Islands in Sky and Sea
Feb. 8th, 2005 09:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mishalakIn the desert there stands a great mesa. It rises high above the dry lands all around it a squat pillar of rock twenty-seven kilometers around. There is no easy way up from below, the rim of this mesa being so hard that the sandstone under wears away to a nearly shear cliff of dirty orange and red. From here where the rubble covered base ends it is another seven hundred meters straight up. With another eight hundred vertical meters of rough slopes all around it puts the top at over fifteen hundred meters above the desert floor and 2,800 meters above the sea. It is a mountain with no peak.
If one were brave enough to climb to the top there you'd see a gentle bowl. It is made of a heavy black stone, but you won't see that foundation much of anywhere but the very edge. High clouds that wisp across the dry lands below often have just a little of their moisture caught by this high finger of earth even while they drop nothing on the thirsty plains. The soft dews feed pale turquoise lichens that build up layer upon layer wherever there is enough water until you get something like this. Hard, but brittle stone covered by layer upon layer of a nearly impermeable chocolate colored skin with a thin layer of bluish life on top building it ever thicker. It is like having a roofer that adds another half millimeter every wet year. In places the layers go down a full half-meter representing the thousand or so wet years since the end of the last ice age some 4,700 years ago.
Further down into the bowl where water starts to collect hardy mosses grow over the lichens crowding them out before in turn grass and a few ancient pines living in the thin soils overtake them. The grass is all a perfect uniform height right down to the small lake. Though perhaps lake is a poor description, anywhere else it would be called a shallow pond. It extends over no more than a square kilometer of the lowest part of the bowl when full. If there is a fierce rain it overflows in a gossamer fall over bank of rock so it grows no larger.
If you stand a while looking you'll soon see why there are so few trees and all the grass is such a uniform height. A scattering of "rocks" move ceaselessly over the bowl, the giant tortoises are forever grazing. Dozens, maybe even hundreds, distant relatives of the ones that graze distant tropical islands. Occasionally they miss one of the bitter pine seedlings and it quickly grows up past their meter long necks to join its relatives as the only living things taller than the tortoises on the mesa.
Some birds nest here safe from the predation of coyotes and desert wolves. Peregrines, hawks, and eagles nest each in their own place in their own way. On one spire to the north an ancient colony of ravens dominates some stony pockets and they exact a fearsome toll upon the tortoise young when they hatch out in the spring. It is just as well, they are a long-lived species and they would soon overwhelm the grasses if more than one or two every decade made it all the way to adulthood. Once at full weight no eagle could hope to lift them up over the rim to dash them on the rocks bellow and before that their beaks are sharp and dangerous to any raven or hawk that would try to torment it into tipping over an edge.
The eagles and peregrines compete for places on the east and south for the early morning sun and warmth through the night. Hardly anyone has ever climbed up to this island in the sky or its two neighbors without the impressive turtles. A band of Indians nearly destroyed them centuries ago and did kill off the ones that lived on the larger mesa 30km south nearer the great river. But they moved on leaving six full-grown tortoises and before discovering the over wintering eggs five hundred years ago.
The last of the six, a great matriarch weighing some 180 kg is making her way across the wide shore to the nameless lake. This is likely to be her last season for she is very tired, but she's still quite able. She was young and lucky when the unknown band came and went one hard winter, but that was so many centuries ago that she is likely now the oldest living animal on earth. After having had a good drink she's ready.
It is high summer and it is time to start preparing a burrow at the base of a tree for the offspring resulting from the short mating season some nine months ago. Digging right down through the meter of soil to the tough rock covering laid down by lichens years ago like ancient roofing tar. The ravens are interested now and trying to get down close to the digging to see what is going on. The females extend their necks to snap at them even as they slowly keep digging under the pines. Then if all has gone right they'll fit themselves tightly in and lay between two and fifty eggs the size of racquetballs. Then they'll cover them all up again before the dawn and the corbids return.
This is not the end of the trouble from ravens though. They'll scratch and peck at any nest as long as they can figure out where they are. Many are despoiled even before the tortoises are compelled to hibernate. The vast majority of the eggs are lost in this way, but enough survive that each spring a few miracles come forth. Each year and as many as twenty-four new turtles to join the dozens that already roam the small basin.
