Blackbrush

Blackbrush -- Coleogyne ramosissima the dominant understory shrub in the pinyon-juniper canyons. Mountain-mahogany -- Cercocarpus montanus and ledifolia. Single-leaf ash -- Fraxinus anomalus and possibly a western hophornbeam by the small birch-like leaves and the shredding bark in a moist stretch of joint trail. The joint-fir, green ephedra looks like an ocean plant. Could the wind or white water rivers alone have shaped these sandstone, red rock forms? Network of canyons, inverse of mountains. It had to be ocean ebbing and flowing, emotionally, like wind, moving atmosphere, thicker shaving, scraping, polishing, gouging, digging fish canyons then, shallower, dinosaur swamps now, dry, rock gardens. Explain the human history with water: did the Anasazi visit neighbors along the canyon rims and deep within, combination caves and red-rock houses small windows, doorways, just crawlways, with corn gifts on summer evenings when the canyon bottoms held permanent, not intermittent, streams? After them came the Ute and Navajo, Spanish and English. Ravens dine on road kill. A few long red roads connect some canyons. The unprotected flats are overgrazed, rabbitbrush. It is interesting that as I learn the woody and herbaceous plants, walk the desert foothills, I too could stay.