A Year Afield: January
Twenty twenty was a tumultuous and pivotal year for many. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic forced all of us into isolation, upending our existing way of living and ushering in a new normal characterized by anxiety and uncertainty. In the throes of isolation, I found companionship in the form of plants. The wildflowers became my friend group, the roadsides my social setting. The human world ground to a halt, but the flowers bloomed just as they always had. I did not set out to photograph plants for a whole year, but the need for seclusion brought about by the pandemic and a new macro lens purchased the previous November provided the ways and means to do just that. Now, five years later, I find myself looking back at all those plant portraits, dredging the memories of those outings from the depths of my brain, and reflecting on my love of plants in the hope that it inspires the same in others.
I began 2020 with a wonderful opportunity, one which would be impossible only a few months later: my first trip across our southern border to explore the high deserts and verdant tropics of Mexico. I, along with my cohort of fellow graduate students and the chair of our program, packed ourselves into a pair of passenger vans just after midnight on January 2nd. We headed south via San Antonio, then across south Texas to cross the border at Laredo. We made it to Laredo just before dawn, stopping to get breakfast tacos just as the sun was beginning to color the eastern skies over the sleepy, chilly streets of Laredo. We made it to the border and crossed without much fanfare since the city was only just starting to stir and the checkpoint was not yet congested. Once across, we scurried through the narrow band of Tamaulipas, greeted by a heavy federal police presence and machine guns mounted on pickup trucks. Soon enough, however, the city and the border receded into the rear view mirror, and the xeric shrublands of Nuevo Leon spread out before us. Racing across the sea of thornscrub, we set our sights on the high desert plateau of central Mexico and the little town of Real de Catorce where we would spend the first night.
Real de Catorce is nestled high up in the desert mountains of San Luis Potosí. At nearly nine thousand feet above sea level, getting to the town requires an arduous trek out of the flat desert below, slowly meandering up gravel roads cut out of the sides of the mountains before finally traversing a one and a half mile long tunnel wide enough to accommodate only one direction of traffic at a time. We made it to our hotel on the west end of town just as the sun was beginning to sink low in the sky, painting the mountain sides and the town in a soft golden light. The Parish of the Immaculate Conception, with its striking black and white stripped bell tower, dominates the vistas of the town. The church dates to the founding of Real de Catorce as a silver mining town in the 1770s. From the steps of the Hotel Ruinas del Real, the rotunda and bell tower of the church are framed by the crumbling edge of a stone wall on one side and a large prickly pear cactus on the other. I imagine that the eroded wall is a symptom of the neglect that befell Real de Catorce throughout the 20th Century, brought on by the drop in silver prices and the subsequent closing of the mine. But just as the prickly pear has sprung from the crumbling remains of the wall, Real de Catorce has experienced a renaissance as one of Mexico’s most scenic pubelos magicos.
Our hotel was a modest and quaint accommodation—stone and stucco reflecting the vernacular architectural style of the region. The rooms opened to a central courtyard generously adorned with plants that were surprisingly lush considering it was January. Because of its elevation and aridity, Real can be cool year around but was especially cold that night. The low was forecast to be around freezing, and there was a small chance of snow the following morning. The doors and window shutters were wooden, with gaps around the edges where they abutted the walls. The floor was stone, and there was no source of heat. Despite that—or maybe because of it—a bed has never felt cozier, nor blankets warmer, than on that cold night high in the desert mountains.
The promise of snow did not materialize, so the following morning I got some papusas from one of the street vendors and explored town briefly. I ventured down the path in front of the hotel, heading away from the town center towards a quiet cemetery and chapel I had seen the previous night. The cemetery was established around the same time as the town and is the final resting place for several notable figures in Real’s history. The chapel (formally known as the Capilla de la Virgen de Guadalupe) was built in the 19th Century, and while I did not venture inside to see for myself, I’ve since read that the original, albeit irreparably deteriorated frescoes, still adorn the walls.
On our way to Real the previous day, I was peering out the van window, taking in the scenes of the desert as best as I could while the van hurried up the mountain. As we climbed, we passed an orb of red tucked amongst the desert vegetation a couple hundred feet off the road. By the time my mind processed what my eyes had seen, we were passed it. I snapped my neck around to see if I could glimpse it again, but it had disappeared into the fabric of the desert. Desperate to see it again, I kept my eyes fixed out the window, scanning the passing desert for another splash of red. I found one, then another, then a patch with several, but each time they were too far away for me to tell unequivocally what they were. In hindsight, it seems silly that I couldn’t tell what plant these red luminous spheres belonged to, but I distinctly remember being baffled. Even once we arrived in Real and unloaded our bags from the van, I continued mulling it over, studying the scene in my mind’s eye, and waiting with eager anticipation for when we would head back down the mountain and I could see them again.
