Grand Canyon Part 3: High Times

As the canyon walls rose, the floor of Tuckup became more shaded, and greener, bigger plants began to appear. Oaks soon reappeared alongside the wash, but now they were Shrub Live Oak, Quercus turbinella, bearing tough, persistent, holly-like leaves, and growing into small trees. Soon another tree appeared, one that I didn’t recognize, with roundish leaves, but the pea-like seed pods (pic left) told me it was part of the Pea family, Fabaceae. It’s Western Redbud, Cercis occidentalis, which is widespread in California, but has only a limited and disjoint range in Southern Utah and Northern Arizona. Indians of California traditionally used the flexible twigs of this shree to weave baskets, and derived a red dye from its bark. Photos of the flowers look stunning; I’d like to see it in bloom sometime.

Side Note: It’s funny, when I posted about Pea family trees down in Mexico last Spring I mused about how relatively uncommon they seemed to be closer to home. Since then I’ve encountered 2 “new” trees, Western Redbud and New Mexican Locust, both in or by the Grand Canyon, both members of the Pea family.

As the canyon grew deeper, the sandy, gravelly floor grew damper, and we kept an eye out for waterpockets. Leafier things began to appear, some- surprisingly- still blooming in October, such as Hooker’s Evening Primrose (pic right). Finally real water pockets and dripping springs started to pop up, the result of the recent rains, and not long after we came to a series of pockets that looked slightly more permanent, as evidenced by the Cattails growing out of them.

I’ve seen Common Cattail, Typha latifolia, thousands of times, all over North America, but don’t ever think I’d ever before chanced upon them releasing their seeds to the breeze, as these were Thursday afternoon.

Cattails have been around for a long time, and are obviously related to grasses, with which they parted ways over 100 million years ago. Unlike grasses, they never adapted to semi-arid conditions, and are always found in or by water. You might guess that they’re close cousins of Rushes or Sedges, but they’re actually more closely-related to Bromeliads, which we looked at last year down in Costa Rica.* Cattails are Wind-Wind, as in wind-pollinated with (obviously) wind-dispersed seeds and are monoecious (same plant bearing both male and female flowers) but also spread by rhizomes (root-cloning) with dense stands aggressively crowding other plants out of waterpockets and mudholes. Later in the trip we’d come across depressions in expanses of open slickrock in which enough soil and water had accumulated to support such stands.

*Man, it is like I have a post for everything.

But there was one recurring shrub- more of a ground-cover really (pic left)- growing in the sandy canyon bottom that I didn’t recognize. Its broad, pointed leaves were slightly asymmetrical, in that the base of one side was anchored to the stem slightly lower than the other. On many of the plants, spiky green racquetball-sized “fruit” appeared, in some cases dried, browned and split open, revealing a multitude of little seeds inside. Finally we stumbled across a blooming patch, and our mystery canyon ground-cover revealed herself in all her Georgia O’Keefe splendor as Sacred Datura, Datura wrightii.

There are ~9 species of Datura across Eurasia and North America. The common species on the East Coast is Datura stramonium, commonly known as Jimsonweed. D. wrightii is restricted to the Western US and Mexico, though its range has been extended both as a weed and ornamental.

Datura belongs to Solanaceae, the Potato family, which includes, in addition to Potatoes (200+ wild species!), Belladonna, Chilis, Tomato, Eggplant and Tobacco. Solanaceae members typically share a diploid chromosome count of 24* (n=12) but the more relevant common characteristic is the presence of a series of alkaloids known as the tropane** alkaloids, a number of which have notable and powerful effects on the human body.

*The common Potato you buy at the supermarket, Solanum tuberosum, is tetraploid, with 48 chromosomes, but wild potatoes can be diploid, triploid, tetraploid, pentaploid or even hexaploid. Still others are diploid, but with a haploid number of 13 (n=13), so they have 26 chromosomes.

**Derived from Atropa, the genus of Belladonna.

The classic example of a tropane alkaloid is of course nicotine. Another, more benign* example with which you’re certainly familiar is capsaicin, the “burning” ingredient in chili peppers.

*Well, usually benign. It’s also the active ingredient in pepper spray. BTW, here’s a fascinating little nugget I stumbled across in researching this post: birds are immune to capsaicin. So if you get attacked by a wild ostrich and all you have for defense is a can of pepper spray, man you are SOL.

Sacred Datura, like Jimsonweed, has long been known for its hallucinogenic effects, which are caused by- you guessed it- tropane alkaloids. Later in the trip, I’d learn a bit about the pharmacological effects of Datura from Guardian Angel Lou (whom we will meet in the final installment of this series) and- just in case- pocketed* one of the “thorn-apples” on the hike back out to facilitate any possible “experiments”. After returning home and researching the heck out of this plant, I will never, ever screw with it.