The ravens that nest on the mesas are not a separate species, but they are distinguished from their non-desert cousins by a blue feather on each wingtip. They mate in fall so their eggs can be laid at the start of the winter rains and take advantage of the variable bounty of the desert lands. They are affectionate and care for their two young very carefully. Despite this there are good years and bad years. Some years, as has happened for the last seven, the rains do no come heavily enough. The nameless lake shrinks away to nothing forcing the one species of frog to hibernate and the shrimp to lay eggs that can survive desiccation. Meanwhile unless the wolves have good kills the young ravens are doomed without heavy rains, and maybe even with them for there have been seven long years of drought prior to this season.
Meanwhile the tortoises have taken a different route. They can survive dry, but must hibernate through the cold months so their young hatch out in February when there is almost no danger of frost even at this lofty altitude. Then in a mad scramble they will head to hide in the muddy lake if available or shelter under trees and in slot canyons making up a full tenth of the north side of the mesa. Though close to the unkindness of ravens they are mostly safe as the tiny south facing canyons are nearly inaccessible to predator and adult alike. They are as safe as they can be on their own. Still maybe only one out of every five hundred laid will survive to the safe size of 10 kg when even the golden eagles can no longer lift these slow moving omnivores and they no longer have the shelter under the pines for reasons other than to be more comfortable in the shade.
There is the problem of food though. Lichens and mosses are not the most nutritious of foods and unwittingly in eating through the layers of dead moss on the sides of the slot canyons they are making them vulnerable to erosion by water and widening them as well. Someday the tortoises may no longer be safe from the curious ravens and will depend completely on the lake being full enough for them to hide in and just as dependent on good rains as raven young. But not yet and this immature raven goes away disappointed.
Springtime brings a buzz of activity. The winter rains and the occasional snow are forgotten. The nameless lake is full and even if there are no summer thunderstorms it will last as at least a puddle right through November. The tortoises have emerged from their communal non-nesting burrows and are busily clipping the grasses and flowers once again. The literal buzzing is coming from the solitary bees trying to get enough nectar for their young before a sharp tortoise beak clips every tender flower. They seem to especially relish the opportunity of a little insect protein even if it does come with a brief sting. The winter flowers, not having to face the hard shelled grass trimmers grow tall, but have limited pollination opportunities. The ones blooming after February grow as low to the ground as possible and keep their seeds there as well.
Turtles have crops that can grind up any seed but a few of the specialized Piñon Pines that are endemic to just this mesa. Like the tortoises they can live a very long time, over five thousand years for the last survivor of the end of the ice age. They have evolved to deal with the animal counterparts by having thick-shelled seeds that might survive the grinding of the tortoise crop. Though usually not. Then so ground down, but not digested, and fertilized by tortoise dung it is ready to sprout if it happens to fall in a spot not already shaded by a tree. Then it has to survive being eaten again once it sprouts, most are eaten of course giving the basin its golf course like appearance with only the occasional full-grown tree.
But for now the solitary bees are buzzing about the low growing flowers and building their own nests before plants are eaten or fade. They also nest in the slot canyons, high up out of the reach of small tortoises, but hopefully in cracks low enough to avoid probing raven bills.
So life has been here for thousands upon thousands of years. There are a great many unanswered questions, for example how did these uniquely adapted creatures survive the ice age when, apparently, the top of the mesa may have been dusted with ice? Fortunately we still have time to ask these questions for aside from at least one brief invasion this island in the sky has been left alone. Protected from man by looking uninteresting until the era of the rock climbers started some fifty years ago. Fortunately it is owned as a part of a vast private ranch that does not allow in visitors and is fiercely protective of their as a heritage for themselves and all mankind. Previously they've never even allowed in researchers for fear of word of this mysterious world getting out and their small attempts to fortify it against the modern world being overwhelmed.
Until now Tortoise Ranch remains obscurely named to outsiders. Now, though, they are raising money to create better defenses and to learn more about what this high isolated world needs to survive the modern one. To that end this is the first camera crew to ever visit this place.
The Darwin's Island Meme: Imagine an island or other isolated place of no more than a few hundred square kilometers (no bigger than about Elba, 224 sq km). Then start adding species from wherever and imagine how they might evolve in isolation. Then post descriptions to your journal. Inspired by the creative book After Man by Dougal Dixon.
