Joshua trees are not really trees
And other surprises about life in the desert
Hot and sweating, I leaned against the cool granite wall on the shaded side of the canyon and sucked down more water. On the opposite wall, an array of prickly, twisted, gnarly and beautiful desert botanicals tucked into every nook and cranny. The longer I looked, the more I saw.
Tubby red and gold barrel cactus, bushy pencil plants without leaves, skittering lizards, lemon-lime churro that look fuzzy enough to pet (don’t try that.) Sagebrush dull in color but vibrant in scent, tall angular ocotillos, crusty lichens layering the boulders around burrows and snake holes.
The moment gave me a flashback to a scuba dive along a reef wall, years ago in Tahiti. That day, we swam across a shallow field of sand with occasional swaths of seagrass and not much else. We headed toward the watery horizon marked by a darker shade of teal. Then the edge of that sandy field suddenly dropped away — one minute the ocean floor was a few feet below me and the next minute I was looking into an abyss the color of twilight. My stomach lurched and my adrenaline surged with a fear of falling — it felt like I’d just stepped off a cliff. Until my brain remembered that I was in the water, not dry air, with full control of my buoyancy.
