Another spring has arrived in the Arizona Desert and after a wet winter, we are the recipients of not only a splash of beauty but an explosion of pollen from all that flowering. I find it too easy to go days without stopping to closely examine what’s going on with the small details of life around me. In a couple of weeks, much that is now colorful will return to the brown hues that most see on first blush. Today the weather forecast calls for the temperature to hit 99 degrees or 37 Celsius, but that is the temperature as measured at a particular spot in Phoenix so I’m certain that we’ll easily see over 100 degrees here in the middle of April.
The crazy armor of cactus boggles my mind as to why some of it is so dense with spines. Like those attracted to leaning into a waterfall as though drawn by the rushing water, there’s an attraction to placing my hand into a pocket where the dense spines of the cactus seem to invite me to see if I can escape unscathed. Then there’s the javelina that eats the pads of the Prickly Pear cactus, spines and all, and the Cactus Wren that builds their nests in these pockets never seeming to snag a wing on a needle-sharp spine.
The ocotillo for the better part of the year looks like sticks jutting out of the earth, but in springtime they are flush with green leaves and, for a short while, this incredible burst of red reaching far into the sky. I wonder how many people who live in Phoenix or visit take the time to look closely at the details that make up the bigger picture?
Google has failed me in trying to identify the tree I photographed here. If Caroline is able to figure it out I’m hoping she’ll share with all of us just what this thorny tree branch is known as. What I do know about it is that I love the color of its bark with its chapped brownish-gray exterior splitting to show the reddish cracks just under the surface.
On the other side of this berm is a golf course where the Phoenix Open takes place every January. I should have taken a photo of this a few weeks ago when everything was still green. I suppose it’s part of being in the moment that when something strikes our eye we fall into a kind of trance and drift into appreciation of just how beautiful that thing is. We allow our minds to photograph the rare scene and often forget that it won’t last forever. Even a photo of what the thing is, does little for the person who never saw it with their own eyes. At best these images work as reminders to those who were witnesses and to others it is but a hint of what reality has to offer.