Spring's Wildflowers

NOTES FROM A Wildflower Journal

Sunrise: A vast island of owl-clover, goldpoppy, and lupine blooms where a dry wash unravels to two channels beside the camp. The sun rims a ridge. The colors twinkle in the growing light. The horizon beckons. What wonders Nature has hidden behind those greened hills where sentinel saguaros stand watch beneath the dome of bright sky . . . .

(LEFT) Desert-marigolds produce their lemony blooms in spurts over extended periods. On the horizon, the Superstition Mountains can be seen.

(ABOVE) Goldpoppies provide a striking color contrast to purple lupine.

(RIGHT) Long-blooming Indian paintbrush colors the desert in summer. GARY LADD (FOLLOWING PANELS, PAGES 24 AND 25) A playa in Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge is filled with orange globemallow and purple sand-verbena.

(PAGES 26 AND 27) Orange poppies bloom in the Tonto Basin.

Midday: Stalks of purple lupine mingle with goldpoppies. A mass display of desert-marigolds carpets the wilderness floor. The rising wind carries the desert's exotic perfume. My boots crunch the sandstone gravels of seas that vanished before time. And somewhere far away a bird cries, a lonely call like the wail of a train plowing through the night....

(PRECEDING PANEL, PAGES 28 AND 29) Yellow poppies and purple lupine cover a hillside near San Carlos.

(ABOVE) Near Red Rock Canyon, a field is cloaked in owl-clover. BOTH BY ROBERT G. MCDONALD.

(OPPOSITE PAGE, ABOVE) The night-blooming cereus produces rare blossoms so fragrant they can be smelled from a distance of 100 feet. DEBS METZONG (OPPOSITE PAGE, BELOW) Yellow and white poppies crowd a hillside in Picacho Peak State Park. INGE MARTIN

Sunset: Owl-clover accents the rough red hue of the sandstone along the canyon bottom. In the soft light and deepening shadow, the beauty stuns me. Midnight: A light breeze carries wildflower essences over wind-sculpted dunes. I walk among thickets of verbena, primrose, ajo-lily, and marigold. Under a full moon, nectar-feeding bats and hawk moths leave tousled flower heads in their wake . . . .

I confess, even after half a lifetime on the desert, I am still amazed each spring when the wildflowers appear. One of the true wonders of the natural world is how these beautiful, delicate transients manage to survive where Nature often plays cruel tricks: endless drought that sucks dry the very earth to drift away in mountainous clouds of horizon-dissolving dust; bludgeoning monsoon thunderstorms that rip and tear and quickly dissipate, killing frosts that strike at night and turn the desert brown and sere and dead. Yet, survive they do. Thank God.