*Figuratively. I actually very carefully wrapped it in plastic and placed it in my pack. Handling these things is tricky.

Tangent: And yes, before I knew more about it, I did flirt with the idea of experimenting with it. Though I experimented with marijuana in college, I never tried any kind of hallucinogen, and although I have no desire to suddenly become a middle-aged druggie, it’s one of those Life Experiences I mildly regret having missed out on.

Nested Tangent: “Experiment”? Did I actually say “experiment”? Oh for crying out loud- I smoked it, OK? I smoked it and enjoyed it, like every college student alive in the 1980s who wasn’t ROTC or attended Oral Roberts University or BYU. And what’s more, I’d probably smoke it again today, if… I hung out with people who had any. Seriously, I almost never encounter it in my social circles, and though smoking dope was fun, it was never so fun that I’d actually go out of my way to seek it out. For me marijuana was kind of like the TV show Ugly Betty is for me today. When I come across it I watch it and generally enjoy it*, but not so much that I try to record it or figure out when it’s on next or anything. Anyway, that’s how I feel about pot. (Though if I lived in California, I’d vote for Prop 19.)

*Although this may be because I’ve always kind of had a thing for Vanessa Williams. OK so I guess I’d pick watching Ugly Betty over smoking reefer. Unfortunately I checked for this post and found out the series ended this Spring. Guess I should have tuned in more often.

But for a moment I succumbed to the politically-correct moniker of “experiment”. What’s up with that? We don’t say we “experimented” with skydiving or witchcraft*. But there’s like this limited range of human vices for which we somehow try to excuse ourselves for having partaken in by calling them “experiments.” It’s like we amble along, living our day-to-day, regular-joe lives, but when it comes to drugs or illicit sex, suddenly everyone’s like this Big-Time Scientist, you know, not actually enjoying it or anything, but “experimenting” for the sake of scientific enlightenment or whatever…

*We use “dabble” for that one…

Most of my college-era maryjane experimentation was conducted in the company of my college roommate- let’s call him “Dan”- who enjoyed the stuff just slightly more than I did, as evidenced by his actually getting a hold of some, which I could never be bothered to do.

All About Hallucinogenic Drugs

There are 3 main types of hallucinogens. Psychadelics, which include LSD mescaline, and peyote are what most people think of when they think “hallucinogenic drug.” These drugs alter the perception of received sensory inputs- visual, audio or otherwise. The second category are disassociatives, which include things like PCP and the plant Salvia dinorum. These drugs act to partially or fully block the input of one or more senses.

Datura belongs to the 3^rd type, called deliriants, or anticholinergics, which act by blocking acetylcholine, one of a number of neurotransmitters* controlling many subconscious functions, and the primary (only?) neurotransmitter controlling voluntary muscle function outside of the brain and spinal chord. Deliriants are sometimes called “true hallucinogens” in that they can lead to complete, realistic full-on hallucinations (i.e. conversation with an imaginary person) as opposed to the “modified-reality” type hallucinations induced by psychedelics. Deliriants have generally been the least recreationally popular of the 3 types due to their many negative side effects.

*I talked about neurotransmitters in this post, though I didn’t cover acetylcholine.

The specific alkaloids at work in D. wrightii are atropine, scopolamine and hydrocyamine. Scopolamine you’re probably already familiar with; it’s the stuff the eye doctor drops in your eyes to dilate your pupils, and unsurprisingly, Datura has notable effects on vision.

Many, many instances of Datura use have lead to hospitalization or even death. In one scenario, the delirium sets off a panic which is exacerbated by partial or complete vision loss*, leading to injury through the ensuing, very literal, blind panic. Other negative effects can include bizarre or violent behavior, prolonged aversion to bright light, hypertension, amnesia and fever of up to 110F.

*Even following a “positive” use experience, at least one user reported difficulty reading for nearly 2 weeks following.

One of the most dangerous aspects of Datura is the range of toxicity among individual plants, the concentrations of toxicity in various parts of the plant and even the range of toxicity in the same plant, in the same parts, at different times, resulting in toxicity typically ranging by a factor of five.

So why try it? When it does work, and doesn’t put you in the hospital or kill you, it supposedly produces some unique effects, particularly some visually. People, and other living things are reported to appear enhanced, or clearer visually, with almost a “glow” about them in some cases. The visual difference between living and non-living things is allegedly stronger than with “straight” vision. And conversely, manmade things- structures, power lines, etc.- are reported to seem much uglier than normally.

