EACH TO THEIR OWN

Desert Wildflower unknown

DESERT TRUMPET

Arizona's LONG NOSED SNAKE non-poisonous but darn if I'd touch it.

PALLID WINGED GRASSHOPPER

EXERTED INDIAN PAINTBRUSH

SUN SPIDER or WIND SCORPION 

Neither a spider or scorpion, classed as an arachnid---ain't touching this one either.

WHITE HEART MOTH

DESERT POPPY

The stocky, rugged man, ruddy of complexion with an averting glaze behind thick glasses and clip on shades walks the road on which our rig faces. I see him coming and go out to meet him. We pump fists and exchange names.

“Howdy, I’m Art from Colorado,” his glaze deflects toward his dusty boots, sold our home north of Boulder when the time was right and been full-timing, yanking an old 5^th wheel trailer around the country since,” He continues without so much as one solid breath. Art is an intense talker without abrasive volume; I listen. His attention now seems to be affixed to a nearby, flowering ocotillo cactus. “My kids got it tough today and their kids ain’t got a chance, we’ve done gone and used it all up, hell-bent on good times, thinking, or not thinking, that we would ever run out of what runs our economy, oil and gas, he says “Oil and gas” with great emphasis on gas. Art finally takes a big breath and without hardly missing a beat, continues, now gazing off into cotton clouds that seem to be sitting on a far mountain peak, “ I’ve got a little money invested in natural gas but that Ken Salazar (Our Secretary of Interior)  has put the kibosh on new exploration, wants to make the whole of Colorado one big, no drilling, wilderness area. I’ve got nothing against those greenie tree-huggers, mind-you, but this country runs on energy, that’s what made it great.” He gives me a quick, sharp look eye to eye and then inspects a large, nearby saguaro cactus with a preening wren perched atop. “How does anyone expect this country to get back on track if we don’t get our own energy from our own land,” He poses the question but gives me no time to answer. “It’s like having something (He’s talking about the gas reserves on his property.) and the government not letting you use or sell it; It ain’t right.”

I wanted to ask him about our species being the only animal detrimental to the health of our planet; about our bent passion of surplusage pollution, about the need for clean alternative energy; primitive areas and wilderness where humans are able to recharge their personal batteries and find the genesis of our being in places untouched by industrial intervention. Our unique string of chromosomes; the genome that must be revisited or suffer devolution.

I looked at his crimsoned face and thought better of  *smacking the hornet's nest* by posing any “tree-hugger” questions, he had already riled himself enough without my assistance.