Spirited Survival of SONORA.

• Author: Nabhan, Gary

Age-old traditions shaped by the land face winds of change in this starkly beautiful state of northwestern Mexico

"La vida nortena" is a frugal yet fruitful way of life that may be vanishing as fast as the very desert and thorn-scrub habitats on which it is based. It is also a way of seeing, a way of recognizing beauty and utility in the often meager resources of a land known for its "hunger weather." And, as the many indigenous and Catholic ceremonies of Sonora attest, it is a way of finding the spirit in the materials and matters closest to home. Sonoran spirituality is not other-worldly--not an awkward transplant from another clime and time. Instead, it is a dramatization of the struggles between good and evil, between modesty and excess, between darkness and light, between bounty and poverty, that take place in and around the rancherias, or scattered settlements, everywhere within the region. That spirit rises like a Spanish mustang out of a dust cloud found on a shimmering desert noon.

Because this earth-stained spirit does rear up in the eloquent photographs of David Burckhalter, many of them disturb or delight us more than those we might get from an academically trained visual anthropologist who set out to record objectively the material world of a particular culture. These are not isolated icons, polished museum pieces, if you will. They are dusty and sweaty, overflowing with people and animals jockeying for position within each frame. You can tell by the warmth in the smiles caught dead-on in these photographs that the man behind the camera is welcomed not as a foreign guest or tourist, but more in the way a distant relative might be. His hosts assume that he knows enough of the terrain and the history of the territory to be treated as an insider; neither backtracking nor buffering is needed. They are not expecting him to glamorize their portraits, to use trick lighting or subtle backdrops to make them look better. They know that he likes them for who they are, not for who they might become or who they know.

Nevertheless, these images do speak of a changing terrain. Buffel grass has displaced native desert scrub. Hereford and Sebu cattle have taken over the shrubby pastures once browsed by the criollo corriente (longhorn-related cattle breed) livestock introduced by missionaries three centuries ago. Chew pickups have sent the hand-built carretas (two-wheeled carts) into the woodpiles. Walking plows and oxen are hardly found except...