook off our fatigue — and a layer of sand — and we were ready. The desert, as so many BBC specials espouse, is alive. It might look barren and sound like the inside of a whistle, but there are all kinds of creatures in an endless loop of living, growing and dying. And Hellhole Canyon was the place to see it.
As we made our way through the snaking incline toward the mountains, the kids were tempted, more than once, to take fallen flowers as souvenirs. But I had Professor Faulstich and Sally Theriault in my head. Stay on the trail! Do not touch the flowers!
Take only pictures! Leave only footprints! “The danger of going off the path is that you will disrupt seedlings, damage the soil, break off stems,” Professor Faulstich had told me. “You may even be bringing in non-native seeds, which could do a lot of damage.
” The trail was about two and a half miles (one way) of mild, and occasionally moderate, hiking, rock climbing and flower identifying. It was easy to forget that this was late February: cloudless, shadeless, blazing hot. But just when you are about to consider heading back to the car, you turn into the canyon and head up into the crease of the mountain. Sand turns to actual grass, cactuses turn to unlikely palm trees, and monotones turn to rewardingly verdant color.
That’s how you know you’re at the oasis, a kind of permanent, year-round super bloom. The children took off their hats and dunked them in the stream. They took off their shoes and sat in the grass. Finally, unfortunately, it was time to leave.
On the way back down, we passed other hikers on their way up. Frankie saw two children looking at a cluster of beavertails and warned them. She knew her cactuses. After all, she’s been comfortable in nature from a young age.
Danielle Pergament, based in Los Angeles, is a frequent contributor to the Travel section. Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling?
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