Desert Paths

Desert paths are marked by rocks. Here, the path is passing through barren sand—a parking lot actually. But up ahead as it climbs up into the hills there will be cactus, shrubs and fragile desert flowers that need protection. Staying on the marked path is important.

Phrynosoma Modestum

 A Roundtail Horned Lizard 

Thanks to Sondra for identification

I took a walk today. This long stretch of marked path is new since last fall and I followed it for several miles. It winds along the Rio Grande and then climbs above it. I saw a few interesting things. Here is one of them. Don't ask me its name but it sure knows how to blend into the rocky soil.

The most curious thing I saw I did not photograph. A not-so-rare bare-bellied retired lawyer in sun glasses looking at the water.

He had his own take on things. "Somewhere else I'd have to pay $50 for this view. Here it's free. All I have to do is come here. And there is nobody else around."

It's Saturday and the lawyer  has come to town from his home to the south "to drink and dance." He looks out at the water and then seems to look inward.

"It's my destiny," he says, "and I've always known it, one day to be killed by a jealous husband. Why fight destiny?"

There is melancholy about this shirtless barrister, almost a sadness as though something was lost or taken from him a long time ago and he can't remember what it was or how to get it back.

"Those years when I was practicing law," he says. "I was in prison."

Yet being out of prison is no picnic either.

"I like to be alone most of the time," he says. "Then I get these moods in which I have to get out and see people."

I bid good-bye and continue along the path and up into the dusty hills.

We've had good spring rains and the cactus are doing what cactus are supposed to do &mdash suck it in. On the hills above the river, flowers bloom. Lizards scurry. And a hundred tiny footprints in the sand mark the places where daytime and nighttime battles raged, where desert hawks zoomed in search of desert mice.

On the way back I pass a fisherman. "Any luck?" I ask. "Nope," he says. "It's hot for this time of the year, and the river is low."

When I pass the parking lot the lawyer has gone—back at his motel no doubt putting on fresh cloths and heading to the Groovy Gritz, where there's a band tonight. And who knows, maybe some action.