Photo Friday: Bring me (to) flowers

In honor of Valentine's Day this week, I'll share some of the many flowers that my husband, rather than bringing to me, and gone with me to see. I like it better that way. (I don't promise I haven't shared any of these photos before).

First the desert. Most of these are from Death Valley or Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in southern California.

Brittlebush, the old reliable. There's usually some in even the driest years.

Brown-eyed primrose

Sand verbena

Phacelia

Beavertail cactus.

Into the heart of the beavertail

Prickly poppy in the Panamint Dunes, Death Valley NP

Desert primrose, Eureka Dunes, East Mojave Natural Preserve.

On second thoughts, I think I'll let the mountains wait until another time! Have a great weekend, and my the flowers in your life be as nice as these.

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2018
As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated!

Review: Caravan, by Dorothy Gilman

 

Title: Caravan
Author: Dorothy Gilman
Publisher: Fawcett Crest, 1993 (original by Doubleday, 1992). 248 pages
Source: I think I found this at the library book sale. Or else on Mom's bookshelves.

Publisher's Summary:

A lushly romantic adventure story set in the North African desert in 1914, told by the impeccable Lady Teal as she reminisces in her London town house about her decidedly peccable past…

With her anthropologist husband murdered and their caravan stolen by fierce Tuareg tribesmen, Caressa’s choices are death or a life of slavery. Concealing her dangerous beauty beneath the faded robes of an Arab boy, she embarks on the adventure of her life, harassed by vicious nomads, slave traders, and the envious witch doctor, Isa. Only a handful of carnival magic tricks stand between her and oblivion. Then she discovers an inner magic so mysteriously compelling that the desert people call her a sorceress. With it she will secure her freedom and discover the love of her life…  


My Review:  I thought I had long since read all of Dorothy Gilman's books, but if I read this one, I don't remember it. So it was kind of fun to find it on my shelf and dive in. 

The blurb calls the story "lushly romantic," but frankly I put it more in the category of adventure. Caressa is a naive schoolgirl of 16 when she marries the anthropologist (more because he says to than because she has any idea what that means). They don't have much of a marriage, and soon enough he is dead in the desert--but not before she begins to see him in a more accurate light. The beauty of this story is not just the adventure, but watching Caressa grow up and seeing her draw on her carnival background for survival (and that background certainly serves her much better than the lessons in being a lady she was taking before her marriage).

I admit it was less fun (but no less a good story) to see her hiding that part of herself and using the lessons in being a lady to fit into a new situation when she comes out of the desert. I suppose in a nutshell it is a story about adapting and survival, with point illustrated in some radically different settings! In any case, an entertaining book if not exactly a work of important literature (and not quite as fun as Mrs. Pollifax, but what is?).

My Recommendation:
A good read for a weekend at the beach or a stormy winter night.

FTC Disclosure: I bought Caravan second-hand, and received nothing from the writer or publisher for my honest review.  The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."   

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Did you write your #Fi50 story? You have until the end of the month! Post it on your website and link back to my story. Then check the Fi50 page above to see what the November theme is!

Deja Vu Blogfest!

 

This is a bonus post, because it's time for blogger D. L. Hammons' Deja Vu Blogfest--a day to share a favorite post from the year for a second time. Since this is all about seeing some great posts we've perhaps missed during the year, I'm going to put the linky-list first, and then share my post.

And now for my post. It wasn't easy to pick one, but I decided to share one of my photo pages, even though I'm a writer and it should be all about my writing.

After a bit of looking, I choose...Night Hike to the Panamint Dunes. If you like it, you can see more from the same trip here.

Back in March we visited Death Valley and the environs in search of stunning desert landscapes and spring wildflowers. We found both. The Panamint Dunes are located in the far north end of the Panamint Valley, which is the next valley west of Death Valley proper and part of the National Park.

Night Hike to the Panamint Dunes

Six miles of rough dirt road behind us, and a hasty dinner prepared and eaten, we hoist loaded packs as the last of the evening light fades away. The sun set early behind the Inyo Mountains, and at 8 p.m. the full moon isn't up. Even so, we can see our goal: the Panamint Dunes are pale in contrast to the surrounding mountains and the scrub-covered alluvial fans that surrounded them. Headlamps, even though I forgot to replace the dying batteries, are enough to show us the footing and avoid injuries as we pick our way over rocky ground near the parking area. Bits of the mountains  have washed down the slope toward the dry lake bed in the bottom of the valley. The poor footing for the first quarter mile worries me. If it's like this all the way, it will be a very long hike indeed.

