High on a mountain pass outside Tucson, the saguaro cacti were thick for miles. How can anyone survive there? I imagined the hundreds of skeletons hidden in the landscape and the thousands of mice living off those bones. It’s crazy!The inhospitable landscape appears lifeless. However, I know better; with some rain, it will come alive. The sight of cactus stretching into Mexico makes many arguments seem trivial and spiteful.
The Sonoran Desert extends further west, the Mojave Desert to the north and west, and the Great Basin to the north, extending into Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado. I’ve visited all of them, but I enjoyed the Mojave the most, with the Joshua trees standing out like giant figures. I missed the tarantula mating season on that visit; I imagined tens of thousands of those arachnids running down the park roads. Creepy, but cool.
In the Sonoran Desert, I went looking for rattlesnakes, but they’re reclusive and only found paloverde trees, creosote trees, and wild blooms in bloom from recent rains.
The Mojave showed me what flash floods mean when water surged down the arroyo formed by dry creek beds outside the airport in Palm Springs. Amongst the green of the fairways pockmarked in the desert landscape, resorts with happy tourist basking in the desert winter splashing in the pools and hitting some golf balls with abandon.
Creatures large and mostly small living by the sunbaked locals and tourist. Oblivious to each other, one looking for some warm and recreation, while the other is just trying to survive. Everything is in bloom with a recent rainfall and at the resorts, irrigation heads peek out of the ground wasting that most precious of all, water. Golfers on course, the spa is doing box office business for those seeking health and renewal. A yoga class is in full swing folks getting those kinks out in bodies long since stiff and achey. And I taking it all in sitting neck high in a heated pool. Nature is awe-inspiring.
