Now is the time of year when most of the ocotillo’s barbed shafts are silver. The thin ones shine brighter in the winter sun than any of the other grays on the mountain. Dead mesquite trunks are dull by comparison. So are the boulders.
On these rugged slopes ocotillo do not grow straight but bend away from the mountain. Their shafts stretch and twist into strange shapes making them the most exotic and improbable living things on this harsh land.
Where they shoot up out of the sparse soil, clusters of rock often encase the base. For a few inches there is a single trunk and then the shafts bend out. Sometimes there will be chutes but most of the ribbed shafts are free of the adornment of branches.
On this part of the mountain where they take the day’s hottest sun ocotillo are most often found where there is some shade. And since shade is hard to find, so is the ocotillo. Only a few protective shadows come slanting down these slopes.
Some of the ribbed ocotillo stalks are brown. Close to the ground even a rare burst of green appears. But it is the glimmer of silver that is most striking against all this dry brown of the west, dried out dirt speckled by the sun.
All of the small, delicate clumps of grass have long since shriveled and been blown away. It is winter and there has been no rain for months.
This not the tourist’s blooming desert. No visitors explore the quiet monochromatic mountainside. Nobody sees these silver shafts of the improbable ocotillo glisten in the soft afternoon sun
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Very nice prose. There is yet another career for you. Let’s do a book.