]3 ^^^ what and the why of desert country 



It SO happens that I am writing this not long after the 

 twenty-first of June and I took especial note of that as- 

 tronomically significant date. This year summer began at 

 precisely ten hours and no minutes, Mountain Standard 

 Time. That means that the sun rose higher and stayed 

 longer in the sky than on any other day of the year. In 

 the north there is often a considerable lag in the seasons 

 as the earth warms up, but here, where it is never very 

 cold, the longest day and the hottest are likely to coincide 

 pretty closely. So it was this year. On June 21 the sun rose 

 almost to the zenith so that at noon he cast almost no 

 shadow. And he was showing what he is capable of. 



Even in this dry air 109° Fahrenheit in the shade is 

 pretty warm. Under the open sky the sun's rays strike with 

 an almost physical force, pouring down from a blue dome 

 unmarked by the faintest suspicion of even a fleck of cloud. 

 The year has been unusually dry even for the desert. Dur- 

 ing the four months just past no rain — not even a light 

 shower — has fallen. The surface of the ground is as dry as 

 powder. And yet, when I look out of the window the dom- 

 inant color of the landscape is incredibly green. 



On the low foothills surrounding the steep rocky slopes 

 of the mountains, which are actually ten or twelve miles 

 away but seem in the clear air much closer at hand, this 

 greenness ends in a curving line following the contoiir of 

 the mountains' base and inevitably suggesting the waves 

 of a green sea lapping the irregular shore line of some 

 island rising abruptly from the ocean. Between me and 

 that shore line the desert is sprinkled with hundreds, prob- 

 ably thousands, of evenly placed shrubs, varied now and 

 then by a small tree — usually a mesquite or what is called 

 locally a cat's-claw acacia. 



