New Museum Exhibit Showcases Desert Life

James Harman is still trying to “Stay out of there. Don’t go. The Great American Desert is an awful place. People get hurt, get sick, get lost out there. Even if you survive, which is not certain, you will have a miserable time.”

--from “The Journey Home,”

by Edward Abbey

Novelist and naturalist Ed Abbey sarcastically uses such general misconceptions about deserts in his book “The Journey Home” to scare off those he thinks don’t belong: developers, off-road vehicle users and land abusers.

The San Diego Natural History Museum has a different approach. Museum scientists would rather break down typical desert fears and replace them with a sense of the need to preserve North America’s deserts through education.

The Chapman Grant Hall of Desert Ecology, a new, permanent exhibit in the museum, provides visitors a controlled and close-up glimpse of varied desert topography and the habitat’s diverse ecosystems.

“We want to break down peoples’ fears about the desert,” said Judy Diamond, deputy director for public programs for the museum. “A lot of people think of the desert as this barren wasteland and prefer to spend their free time at the beach. We’re trying to show that the desert is rich with life, and, if it’s preserved, it will be with us forever.”

Phase 1 of the project, which opens April 16, is a scaled replica of the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in San Diego County. The walk-through model showcases wildlife and plant life able to endure desert extremes.

Live scorpions, tarantulas and sun spiders lurk in glass aquariums, encased in rock walls. A stuffed specimen of the rare Desert Big Horn Sheep stands against make-believe rock slopes, and the nocturnal ringtail cat sneaks down a tree to drink from an underground spring at a palm oasis. A painted 120-foot diorama, depicting sections of the Anza-Borrego Desert, acts as backdrop.

All animals in the exhibit are stuffed ones that the museum had in its collection. The botanical specimens have all been taken from the park, with permission, and preserved either by freeze-drying or using a preservative liquid.

Visitors to the exhibit get a sense of walking through a desert wash that from time to time fills with the howls of coyotes or the melodic song of the flycatcher bird. Pressing colored boxes on a small television screen triggers sounds, pictures and written descriptions of the desert landscape.

A video disc, hidden behind a simulated sandstone wall, holds data for 100 animal and plant species.

Just about the only things the museum staff hasn’t provided in this realistic exhibit are the feelings and smells. Visitors are left to their own imaginations when it comes to the sweet desert aroma of creosote bushes, wild flowers and the dry, intense heat.

Diamond said many people view the desert as a dangerous environment where only rattlesnakes can survive and lost explorers die of heat exhaustion and thirst.

“Because of people’s distrust of the desert, we wanted to show the beautiful aspects and the wildlife that most people aren’t able to see even if they do visit the desert,” Diamond said. The desert is depicted in the spring, when it is blooming.

Ocotillo cacti with bright red flowers and yellow brittle bushes are representative of the season and soften the harsher forms of desert life in the exhibit.

“There is an amazing amount of life in the desert,” Diamond said. “The kangaroo rat is an incredible desert animal. It gets all its water from eating dry grain.”

The project took three years to get off the ground, including the painstaking process of installing the plants, said Bill Coleman, chairman of the exhibits department.

“Preserving the plants took the longest amount of time,” Coleman said. “Each plant had to be re-painted after the freeze-dry process, and all the flower petals were made out of paper.

“We’ve really had a lot of help from people outside of the museum while researching the project. Botanists in the area, San Diego State professors and park rangers were of great use.”

Phase 2 of the desert hall, scheduled to open this fall, will offer adventurous patrons a chance to feel the desert. It will will feature a collage of all North American deserts, a field guide that can be used in the real desert and a room where children and adults can touch and hold live snakes.

“It is our job at the Natural History Museum to educate people on how to protect our deserts,” Coleman said. “With our growing population, more and more people have to be taught to understand the desert. If they don’t understand it, or dislike it or fear it, they’ll ruin it.”