High Desert

We drove along at a fast clip, the trip from Gorman to Palmdale always a ho-hum leg of our journey, with the desert scrub, sage, and yucca dotting the landscape in the foreground, and the high desert mountains protecting the horizon in the distance. Sand, pavement, scrub, sometimes wind.

This spring, the shock of what opportunist plants and flower can be came to us with a slap to the senses. Rioting waves of California poppies, goldenrod, and lupine filled in the void between the sage and scrub in every meadow and vernal dip in the landscape. The orange from the poppies so electric, that it shocked our eyes with violence of their color.

The lupine seemed to find its way into every rocky crevice, seeking out the sun on the sides of the mountains. From far away, the color of the lupine blended from dark blue to lilac, and from purple to the dark gray of the rock. The waves of poppies hugged the base of the hills and mountains, and the goldenrod and lupine shared the upper spaces with a dusting of color that almost seemed like it was a mirage from the sun’s intensity.

We took pictures, but they don’t do justice to what the desert shared with us.