beauty desert peace

I love the desert. Except when I am driving on the ragged coast, there is no place else that feels more like home. The dry air, the strong wind, the smell of the earth and this incredible vegetation. Each landscape has its own sense of beauty, and I appreciate the lushness of the bushes in New Jersey's tropical rain forest summer, and the tall green trees of West Virginia and the green grasses of Kentucky, etc. But there is just something about the desert. I had never experienced it in spring and I was OVERWHELMED with the beauty.
I am not saying that the desert is the MOST beautiful place in the world. It just calls me in a way that other landscapes don't. It inspires in me a sense of belonging. As soon as I take my first breath in the desert air, I feel calmer, different. Maybe it is because it is a place where you need to be strong and flexible and resourceful to survive. It almost, ALMOST, made me want to go out and buy a camera. I have lived without having to try to fit something into a little viewfinder for so long, I am not able to control digital cameras when someone asks me to take a photo with one. Yet, I did long for someway to capture these beauties.
These photos really do no justice at all to the staggering beauty.
I was thoroughly enjoying each new variation on life in a place where you would least expect such a rush of color and pride. It is a good thing that I was running because I had to resist the temptation to pick one of each flower to press and keep as if you could somehow harness their energy and save it for later. I kept telling myself to live in that moment. Enjoy those beautiful flowers and all their lives embody in the place they needed to stay.
These (below) were my favorites, even though it seems against the law of nature to choose one over the others. These caught my eye as we were driving to Mount Charleston.
There was just something about the hardiness of the stalk and the seeming vulnerability of the bloom. And, well, that gorgeous color. So, even though the photos dominate my post (thanks to the blogger.com god(dess) for protecting my post from crashing as I uploaded all these pics!), these are not at all like the real thing. I wish you all the chance to get out there and see the desert in bloom sometime in your life.

I am looking forward to making a summer trip to Utah and then another fall trip to see how the seasons change the desert!

***I borrowed all these pictures from a wildflowers in the desert websites. Enjoy!