Happily, we soon pass the rocky portion of the fan, and the rest of the 3-mile approach provides fairly smooth footing. We pick up the pace, dodging around bushes and following sandy washes where they angle off in more or less the right direction, abandoning them when they move too far upslope. There are footprints in places, telling us less that we are on the right route than that pretty much any route will do, as long as we keep pointing at the dunes.

The full moon should have risen as the sun set, but the ring of mountains means that the early sunset is followed by a delayed moonrise. We hike for 20 or 30 minutes before it tops the ridge to the east. Light hits the dunes first, giving them a ghostly beauty. When it reaches us, headlamps become a silly waste. The moon is brighter. We turn our lamps off and let our eyes adapt to the night. A deep shadow lies between us and the dunes, but though our pace is fast, the moon rises faster. We never catch the darkness, and move with greater confidence.

Just over an hour sees us over three miles in, 700-odd feet higher, and starting to sink into the sand. Vegetation is thinning and it's time to make camp. The moon allows us to do that still without lights, so that though we realize that others are camped a few hundred yards off (mysteriously, they keep their lights on, even while sitting and presumably enjoying the night) they probably don't know we are there. The night is calm, and the view well worth savoring. When it grows too chilly for comfort, we crawl into our bags, knowing we'll be up well before sunrise.

Morning on the Dunes
Our early start means that we have eaten breakfast and are well up the dunes (which rise only a couple of hundred feet beyond our camp) before the sun hits. The morning is best told in photos.

 Dawn breaks on the Panamint Valley.

Desert mornings can be chilly. We are well-bundled to eat our cold cereal.

 
 As the sun rises, the moon sets over the Inyo Mountains (we really only see the foothills here).

 Dune fields yield endless patterns of light and shadow and texture.

Curves and shadows and contrast with the eroded hills beyond.

Ripples.

 Even footprints add to the textures.

 Low sun turns footprints along the ridge into a braided piping for the edge of a dune.

If you think a dune is a dead place, look more closely. More like Grand Central Station!

Beetle tracks

There were also some kind of ground-dwelling bees, busily digging their holes.

Not the best photo. The bees wouldn't hold still.

Seems like every dune field we visit has a characteristic species. In this case, it was the prickly poppy.

When the sun grew hot, we returned to our tent, broke camp, and hiked the hour back to the car. Just for fun, here's our rather low-clearance Prius trying to cope with one of dozens of small gullies/washes that crossed the road. You can drive a lot of "4wheel drive" roads in a small sedan, if you go very slowly...and can muster a certain indifference to the sounds of the car depreciating beneath you.

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2016

As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated!

Photo Time: Anza Borrego State Park

We are getting close to spring break and a trip to the desert, for the first time in 4 years, so I thought I'd haul out and share some photos from Anza Borrego Desert State Park, east of San Diego, CA. We won't be going there this year--we need to go higher to find the flowers in this warm, dry spring, but it's a cool place. Well, "cool" in a warm, desertish way. These photos are from our most recent visit, in March of 2011, a decent wildflower year (the last one we've had, due to the on-going California drought).

First, just to get you oriented, here's Southern California. The park doesn't get a specific outline here, but it positions it (for those of you who wondered last week, look up north of I 40 near Needles and you'll see the general location of the Mojave National Preserve). Anza-Borrego is California's largest state park, at over 600,000 acres.

Now, I know that many of you think of desert, and this is what you think of: bare, hot, dry, and nothing grows there.

Font's Point at sunset.

But the desert is nothing if not surprising, and every canyon in Anza Borrego holds delights. One key to enjoying them is to start off early.

Starting off early up Borrego Palm Canyon, among the brittlebush.

Early morning is also about the only time you'll see wildlife (well, and sometimes at dusk). If you are very, very luck and keen-eyed, and up a canyon early enough, you may see Desert Bighorn sheep (the borregos of the name).

Hare in the early morning, near the Borrego Springs campground.

One of the delightful surprises is water in the desert. There is a year-round creek in Borrego Palm Canyon (I hope it still is. Three years of severe drought could have changed that).

Water lets all sorts of plants and animals thrive.

The signature feature of the area is, in my mind, the California Fan Palm oases. Left to themselves, the palms will grow their "skirts" of dead fronds all the way to the ground. Some idiots think it's cool to set them on fire, and sadly very few groves have escaped this vandalism. Some of have destroyed. I can only wish infestations of ticks, chiggers, and tse-tse flies on the idiots who did it.