That chance came after the short walk to the chapel. We departed Real, again passing through the tunnel and down the gravel mountain road we had ascended the previous day. Much to my delight, on the way down the mountain, we pulled the vans to the side of the road and got out for about half an hour to admire the desert plants that we had hurriedly passed by on the way to Real. The desert below Real de Catorce is home to some wonderful cactus species, the largest of which is Echinocactus platyacanthus, appropriately known as the giant barrel cactus. The giant barrel cactus is only known from the Chihuahuan Desert in Mexico, and from what I saw, it seemed occasional to common in the lower elevations. The individual I photographed seemed enormous to me, almost as tall as a 55-gallon drum and every bit as wide. I’ve since learned that this is a fairly modest size for this species, with the largest documented individuals towering nearly ten feet tall with a circumference of almost four feet.
Not to be usurped by a corpulent cactus, the object of my fascination was also waiting patiently on the roadside with its halo growing red. The red orb in question turned out to belong to Ferocactus pilosus, the Mexican fire barrel. This species is another large barrel cactus that is endemic to the high desert plateau of central Mexico. Its spines are a deep blood red and, where they are concentrated at the growing tip of the cactus, they give the cactus a luminescent red glow. The individuals I photographed have a deep green skin, but I have seen pictures of other individuals that are darker, and the spines seem to glow even more brilliantly.
Maybe it was the way the desert was painted with the drab palette of winter. Maybe it was the way the fire barrels were backlit and glowing red, but I was absolutely enamored, consumed by their beauty, believing there was something ethereal, something spiritual about these cacti. This is one of my favorite pictures to come from the trip: Yuccas bobbing in a sea of desert shrubs, uninterrupted to the horizon except for the small, infrequent pockets where the fire barrels glowed brilliantly. I feel honored to have seen these cacti and their habitat, and I hope that the love I have for them inspires others to feel the same.
From Real de Catorce, we continued heading south, crossing from the arid west slopes of the Sierra Madre Oriental to the rain-soaked east slopes, staying the night in the town of Xilitla, another one of the pueblos magicos in the state of San Luis Potosí. The scenery could not have been a stronger juxtaposition from the previous day. We had traded the cold and drab desert for lush and verdant forests where winter seemed a distant reality. Xilitla is technically subtropical, a transitional zone between the temperate climate to the north and the tropics that we would soon encounter as we ventured further south. I did not take many pictures in Xilitla, but one that still pulls me back to that time and place whenever I look at it is this image of a multi-tiered waterfall at Las Pozas, the surrealist sculpture gardens created by British expatriate, Edward James. I love how the tumultuous cascade of the waterfall imbues this image with a quiet energy and how this energy contrasts with the peaceful repose of the rock walls blanketed with spongy beds of moss and adorned with a rich variety of broad-leaved plants.
From Xilitla, we pressed further south towards the tropics, finally arriving in the small town of Calnali, Hidalgo, three days after leaving Texas. The field station, our home for the next week, was located west of town, situated on the main road but backing up to a small patch of forest, a shaded creek, and beyond that, quiet dirt roads dotted with small farms. Having so far mostly seen the Mexican landscape from the van window, I wasted no time exploring the area around the field station.
One of the neatest discoveries I made while exploring was a few coffee plants growing in the forest behind the field station. They were slender trees, less than six feet tall, with only a few branches. The leaves were mottled with yellow, and there were only a handful of coffee cherries on the plants. The plants were far from thriving and unfortunately, seemed to be infected with coffee leaf rust, a fungal infection that reduces the productivity of coffee plants and has ravaged the coffee industry in Mexico. While it was disheartening to see the plants in such a despairing state, it was still incredibly special to finally see coffee growing wild in situ. Mexican coffees are among my favorite, but Chiapas, Oaxaca, or Hidalgo always seemed so far away when buying the beans from a coffee shop. It was so refreshing to meet this plant in person, to see that its home in the understory of the tropical forest is really not that far away, and to know that while these plants are beleaguered by coffee leaf rust now, there are so many people passionate about coffee and working to safeguard the future of coffee in Mexico.
The tropics are known for their immense richness of species, but what I had never considered and was amazed by was the structural arrangement of all these organisms. I am used to seeing oak branches peppered with the gray-green crust of lichens, adorned with sporadic tufts of ball moss, and—if it is humid enough—fronds of resurrection fern unfurling from the moist furrows of the bark. But in the tropics, the epiphytic dance of plants growing on other plants is turned up to eleven. Here, the diminutive ball moss is replaced by sister species, much larger Bromeliads, some with narrow, straight leaves and others with broad, spreading rosettes that look like verdant candelabras perched in the tree canopy. The ferns are long, feathery, and fanned out as though the tree needed a crest of its own to rival the likes of the Atlantic royal flycatcher. And as if the trees were not already so richly adorned, tucked amongst the Bromeliads and ferns are soft beds of moss, their downy tufts shrouding the bark of the tree. The seeds of the Bromeliad, the spores of the fern, find their way into the moist embrace of the moss, where they are gifted all that they need to begin life anew. To be a moss is to be at home on the tree branch but to simultaneously provide a home to the progeny of plants that will one day tower above you. With all these species stacked on top of each other, competition is intense, but I believe that the power of reciprocity must be stronger.
