Larry Stevens, the most creative, capable and diligent field biologist ever to work in the Grand Canyon, humbly confesses how little wed may actually know about arid landscapes:
“I remain appalled at my own ignorance [about deserts]. As a well-intentioned student and representative of life’s supposedly highest form of consciousness, you would suppose that I could figure out most everything out here, in the supposedly simplest of biomes… Yet I can scarcely understand how my own portion of life’s grand lineage arrived here to see this miracle… Yes I will stay here, remain dumber than a doorknob and mull full of it than the Christmas bird, until I drop. And yes, the dry dust I too am soon to become likely will blow northeast, always seeking rain.”
