Flowers of memory

Because of the unseasonal rains, the "flower fields" outside Borrego Spring have burst into bloom the way they usually only do in the spring. This was a chance those of us who visit the area only in winter and summer never get, so we took a day trip to see them on the eve of our return to New York. They're familiar from photos my parents have shared, as well as many featured in the Anza-Borrego Desert Wonders facebook group of which I'm a member, but here they really were! 

Beyond the flagship pink desert sand verbenas, white dune primroses and yellow desert sunflowers we found a dozen other flowers too (like the marvels above), though none making as big a splash. Besides the fact that verbena-primrose-sunflower trifecta seem to appear only in a few places (two are marked with a flower sign on the official Anza Borrego map), the most striking thing was something none of the photos had shown - the view from above. The verbenas and primroses spread in all directions from a single point, verbenas sprawling opportunistically along the contours of the ground, primroses with a circular symmetry reminiscent of straw stars. I had something to give back to the group!

The desert lily, the Facebook group's holy grail, seemed to be blooming too, so we asked a docent at the Visitor's Center if there was somewhere not too remote where we might find some. She directed us to a simple campground some miles beyond the famous flower fields, where she'd seen some ready to bloom on Saturday, though she couldn't promise anything. They're small, she warned us. Desert lilies creep out of barren-looking sand with tentacle-like leaves, which appear singly and doubly before buds emerge. We saw many just starting before spotting our first buds - spent! Soon we happened on others getting ready to bloom and finally what turned out to be a half dozen that were in bloom. The flowers have a lovely sweet scent, but you need to put your face close to the ground to smell it. After a while, we started noticing desert lilies popping up in many places - they're a distinctive blue-green.

I was buzzed as we drove back to my parents' house on the coast. How fortunate to have had a chance to see these glories! (Even in spring they bloom only when - if - it rains and only last for a short time.) But then I had a strange worry. Had I really not seen them before? Had we not in fact seen them together just a few years ago? Was I not then glowing just as I was now? 

As those who know me beyond the blog can attest, my memory is not the best. Its gappiness - and my awareness of it - can create some odd and elliptical sensations. Today's species of subjunctive déjà vu is one of them. It seems to show up when I've finally done something I'd long planned or hoped to, perhaps even more specifically something I'd looked forward to announcing I'd finally done... 

Except that, really, I had not expected ever to have a chance to catch the Borrego blooms. I had resignedly contented myself with triangulating from others' photos the way one does with real estate pictures. Maybe I was confused by how closely reality met my unreal expectations! Or intoxicated by the desert lily's perfume. 

As it turns out, I really haven't seen the bloom before (unless perhaps as a child), and certainly not the desert lilies! I have a new question, now that my interaction is again mediated by artfully shot and carefully selected photos, now including my own. That picture of the desert lily above: did one of the left-side leaves move?

Desert flora

Anza-Borrego hasn't seen rain since April, but the desert finds a way

Rock torrents

In Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, stumbled on a wondrous place known as Rainbow Canyon for the range of colors of metamorphic rock tumbling through it. The trail goes up eight dry falls (exciting!) in a valley clearly carved over aeons and aeons by powerful masses of water. But the wonder of it is that the snarled stone so often looks like water itself, gliding and folding and swirling and even splashing...

Weather

Looking into (west) and out of (east) a rainstorm over Borrego Springs

Just desert

Barely two days in the desert - Anza-Borrego Desert State Park and the southern part of Joshua Tree National Monument by way of Box Canyon Road - and I'm regrounded. If astronomical events remind us of the remote human past, the desert somehow takes me far deeper. Here you find the layered beds of ancient rivers and oceans jangled by the jostling of tectonic plates, all rolled and carved and cracked and embroidered by flows of absent water and wind. And in the midst of it all this inorganic wonder, life finds a way.

San Diego East County

Some textures of Anza-Borrego & Santa Ysabel Open Space Preserve.

Au revoir, San Diego!

Out the window of the JetBlue flight back to New York, we were afforded a last view of places of delight: Del Mar, at upper left of the photo on the right, with the glorious Pacific, and Borrego Springs, at upper right of the photo below, the start of the desert Southwest. You can find snow in both pictures, too!

Borrego Palm Canyon

bighorn sheep, chuparosa, California's only native palm, and ocotillo!