If one were brave enough to climb to the top there you'd see a gentle bowl. It is made of a heavy black stone, but you won't see that foundation much of anywhere but the very edge. High clouds that wisp across the dry lands below often have just a little of their moisture caught by this high finger of earth even while they drop nothing on the thirsty plains. The soft dews feed pale turquoise lichens that build up layer upon layer wherever there is enough water until you get something like this. Hard, but brittle stone covered by layer upon layer of a nearly impermeable chocolate colored skin with a thin layer of bluish life on top building it ever thicker. It is like having a roofer that adds another half millimeter every wet year. In places the layers go down a full half-meter representing the thousand or so wet years since the end of the last ice age some 4,700 years ago.
Further down into the bowl where water starts to collect hardy mosses grow over the lichens crowding them out before in turn grass and a few ancient pines living in the thin soils overtake them. The grass is all a perfect uniform height right down to the small lake. Though perhaps lake is a poor description, anywhere else it would be called a shallow pond. It extends over no more than a square kilometer of the lowest part of the bowl when full. If there is a fierce rain it overflows in a gossamer fall over bank of rock so it grows no larger.
If you stand a while looking you'll soon see why there are so few trees and all the grass is such a uniform height. A scattering of "rocks" move ceaselessly over the bowl, the giant tortoises are forever grazing. Dozens, maybe even hundreds, distant relatives of the ones that graze distant tropical islands. Occasionally they miss one of the bitter pine seedlings and it quickly grows up past their meter long necks to join its relatives as the only living things taller than the tortoises on the mesa.
Some birds nest here safe from the predation of coyotes and desert wolves. Peregrines, hawks, and eagles nest each in their own place in their own way. On one spire to the north an ancient colony of ravens dominates some stony pockets and they exact a fearsome toll upon the tortoise young when they hatch out in the spring. It is just as well, they are a long-lived species and they would soon overwhelm the grasses if more than one or two every decade made it all the way to adulthood. Once at full weight no eagle could hope to lift them up over the rim to dash them on the rocks bellow and before that their beaks are sharp and dangerous to any raven or hawk that would try to torment it into tipping over an edge.
The eagles and peregrines compete for places on the east and south for the early morning sun and warmth through the night. Hardly anyone has ever climbed up to this island in the sky or its two neighbors without the impressive turtles. A band of Indians nearly destroyed them centuries ago and did kill off the ones that lived on the larger mesa 30km south nearer the great river. But they moved on leaving six full-grown tortoises and before discovering the over wintering eggs five hundred years ago.
The last of the six, a great matriarch weighing some 180 kg is making her way across the wide shore to the nameless lake. This is likely to be her last season for she is very tired, but she's still quite able. She was young and lucky when the unknown band came and went one hard winter, but that was so many centuries ago that she is likely now the oldest living animal on earth. After having had a good drink she's ready.
It is high summer and it is time to start preparing a burrow at the base of a tree for the offspring resulting from the short mating season some nine months ago. Digging right down through the meter of soil to the tough rock covering laid down by lichens years ago like ancient roofing tar. The ravens are interested now and trying to get down close to the digging to see what is going on. The females extend their necks to snap at them even as they slowly keep digging under the pines. Then if all has gone right they'll fit themselves tightly in and lay between two and fifty eggs the size of racquetballs. Then they'll cover them all up again before the dawn and the corbids return.
This is not the end of the trouble from ravens though. They'll scratch and peck at any nest as long as they can figure out where they are. Many are despoiled even before the tortoises are compelled to hibernate. The vast majority of the eggs are lost in this way, but enough survive that each spring a few miracles come forth. Each year and as many as twenty-four new turtles to join the dozens that already roam the small basin.
The ravens that nest on the mesas are not a separate species, but they are distinguished from their non-desert cousins by a blue feather on each wingtip. They mate in fall so their eggs can be laid at the start of the winter rains and take advantage of the variable bounty of the desert lands. They are affectionate and care for their two young very carefully. Despite this there are good years and bad years. Some years, as has happened for the last seven, the rains do no come heavily enough. The nameless lake shrinks away to nothing forcing the one species of frog to hibernate and the shrimp to lay eggs that can survive desiccation. Meanwhile unless the wolves have good kills the young ravens are doomed without heavy rains, and maybe even with them for there have been seven long years of drought prior to this season.
