It's the Weekend: Plants and Birds and Rocks and Things

In my opinion, A Horse with No Name will always be one of the best desert songs written:

"...After two days in the desert sun

My skin began to turn red

After three days in the desert fun

I was looking at a river bed

And the story it told of a river that flowed

Made me sad to think it was dead

You see I've been through the desert on a horse with no name..."

(Bunnell)

While the Out There may not have the look of a classic desert, there being too much plant life, and the river that once flowed can only be imagined in certain areas as you cross from west to east, or back the other way, the sense of dryness is persistent. Sure the large Lemonade berry shrubs remain green, and will throughout the remainder of the summer, but that singular vibrant sign of life has pretty much been drained from everything else. Other than a few randomly located exceptions the California buckwheat has turned to rust, the grasses have dried to the same color as the sun-baked earth, sage is withering and on its last legs their stems broken to reveal hollowed cores, even the cactus with their pincushion paddle-board pads, and the cholla, are beginning to wrinkle and burn. One thing that does seem to revel at this time of year, though, is that plant with the tiny pink and yellow flowers (they look a heck of a lot more purple through sunglass lenses than they do through a camera lens). They are easy to overlook, especially since the rest of plant from which they spring, appears just as drained and lifeless as everything around them but, if you stop and let your eyes adjust to the sudden lack of movement, they are there, a surprise waiting to be discovered. 

Discovered. Speaking of which, I discovered the county line, or at least a marker locating that boundary. It is pretty much right where expected, middle of the wash. Someone, maybe a survey crew, must have been looking for it, since the brush around it has all been cut back, and the ground around it dug up. I've passed it multiple times over the past couple weeks before finally deciding to stop for a look. It is not hard to imagine there are more such markers in the Out There, hidden away, overgrown, buried.

"On the first part of the journey

I was looking at all the life

There were plants and birds and rocks and things

There was sand and hills and rings...

The heat was hot and the ground was dry

But the air was full of sound..."

It may seem like most of life out there has dried up and blown away right now, but if you care to look you can still find it - in the rush of a covey of quail, the plaint of dove, the throaty cackle of crow, the rattle of snake, the color of summer wildflower. It's the weekend, get out and see what you can see.