A trip to the tropics in January is a salve for the soul of the botanist, salvation in the form of indefatigable life, to find solace in a place where the flowers bloom ad infinitum. Meandering through the varied landscapes of Mexico, I came across some old friends, plants that I knew already from Texas, but the vast majority of the flora was entirely unknown to me. One familiar acquaintance was a morning glory I found in the cloud forests near Tlanchinol. The corolla was nearly as big as the palm of my hand and was one of the most intense shades of blue I have ever seen on a flower. It exuded a cool radiance, like a tiny sun at the center of the cloud forest galaxy. I tentatively identified the species as Ipomoea tricolor, the Mexican morning glory. This species is cultivated in gardens all over the world, beloved, I suppose, for the same reasons I was enraptured by it. Considering its now cosmopolitan distribution, it was incredibly special to see this species in its native range and its natural habitat.
Wandering the farm land near the field station, I came across another plant I was intimately familiar with: Asclepias curassavica, the tropical milkweed. But for many, tropical milkweed is a plant whose reputation precedes it. When the plight of the monarch butterflies first started gaining widespread attention, people thought the best way to combat their decline was to rampantly plant milkweeds. With the best of intentions, gardeners planted milkweeds but did not always take stock of which species were native to their region. On top of this, for some nebulous reason, despite the United States having a stunning variety of milkweed species, the milkweed most commonly available in garden centers was this tropical denizen that was far from home in the temperate United States. We know now, however, that planting non-native milkweeds, especially tropical milkweed, can actually do more harm to monarchs than good. In the southern United States, tropical milkweed does not die back in the winter as native milkweed species do. Because it continues flowering through the winter, the fear is that it can discourage monarchs from migrating further south and leave them exposed to deadly winter freezes. On top of that, under increasingly warmer temperatures, tropical milkweed produces more compounds that are toxic to monarch larvae. This plant has quite a reputation among ecologists, monarch conservationists, and native plant gardeners in the United States, but I was so happy to encounter this species in its native range.
Just one of the numerous plants that I encountered for the first time in Mexico was Cestrum fasciculatum, a spreading shrub found in the understory of the cloud forests from Hidalgo south to Oaxaca. It is a member of the tomato family, Solanaceae, but it’s red, tubular flowers are unlike any Solanaceae species I’ve come across and suggests that this species is pollinated by hummingbirds.
In addition to all the incredible plant species, I was able to see and photograph some lovely waterfalls. Two of which were near Tlanchinol. I love the juxtaposition between these two waterfalls: in one, the water cascades in a singular, loose ribbon down a sheer rock face thirty to forty feet tall while the other is a mere five feet tall but with rock that is finely terraced so that the water trickles down in countless minute streams. Seeing these two waterfalls and the verdant plants that surrounded them made me forget the drury cold that was waiting back in Texas. We were only six hundred miles south of College Station, but it felt like another planet entirely.
We made the return trip back to Texas faster than the southern leg of the journey, stopping for only one night in the town of Tamasopo. Puente de Dios, just a few miles outside of town, was the last stop on our trip and proved to be one of the most incredible. At the Bridge of God, the creek which runs northwest of town flows over a series of waterfalls and into a tight bowl-shaped canyon carved out of the rainforest. We arrived as the sun was setting, and the blue hour in the sky above mirrored the dark blue-green waters below. With each passing minute, the light faded more and more, as though the rainforest canopy was closing in above, as though the rock walls were creaking shut in preparation for nightly respite. Despite the growing dusk, the water continued rushing, as loud and turbulent as ever. Despite its immense energy, there is something paradoxically calming about a rushing waterfall. The sound is undeniably hypnotic, but the way the water crashes into and diffuses across the otherwise placid pool offers a promise that the turbulence is not permanent, that calmness pervades when we welcome it in. I could not have known at the time, but looking back, that lesson was so important to carry with me as the world abruptly spiraled into chaos and simultaneously ground to a halt at the onset of the pandemic.
The next day, we finished our trip, crossing back into Texas in the late afternoon and arriving back to College Station in the hours after midnight. Looking at these images, I feel the immediacy with which I am transported back to that time and place. It feels not that long ago, but at the same time, it might as well have been another lifetime. The world has changed so much in the last five years. Standing on the ledge of Puente de Dios, looking down into the dark waters churning calmly, I could have never imagined the world we were about to walk into. I miss the landscapes of Mexico, and I miss the way the world used to be. The landscapes are still there for me to see and relive and share with those I love, but how do we get back to the world we left behind?