Meanwhile the tortoises have taken a different route. They can survive dry, but must hibernate through the cold months so their young hatch out in February when there is almost no danger of frost even at this lofty altitude. Then in a mad scramble they will head to hide in the muddy lake if available or shelter under trees and in slot canyons making up a full tenth of the north side of the mesa. Though close to the unkindness of ravens they are mostly safe as the tiny south facing canyons are nearly inaccessible to predator and adult alike. They are as safe as they can be on their own. Still maybe only one out of every five hundred laid will survive to the safe size of 10 kg when even the golden eagles can no longer lift these slow moving omnivores and they no longer have the shelter under the pines for reasons other than to be more comfortable in the shade.
There is the problem of food though. Lichens and mosses are not the most nutritious of foods and unwittingly in eating through the layers of dead moss on the sides of the slot canyons they are making them vulnerable to erosion by water and widening them as well. Someday the tortoises may no longer be safe from the curious ravens and will depend completely on the lake being full enough for them to hide in and just as dependent on good rains as raven young. But not yet and this immature raven goes away disappointed.
Springtime brings a buzz of activity. The winter rains and the occasional snow are forgotten. The nameless lake is full and even if there are no summer thunderstorms it will last as at least a puddle right through November. The tortoises have emerged from their communal non-nesting burrows and are busily clipping the grasses and flowers once again. The literal buzzing is coming from the solitary bees trying to get enough nectar for their young before a sharp tortoise beak clips every tender flower. They seem to especially relish the opportunity of a little insect protein even if it does come with a brief sting. The winter flowers, not having to face the hard shelled grass trimmers grow tall, but have limited pollination opportunities. The ones blooming after February grow as low to the ground as possible and keep their seeds there as well.
Turtles have crops that can grind up any seed but a few of the specialized Piñon Pines that are endemic to just this mesa. Like the tortoises they can live a very long time, over five thousand years for the last survivor of the end of the ice age. They have evolved to deal with the animal counterparts by having thick-shelled seeds that might survive the grinding of the tortoise crop. Though usually not. Then so ground down, but not digested, and fertilized by tortoise dung it is ready to sprout if it happens to fall in a spot not already shaded by a tree. Then it has to survive being eaten again once it sprouts, most are eaten of course giving the basin its golf course like appearance with only the occasional full-grown tree.
But for now the solitary bees are buzzing about the low growing flowers and building their own nests before plants are eaten or fade. They also nest in the slot canyons, high up out of the reach of small tortoises, but hopefully in cracks low enough to avoid probing raven bills.
So life has been here for thousands upon thousands of years. There are a great many unanswered questions, for example how did these uniquely adapted creatures survive the ice age when, apparently, the top of the mesa may have been dusted with ice? Fortunately we still have time to ask these questions for aside from at least one brief invasion this island in the sky has been left alone. Protected from man by looking uninteresting until the era of the rock climbers started some fifty years ago. Fortunately it is owned as a part of a vast private ranch that does not allow in visitors and is fiercely protective of their as a heritage for themselves and all mankind. Previously they've never even allowed in researchers for fear of word of this mysterious world getting out and their small attempts to fortify it against the modern world being overwhelmed.
Until now Tortoise Ranch remains obscurely named to outsiders. Now, though, they are raising money to create better defenses and to learn more about what this high isolated world needs to survive the modern one. To that end this is the first camera crew to ever visit this place.
The Darwin's Island Meme: Imagine an island or other isolated place of no more than a few hundred square kilometers (no bigger than about Elba, 224 sq km). Then start adding species from wherever and imagine how they might evolve in isolation. Then post descriptions to your journal. Inspired by the creative book After Man by Dougal Dixon.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-09 05:48 am (UTC)After Man is fun, I've it tucked away somewhere.
One possible error - venerable to water erosion - is that supposed to be "vulnerable"?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-09 05:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-09 05:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-09 06:26 am (UTC)Why do you think you need a co-writer - what is it you are looking for? It seems to me that you do pretty well on your own.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-09 06:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-09 07:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-09 07:10 am (UTC)