Desert Spring

It's spring in the desert.

We got a quarter-inch of rain Monday, and briefly lost satellite television service just around tip-off in the Golden State Warriors Game 7 NBA win over the OKC Thunder. And we heard plenty of thundering. Saw beautiful lightning, too.

There's a unique scent to the desert receiving the rain it has so longed for. Lightning crackled above the dark peaks. The cat hid under the guestroom bed. The birds, afterwards, seemed a little tipsy.
 

A week or two earlier a huge hailstorm made the world suddenly look wintry; and while it did no real harm to us, it slammed our neighbor. She had about a dozen leaks, each with a bucket or bowl under it, catching the drops. Her front yard was a stew of various-sized hailstones and the leaves and small branches they'd taken down. At Saturday's market some favorite vendors were absent or looked at us mournfully across tables devoid of vegetables.

Recently, a dozen tiny Gambel's quail chicks wandered in for a drink. Birds are sitting on their nests, ready to defend them. The Texas horned lizard appears to be scouting the same area where she hid eggs a few years ago. A baby rabbit so tiny we wondered how it was out alone turned up in the garage.

One day we watched a bull snake climb up into the cypress where we've often seen nests.

I don't think he got any eggs for breakfast, but as he lingered near the tree two curved-bill thrashers hopped up and down, scolding him, until, finally, he slithered away.

 

Two days later a young roadrunner stood on the railing of the deck out back. When he

flew up into one of the ash trees, a desert cardinal chased him away. (Their nest sits in the next tree.) Later a couple of birds chased away a golden eagle who'd wandered too close. 

We love this life. The desert creatures and plants are a welcome relief from various human concerns. There's an elemental nature to life here, a rawness: the lightning isn't hidden by buildings or forests, and we can see storms long before they reach us; and the birds and animals live out their dramas right in front of us. They painstakingly build a nest, then might helplessly watch something eat their offspring.

Life's fragility is more obvious here. We're perched on this naked earth as precariously as the desert cardinals' nest in the ash. The life-giving water we greet so joyfully can also destroy whatever lingers in its path as it rushes down an arroyo. 

And then there's our drought, one that won't just disappear if that reality-TV guy denies it as he did the drought in California. Even if he promises to abrogate water agreements requiring us to send much of the Rio Grande water to the “rapists and murderers” down in Mexico, we're still suffering a drought and have begun drawing on long-term reserves of water that won't be replenished any time soon. 

 

Nor will withdrawing from climate-change agreements (as he's promised to do) make long-term climate changes magically disappear. Refusing to acknowledge a rattlesnake's warning doesn't prevent a bite.

But for now our little patch of desert is our refuge. We can sit listening to the birds in the morning, and watch blossoms dance in the breeze, or just contemplate the magnificent, billowy white clouds that gather in late afternoon – then marvel at a multitude of stars (despite increasing light pollution).

If I refuse to read the newspaper, let alone write a column, will all the problems and politicians disappear?

                                                -30-

[The above column appeared in the Las Cruces Sun-News this morning, Sunday, 5 June.  It will also be on the KRWG-TV website presently under News-->Local Viewpoints.  I welcome comments, questions, and criticism there or on this blog.]

[Black-throated sparrows are some of our most consistent companions, and a lot more courageous than larger birds about hanging around near us.  (If I sit at the table on the deck, so that the white-winged doves stay away, the sparrows are the first to take advantage, feeding a few feet from me.)  Dael discovered a nest they'd built near the well house -- on the ground, in a clump of grass at the base of a Bird-of-Paradise.  We worried about their judgment.  Sure enough, after I'd written this column but before it appeared, the three eggs had disappeared.]

  

 

Desert Willow

Mexican Hat

Hesperaloe

Texas Horned Lizard

Bat-Faced Cuphea