The “classic” mode of preparation is to brew a tea from the seeds. Unfortunately this seems to be the method likeliest to put you in the hospital (or the morgue.) The most common alternate method is to brew a tea from the roots, but supposedly this is so mild as to produce no effect at all. An alternative, (claimed) middle-of-the-road approach is to smoke the flowers, releasing the alkaloids from the pollen. Allegedly, the sweeter-smelling the flower (vaguely of jasmine) the readier it is to be smoked.

It’s unlikely at this stage of my life that I’ll ever get around to trying an honest-to-goodness hallucinogen. Responsibilities, fatherhood and the general risk-aversion that comes with middle age conspire to discourage me from ingesting any new potent chemical agents. But I’ll always wonder about the experience of chemical hallucinogens/ deleriants. The brain is complex hodgepodge of chemical circuitry. If an agent somehow altered- temporarily, safely- some aspect of that circuitry, could we sense, see or know things we couldn’t know otherwise?

Tangent: Maybe, though I suspect not. When “Dan” and I smoked pot, we used to have all these Amazing Incredible Ideas, which we were sure would Fundamentally Change The World, if only… if only… if only we could remember them the next morning. So one time we got high with pen and paper in hand and wrote down several of our Amazing Incredible Ideas, which in the light of the following day turned out largely to be alternate ways to order pizza or prepare ramen noodles.

Nested Tangent: “Dan” also once surreptitiously tape-recorded us, in hopes of accomplishing the same. Of course no big ideas were captured, but the resulting tape was incredibly funny*, and we listened to it many, many times. “Dan” entitled the cassette case, “We’re Really High” and kept it on his shelf of cassettes alongside tapes of Pink Floyd, The Who, etc. Sadly, “Dan”- always braver in word than in deed- later destroyed the tape, afraid that his mother would come across it in the course of one of his dorm-related moves.

*After 30 minutes or so of free-ranging dialogue, the tape ran out to the sound of- I am not making this up- my snoring.

Arizona Steve and I continued down-canyon until we reached the junction with Cottonwood Canyon, joining from the West. Shortly before the junction we passed the bottom of the Redwall Formation and entered the Muav Limestone, another sea-bottom-deposit layer, but further off-shore, laid down some ~515 million years ago. Muav tends toward a grayish color, whitened where its been smoothed over by water flows. The band of Muav is much thicker/deeper toward the Western end of the Grand Canyon (where we were) than in the Eastern reaches. At the junction were several pools full of crystal-clear water, one trickling into the next through smooth shallow grooves in the white stone. We pumped water, ate and rolled out our bags on narrow ledges above the pools, watching shooting stars until we were lulled to sleep by the soft trickle of the water.

Note About Sources: Western Redbud range info came from the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service site. Cattail info came from David Williams’ A Naturalist’s Guide to Canyon Country and Wikipedia. Much of the basic info around anticholinergics came from Wikipedia, but far and away the most informative and fascinating source for this post was this post/article on the absolutely fascinating and well-written (if somewhat unconventional) blog/webzine Luminous Numinous.

Light Week: Solstice, My Dentist, Pizza And Stoners

Almost 6 months ago to the day, I did a post called “Dark Week”, where I talked about the Winter Solstice, hours of daylight and sun angles. (A couple days later I followed up with a post explaining changes in azimuth between the solstices.) In that post, I suggested marking your calendar for this Saturday or Sunday to check out one or more aspects of the Solstice- the length of the day, the sun angle at noon, and/or the azimuth at sunrise/sunset.

Note: Yes, I recycled some of the graphics from that post for this post. Hey, I spent enough time doing them, I can damn well re-use them if I want…

It seems remarkable that 6 months flew by so fast. Each winter when you think about the coming year, you always think about all the time you’ll have and all the things you’ll do, and then before you know it, the time’s gone by and you’re setting your sights on the next year, and all the things you’re sure to get done then…

All About My Dentist

Tangent: The passage of time is foremost on my mind right now because yesterday I went to the dentist. I’ve been seeing the same dentist twice a year for nearly a decade. (pic right = actual photo of my dentist’s office, from his website. I think the lady in the photo is a model; I’ve never seen her, and the usual receptionist is about 40 years older…) Because I see my dentist only at long intervals, we have a weird relationship. We’ve spent maybe 6 or 7 hours together total, but it’s been spread out over a decade. Our relationship is kind of like one of those science fiction stories where people meet again after years-long interstellar journeys where, due to the effects of time-dilation at near-lightspeed travel, only a short time has passed for the travelers, but back on Earth everything’s different. Over the course of our basically single, 6-hour conversation, I’ve changed jobs once, presidents twice, had 3 children, and broken and mended my back.

