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Tuesday, March 22, 2011

What Is It About A Desert?

The foothills trail around Tortugas (Tortoise) Mountain
For me, it's the austerity of the desert landscape, the ability to see the very essence of things.  Desert plants do not obscure, but enhance geological formations--a thin veneer of life on a rocky substrate.

The naturalist Joseph Wood Krutch wrote in The Voice of the Desert:  "The nude mountains reveal their contours, or veil them as lightly as the late Greek sculptors veiled their nudes, because only near the summits of the mountains can anything tall enough to obscure the outlines grow."
Hills like tan elephants

Darkness looms on the eastern horizon

The southwestern flank of Tortugas Mountain


Clouds partially obscure the rugged Organ Mountains



An arroyo at the base of the mountain
The rolling desert foothills

3 comments:

Jenny-B said...

Beautiful pics . . . thanks for sharing.

Bob said...

Beautiful Rob!

Reminds me of my all too brief stay in Phoenix a few years back. I couldn't care less about the city itself, but the Sonoran desert on the slopes of Camelback was magic to me.

Still working on convincing my wife to get her passport, just so I can show her.

Thanks for sharing these pics Rob. They make me mightily sick of our Canadian winter :-)

Dr. K said...

Great photos and writing.

Sunny, Windy, Cold

1st 2:  slightly different views of yucca and the Organs We really cut the hike short this morning.  The strong wind and near-brutal cold ga...