Warning: Ordnance Testing

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Lying on a gray foam mat on a patch of desert pavement in a wide wash in the Owlshead Mountains.
Flashes of chemical light had preceded the dawn. Bomb blasts glided across the salt pan. Only a mountain range separated me and the war games being had, while the scorpions and tarantulas fought over space in the bottom of my left boot. I was sleeping and not at the same time.

Machine gun dreams.

Slowly, the stars turned blue.

Thoughts of instant coffee, powdered milk, and quaker oats, drove me up.

A trail of smoke rose on the horizon. Jet trails crisscrossed the sunrise. A fire still burned.
A U.F.O. crash, I supposed. Military investigation ensuing.

Sun rays crawled across the highway as the rattlesnakes awoke.

Once I got going, I began to sweep the desert with my eyes. It had grown a green carpet full of mysteries, but still, the alien corpses remained elusive.

My mind is a machine, cataloging, naming, counting, measuring. I've lost the ability to think.

Civilization burps.

The future remains uncertain.



I will continue to be involved in many education and restoration projects, working with kids and volunteer groups, on top of all the endangered species monitoring research my boss has recently bestowed upon me. I still continue with my own research, which is becoming rather intense, as every time I go out in the field, I find new annual species that weren't there the day before. My brain is tired. I dream in Latin and have anxiety dreams about cyclical dichotomous keys that eat their own tails and drive me into a dribbling madness.

The desert is bursting forth with green these days. My brain hurts as the number of plant species grows exponentially. Impatiently, I've been dissecting many buds. All the perennial friends I've come to know by their various shades of grey and twisted sun-baked shapes, are also donning new clothes, pulling their trickery over my Jepson keys.

I've been getting deep into the vast and ever growing Geodatabse being compiled from all our records, spreadsheets, herbarium collections, and GIS shapefiles. Working my way into it and adapting my data to fit into it is a daunting task. Many dull days are spent staring at the screen, but it's quite satisfying once everything is communicating smoothly and the entire history of plants in the park is all in one place, spatially represented, and include my own observations. I'll probably lag behind on the office work for a while, seeing that the end of the field season at low elevation looms all too close and the desert plant world's brief frenzy of copulation is ever so short.


There are 64 pictures in this blog. I really cannot help myself.


4.5 months later,

Steve

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Comments

[eric in pdx]

great photos steve!
miss you, man. thanks for posting the beautiful photos - you make me miss the desert in a big way. i loved death valley the two times i went through. see you when you come up to see pdx! eric

[manroot]

geobotanical daydream
fucking awsome!! wish i was there with you my friend, lets trade for a week or so?

[Rowbear]

Desert solitaire
Awesome photos--why should you restrain yourself from snapping thousands more? Is that a watermelon?--and is it the oddest thing you've found there?

[Dell Phavero]

comments make me fuzzy all over
Not sure who comment #2 is by, but hey I'll risk a trade for a couple weeks. As for you other two, I know who you are and where you live. Watch out. I will be back soon. Sorry to make you miss the desert, Eric, but it and a swamp-cooled government apartment are here, when ever you feel like visiting. Bob, AKA sasquatch, that my friend, is nonetheless than a Coyote Melon, a native species, in fact, also known as Cucurbita palmata. Not the strangest thing I have found...that would be something far different that comes deep in the depths of my mind when faced only with my thoughts, the starkness and silence of the desert, and a torpid history... I will not elaborate here, but wair for yet another post. I quit, Steve

[babao]

nice pics
my eyes hurt with beauty of it. yours must be falling out of your head.