Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Arizona Landscape

After 11 months of traveling around this country, I have learned not to trust my preconceived notions of a place. I am not sure what I expected of Arizona before we arrived but it certainly wasn’t this. This is a landscape of surprise. The sun that pours in early each morning doesn’t have a harsh quality as expected but rather the promise of something that can be mine if I get up early enough to beat the heat. As a tried and true despiser of heat, I am happy to oblige!
     Bridgeeta, (who is now being referred to as the desert queen), and I make coffee and come out to the patio that is cool and shady. The mourning doves are singing their song, as are at least four other kinds of birds I don’t recognize. As we sit down, all the birds seem to disappear and it is only upon patient waiting that the whole area comes alive again. Suddenly a whole group of birds with curved bills appear and began digging at the dry ground, scratching out some unseen delicious bug. A  family of five Gembler quail come walking out of the huge prickly pear cactus near us, their fancy curly cue looking like church bonnets from a century past. They too scratch and search through what seemed to be barren dry earth and come up with a mouthful of breakfast, all under the not so watchful eyes of the Desert Queen, who can’t be bothered to lunge unless they brazenly pass within a beardhair’s length. Something they quickly attempt to do, no fear here.
     Last night as we watched the stars a coyote crossed through the site following the calls of his family just off from the light of our camper. The lizards here are especially busy running to and fro at any given moment, much bigger than their Florida counterparts. It’s a busy place to be, here in the Arizona Desert.
     As we always do, the boys and I have been studying the local plant life as part of our curriculum and the junior badge program. We are able to give names to the plants that seemed so extraordinarily foreign upon our arrival.   


The Ocitillo in particular seemed alien and now we see it everywhere, in some cases as living fences and surrounding the graves up on BootHill in Tombstone.

The prickly pear grow massive, in many cases the size of a VW Bug. The tips sprout flowers, not tiny and delicate but fist sized and vibrant, the colors ranging from blush to yellow to bright orange. The plant life has found clever ways to adapt to the heat and lack of water. 
     The Palo Verde tree, hated by my in-laws as it makes a lovely but problematic carpet of yellow blossoms all over their yard to be tracked in by the kids, has evolved into a Jack-of-all-trades. It has a vibrant green bark that allows it to create it’s own food even when there isn’t enough water to sustain leaves. Even when times are tough, it finds a way to power on!


The barrel cactus here are sprouting a ring of bright yellow fruit when it isn’t plucked off by nocturnal ringtails. There are agave plants that rival their Prickly pear neighbors in size. 
     

But the king of all is clearly the Saguaro. A row of them at the entrance are twice as tall as our rig, pushing 30 feet. One has 13 arms, making it a contender in our arm counting contest. We know from our studies that the first arms don’t arrive until the plant is 75 and they can live to be 200 years old


I am in no hurry to leave this area but the daily heat, pushing into the 90’s even in April, is a stark reminder that this beauty comes with a price if you stick around long enough. This has been a very surprising trip into the desert. I didn’t anticipate the
abundance of life and beauty here. There are definitely rewards for sticking it out in this arid landscape.