Nested Tangent: Since I am going to pick on my dentist in a just a moment, I should say that both he and his hygienist are outstanding. This guy gives a novocain shot so smoothly you would not believe it. If you’re local and looking for a dentist in the Salt Lake Valley, let me know. He and his staff provide outstanding, high-quality service.

All About Pizza And Stoners

Speaking of customer service, this is a good opening for me to talk about something else that’s top of mind for me right now: Legalization of Drugs.

As you no doubt are aware, the whole issue of the “War on Drugs” and possible legalization of drugs is a big topic in the US right now. And for many years there have been a number of people who have proclaimed the War on Drugs a failure, having led to record incarceration rates and the creation of violent cartels, while failing to effectively curb drug addiction and dependency.

Now I should say that on the whole I am at least moderately sympathetic to these arguments. As long-time readers can probably ascertain, I tend towards liberal end of the political spectrum, usually vote for Democrats, and am supportive of things like wilderness protection, universal healthcare, and true, non-xenophobic, immigration reform.

And, if we’re going to be completely honest here, in my younger/college years, I did on a number of occasions, smoke my share of marijuana, and- I will confess here and now- enjoyed doing so thoroughly.

So you might think that I would be favorably inclined toward the legalization of (at least some) drugs, and yet at a gut level, I’m not. I’ve sort of half-wondered why this is, and last night, when our dinner was delivered, it suddenly dawned on me: Pizza.

Awesome Wife and I have a favorite local pizza place. They make great, high-quality and creative pizzas, deliver to our neighborhood*, and generally manage to find our house. But at least 50% of the time, the order is screwed up, and the pizza is made wrong.

*Unlike another well-known Pizza Place- let’s call it “The Pie”- who refuses to deliver to any address East of Foothill Blvd (we are 2 blocks past the limit) having determined everything East of this thoroughfare to be “the canyons.” Those guys are total geogratards.

We’ve discussed at length why this is so often the case with our orders, and have come to the firm conclusion- supported by numerous interactions with the employees of this establishment- that the majority of their staff is stoned the majority of the time. And this, right here, is what lies at the heart of my resistance to liberalization of US drug laws- the certain knowledge that if drugs are legalized, I will never ever get a pizza made right again.

Much of our continuing conversation has revolved around our common interest in biking. In years past, my dentist- let’s call him “Bill”, was also an avid cyclist. (pic right = actual photo of my dentist. I am telling you, he is awesome- best dentist I’ve ever had.) Like so many 40-something former cyclists, Bill doesn’t ride much anymore, and through our entire, decade-long single conversation, he has been talking about buying a new bike. Seriously, it’s been 10 years, and he’s still procrastinating over buying a new bike. Every visit he asks me my opinion about various brands and such, etc. Finally this time I just said, “Bill! It doesn’t matter. Any bike you buy today is going to be infinitely better than whatever circa-1980-elliptical-ringed-rusty piece of crap that’s sitting in your garage. We’ve been talking about this for a decade- just go buy a bike already!”

Nested Tangent For My Coworkers: Yes, I know that at least a half-dozen of you regularly read this blog (though by and large you are all too chickenshit to ever comment.) Anyway, you know what? There’s a guy in our office with whom I’ve been having the exact same, “I’m-gonna-buy-a-bike” conversation for 7 years. 7 years! Hint: he works on the 4^th floor.

I keep hoping that my dentist will have the same kind of 40-something realization that I did a couple years back, shortly before I started this project: I’m 40-something. I’m a [dentist/salesman/whatever-the-hell-it-is-I-do]. I’ll never be an astronaut or rock star or Secretary-General. This, right here, is my life, and instead of just striving and hoping and procrastinating and thinking “gee, maybe someday…” all the time, I’m going to start living it.

Part Of The Post Where I Get To The Point Already

So yeah, the solstice. That’s something you can easily blow off every year, and plan on checking it out the next year, but then one day you’ll be on your death-bed and you’ll be like, “Oh shit, I never really checked out the solstice…” Think about it- you live on this giant, tilted spinning ball that is whipping around and around this giant star at a ripping 66,000 mph. You may think, well I can’t see it because I’m not an astronaut, but you can see it- you just have to look up.

At around 1:30PM Saturday and Sunday in Salt Lake, the sun will be up at an astounding 72 degrees in the sky. We don’t look up at the noon-sun much (and we certainly shouldn’t look directly at it) but if you check it out, you’ll be startled with just how darn high* it is. And if you look around you at noon, check out the shadows- they’re teeny!

*Almost as high as the guy working the phones at Wasatch Pizza.