A small grove well up the canyon. Some of the trees look burned; others were denuded and uprooted in a flash flood that came down the canyon in, I think, 2009.

Animals of all sorts like the creek environments. These are an invasive species that must be watched very closely!

Showering in a waterfall up Hellhole Canyon.

The desert--flat and rugged, dry and in bloom!

Ocatillo at the mouth of Hellhole Canyon. The trees and green mark the town of Borrego Springs.

Gratuitous flower photos:

Datura

Prickly pear in bloom. Note the pollinator.

Cholla blossom.

Ocatillo blossom. Ocatillo only grow leaves (and bloom) when they have enough water. The rest of the time, they look like sticks.

Have to look this one up.

Oases come in all shapes. After a long morning hiking up a canyon, in the hot afternoon, a town with laundry, a bit of grass and shade, and a laundromat are a pretty good bargain!

Christmas Tree Circle in Borrego Springs.

Not Death by Ice Cream, but more like "ice cream is my life!"

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2015

Flash Fiction Friday: Iron Desert

This week Chuck Wendig gave us a random title generator.  Our mission: to roll the dice (as it were), and select a title from the five random choices.  I cannot tell a lie: the titles were such fun I did it a whole bunch of times.  Then I picked about 6 favorites, and made a note because who can't use an occasional title?   But for today's story I selected "Iron Desert," and it was immediately clear to me that was the desert that Gorg the Troll was crossing when he found the skull of the swordswoman's horse (see Revenge of Gorg).  And maybe an iron desert is just what it seems. . .

This one's  a bit shorter than usual, at just 560 words.

Iron Desert

Three days ago Gorg had found the skeleton of a horse he'd known and liked--and the swordswoman who'd ridden him.  What was her name?  Gorg didn't care, though he mourned the horse in his slow, trollish way as he trudged along.

Gorg had bigger problems than that now.  He had set out to cross the Iron Desert because it was the quickest way from Mosternestine City to the Valley of Baleful Stones.  There he expected to find the Duke Bale the Artichoke-Hearted, nephew of King Celery the Half-Wit.  The Duke, Gorg had reason to believe, had givent he order that he led the now-dead sorcerer Mergle to petrify various members of Gorg's family.  It had been a cruel and unnecessary act, given that trolls are nine-tenths stone in any case.  When Gorg scratched his head, he scattered rock dust and flakes of shale.

But now, in the middle of the Iron Desert, it was dawning on Gorg that he was in trouble.  Thing was, a troll could cross an ordinary desert with no worries.  Rock everywhere?  It was the stuff of life.  A troll is born of rock, and eats the stuff.  And they don't need to drink, since there is very little water in their make-up.

Gorg hadn't known that "Iron Desert" wasn't a metaphor.

For an entire day Gorg had been crossing a flat pan of iron.  No stone.  Just iron.  As though forged by the hand of a divine smith, and utterly without sustenance for a troll (or anyone else; but Gorg didn't care about anyone else just then, because they weren't there and he was).  If he didn't get out of this soon, Gorg could see he wouldn't get out at all.

He was starting to stagger.  A vision of that poor horse crossed his mind as he slowed for another rest.  He unslung his massive stone warhammer--as a last resort he would eat that, though it was worn and tasteless--to take it's weight from his back.  It narrowly missed his foot as it slipped from his now-stiff and weakened grip and crashed to the iron ground.

Iron is brittle.  Gorg gaped at the crack that opened in the smooth surface.  Trying hard to think, he picked up the hammer and dropped it again.  The ground shattered.  Gorg pushed aside the shards of broken iron, his face breaking into a smile.  He ignored the chips that flew from his cheeks as they creased, reaching for the stone that lay under the iron.

Gorg chipped off a few savory bits and nibbled them slowly, recovering his strength.  The blazing sun didn't bother him.  The absence of water didn't matter.  But somewhere in his earthen troll-brain, Gorg was realizing that smooth-cast iron was not a natural coating for a desert floor.

Duke Bale had found another sorcerer.  A powerful one, to spread such a surface over the desert.  Or maybe it had been an illusion.  No matter, it took power either way, and a deadly intent.  Rock is slow to anger, but when it grows hot, it is a force to reckon with.  Gorg was growing hot.  Battle was rejoined, and he had won the first round.

Taking up his warhammer and another handful of light, tasty rock, Gorg turned his stony face toward the Valley of Baleful Rocks.  He'd be pickling artichoke hearts before he finished.