Boondocking east of Gila Bend AZ, a couple (early) springs ago.
These volcanic knolls aren't exactly Irish hills but that doesn't stop them from trying to be, this spring. They are surrounded by sloping lawns of grass. At the base of the knolls are guard-rings of vicious cholla. The cholla seem to like good drainage.
From the top of the volcanic knoll Coffee Girl surveys her empire.
These volcanic knolls aren't exactly Irish hills but that doesn't stop them from trying to be, this spring. They are surrounded by sloping lawns of grass. At the base of the knolls are guard-rings of vicious cholla. The cholla seem to like good drainage.
From the top of the volcanic knoll Coffee Girl surveys her empire.
I seem to be encountering strange optical effects lately. This sloped valley of hers had plants on it that seemed to be arranged in parallel rows.
On any given day all of central Arizona is covered with "climate change," Phoenix style: smog during the day and light pollution at night. I'm not sure which of these ever-expanding, glowering blobs is more hideous. You must tolerate this if you are going to enjoy the BLM land that is now called the Sonora national monument. The pollution does create some interesting optical effects, like colorful sunsets and this:
It looks more like ridges near the Smoky Mountains, back east.
In one of the dry washes there was a vertical side-wall, knee-high and north-facing, that was covered with lichen that belongs on the Olympic Peninsula. It was a moist cladding, a half-inch thick. This lichen has to survive 115 F temperatures in June. I kneeled down to photograph it and chuckled when the flash came on. Imagine that on a day as bright as this the camera would think a flash was called for! It was slipping into the local mood of time and place. It had developed a sense of humor.
Normally when you think of a micro-climate in the desert, you think of some place like Havasu Falls, near the Grand Canyon. But that is just the standard postcard embodiment of a general principle. Visual beauty, frozen into a postcard, is like once-fresh wit, worn into a cliche or platitude.
There were humble examples of micro-climates everywhere around us that will never make it onto the front cover of the "National Geographic." Sometimes they were commodious gaps in a jumbled pile of volcanic rocks. Someone had once slept there. Usually these little motel rooms opened to the north.
The other day Coffee Girl dug up a mouse. Ever since then I have been thinking about this netherworld under the desert surface. In our modern age we've forgotten what it means to grow things in the ground, to store them in root cellars in the winter, or to draw cool water up from a well in the summer. Just think how cool it must be down there in a Sonoran desert summer.
On any given day all of central Arizona is covered with "climate change," Phoenix style: smog during the day and light pollution at night. I'm not sure which of these ever-expanding, glowering blobs is more hideous. You must tolerate this if you are going to enjoy the BLM land that is now called the Sonora national monument. The pollution does create some interesting optical effects, like colorful sunsets and this:
It looks more like ridges near the Smoky Mountains, back east.
In one of the dry washes there was a vertical side-wall, knee-high and north-facing, that was covered with lichen that belongs on the Olympic Peninsula. It was a moist cladding, a half-inch thick. This lichen has to survive 115 F temperatures in June. I kneeled down to photograph it and chuckled when the flash came on. Imagine that on a day as bright as this the camera would think a flash was called for! It was slipping into the local mood of time and place. It had developed a sense of humor.
Normally when you think of a micro-climate in the desert, you think of some place like Havasu Falls, near the Grand Canyon. But that is just the standard postcard embodiment of a general principle. Visual beauty, frozen into a postcard, is like once-fresh wit, worn into a cliche or platitude.
There were humble examples of micro-climates everywhere around us that will never make it onto the front cover of the "National Geographic." Sometimes they were commodious gaps in a jumbled pile of volcanic rocks. Someone had once slept there. Usually these little motel rooms opened to the north.
The other day Coffee Girl dug up a mouse. Ever since then I have been thinking about this netherworld under the desert surface. In our modern age we've forgotten what it means to grow things in the ground, to store them in root cellars in the winter, or to draw cool water up from a well in the summer. Just think how cool it must be down there in a Sonoran desert summer.
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