Even cooler than the sun’s up-down angle, check out it’s “side-to-side” angle, by which I mean the path it travels around the sky. Between sunrise and sunset, the solstice sun in Salt Lake will cover an astounding 244 degrees of the total horizon. (I explained how this works in this post, and won’t repeat it here, seeing as I spent too much time already going on about my dentist and stoner-pizza-guys.)

Although the noontime shadows may be teensy, if you pay attention to early morning and late afternoon shadows around your home or office, you’ll notice light and shade in places you rarely see them the rest of the year (including sunshine on the North side of your house!)

Monday the days will begin to get a little shorter. But interestingly, although the sunrises will start to get a bit later each day, the sunsets will still keep getting later for about another week. How can this be?

This Part Is Not Really That Complicated But Is Super-Hard To Explain

Because the Solar Day is longer at the solstices than it is at the equinoxes. The Solar Day is the time from one Solar Noon to the next, and this time varies slightly over the course of the year. Remember, each day, the Earth travels ~1/365^th of its path around the Sun. And because the Earth orbits the sun in the same direction as it rotates (counterclockwise) this orbital travel adds a little teeny bit of time to each solar day. From the standpoint of a non-rotating Earth, the Sun is creeping gradually East; from the standpoint of an Eastward-spinning Earth, it has to spin slightly more than a full rotation to “catch” the sun at noon each day. Our calendar of course is a solar calendar, and so accounts for this daily “catch-up”, which takes up about 4 minutes per day.

Side Note: A purely rotational day that ignores the position of the Sun is called a Sidereal Day. A Sidereal Day is roughly 4 minutes shorter than a Solar Day. Who cares about sidereal days? Astronomers, who want to know at what time which stars will be where…

OK This Is The Hard Part

But that’s 4 minutes on average; more time is added to the Solar Day at the solstices than at the equinoxes because the Sun changes its position relative to any given point on the Earth’s surface more each day around the Solstice than it does around the Equinox. The reason for this is the Earth’s axial tilt. At or near the solstices, the rotation of any point of the Earth’s surface at noon is pretty much parallel to the Earth’s orbital plane around the Sun, making the noontime change in relative Sun position effectively due East. But at or near the equinoxes, the rotation of any point of the Earth’s surface at noon is at around a 23.5 degree angle to the Earth’s orbital plan around the Sun, making the daily change in relative noon position is effectively Southeast (Fall) or Northeast (Spring.)

(I know this is way hard to envision, and I’m not doing a very good job explaining it. If you have a globe, play with it and a lamp and eventually it will make sense.)

This greater effective change makes the Solar Day (which again, is Solar Noon to Solar Noon) a titch longer, because a bit more “catch-up” is required, causing our Average-Solar-Day calendar to get just a bit ahead of itself around the Solstice, resulting in a slightly later sunset. Closer to the Equinox, the calendar “falls behind” a little bit in relation to the then shorter Solar Days, and over the course of the year it all averages out. Get it?

There’s a second factor at work, and that’s the elliptical nature of the Earth’s orbit. Aphelion*- when the Earth is closest to the Sun and traveling fastest- is around January 4 (close to the Winter Solstice) and perihelion- when the Earth is furthest from the Sun and traveling slowest- is around July 4 (close to the Summer Solstice.) But the axial tilt accounts for the vast majority of variation in Solar Day length.

*I explained aphelion and perihelion in this post.

So this next week- the post-Solstice week- is probably the best week of the year to do stuff after work, whether it’s bike, hike, run, play in the yard with the kids, or just smoke pot and deliver pizzas.

Happy Solstice everybody!

Final Serious Note: In some other parts of the world- mainly northerly places, like Scandinavian countries- the Solstice is a big holiday. I think that’s really cool, and I wish it were a big holiday here as well. But here in the US, there’s an even cooler holiday that we should all be celebrating in a really big way, and it’s today, June 19^th. It’s Juneteenth, a holiday celebrating the passage of the 13^th amendment and the emancipation of the slaves.

The 13^th amendment didn’t make everything right of course; African-Americans continued to get (and to a certain extent still do get) a shitty deal in this country for at least a century more. But the single best, coolest, most progressive thing this country ever did was abolish slavery. That’s something every American should be proud of, and a pretty great reason for a holiday. Unfortunately it doesn’t get the recognition it deserves*, but that doesn’t stop you from celebrating it, and maybe telling your kids why it’s so cool.

*Except in Texas. In my real life I have, many times, made fun of Texas, for everything from its kooky anti-science politics to its dismal zoning practices. But Texas is the one state which celebrates Juneteenth as a full state holiday (though several other states recognize it in varying, lesser degrees.) Way to go, Texas.