Frances Bonker

“ But you take the dare and come again if you can, and yet again, wending your way farther each time across the foothills and mountains, ever in search of that evanescent something called the desert-spell or the thing that calls you back.
In our domestic lives we work hard for the few little things we have; many homes are devoid of the animation and color and the thrill of flower creations; for to have the beauty of plants and blossoms is to work for them and then to keep them, by dint of much effort and labor of love. ”

“ For only one night in each year does the flower queen come forth into bloom, scenting the warm sweet air of the desert land for miles and miles, while thousands of people, Indian and white, gather for the brilliant spectacle of hundreds of thousands of waxy white blossoms. Then no more may the eye of man behold the lovely colorings, nor sense the exotic perfume of the Goddess of the Night, until her appointed time comes yet again in the Desert Land of Plants and Flowers. ”

“ Pen or brush in the hand of the genius scarce can do justice to the loveliness of Nature’s handiwork, the Goddess of the Night. Most popular of all the cacti, she delights to grow wild on the desert mesas, where the sensuous spicy fragrance of her beautiful blossoms perfumes the air for miles around, along the bajadas in western Texas and Southern California, over the mesas of southern Arizona and far down into old Mexico. ”

“ This slender little Cholla is interesting because of its inch-long purple-brown and yellow flowers, unfolding once in the afternoon, then closing at night never to open again. Many of them seem to sulk on their heavy moisture-laden stems during the hot dry hours of the desert day, and then swiftly to unfold themselves and parade in evanescent beauty when the long shadows of a departing day begin to paint the mountain slopes, bidding the day to hurry and beckoning night to approach for the fashion show of the desert flowers. ”

“ But if you wish to see the real show and to appreciate the real beauties of the desert land in flower-time, you must go into the silent sandy wastes when the sun is gone and the moon is coming over the mountains, spreading its gossamer silvery sheen over the floor of the desert in crazy shadow-patch, and watch the blossoms come slowly open, one by one, to receive the kiss of the night dew and the gentle caress of the newborn breeze. ”

“ Arizona mountains with its waxy green joints and pink spines, sometimes brownish white thorns, and bright golden satiny blooms shading into red and orange at their bases and yellow-green toward the margins, suffused with purple-brown, a lovely harmony of color splashing across the painted canvas of brilliant desert flowers. Appearing in loose golden clumps, one and one-half to three feet tall, with the spicules forming a dense pinkish gray fringe about the upper half of the areolas, this prickly pear roams the rocky, gravelly foothills and mountains here in southern Arizona and in Sonora. ”

“ It must be that we adjudge the majesty of the grand old mountains and deep cañon recesses, the lure of fantastic growth and wonderful flower creations, the magical charm of the desert which never stops its calling—the call that brings you back—as balancing the scales and tipping them just far enough to bring us back again for further exploration in the fantastic realm of cactus land. ”

“ Does Nature make up for the hot aridity of the desert and the barren wastes of sand and more sand, by brilliance of flower and wealth of fantastic design? It would seem so, for nowhere else in the world are to be found the weird, grotesque shapes, the flaming splendor and fragrance of blossom, the kaleidoscopic changes of color and pattern which are created far out on the dry expanses, under the burning sun and during seasons of inconceivable drought. ”

“ In the hot dry heat of a desert day they are just some more of Nature’s plants and flowers, but in the dusk of the desert twilight these fantastic growths look like some immense graveyard, and we might fancy that we can even read the epitaphs on their beautiful spiny shafts. For in this fancied graveyard of the desert there are many wonders, and now we shall invade their tomblike resting place and get acquainted with still another group of the weird Fantastic Clan. ”

“ Early in the morning of a fine April day near Needles, California, on the Arizona border, we continue our journey into the desert. Before us stretches a panorama the like of which few among us have ever beheld; a picture majestic, tremendous, suggestive of the grandeur of Nature’s workshop, the vastness of those great sweeps of arid lands, covered with symmetrical, cross-patch, lacework, fantastic growths, of every size and shape and color imaginable. ”

“ The lover of plants and flowers which thrive on the desert wastes has often but little conception of the mystic beauty which lingers there, wrapped up in the delicate waxlike coverings of these wondrous blossoms. Exotic and strikingly beautiful, some of them are. It would seem that Nature, the Great Gardener, has caused the mountains to grow their huge trees bedecked in evergreen, snow-crowned and haloed in gorgeous golden sunsets with tints of spectral beauty ”

“ Finis cannot be written to any story which deals with the desert; for the desert call is a charm, it will etch away the heart of you until it brings you back; back to the long trek across burning arid wastes where you wondered first how any living thing could exist and where you found life and beauty and music, back to the giant amphitheater of the desert where the moonbeams flit about at night among the weird Fantastic Clan and the sun boils everything up by day, defying you then to tarry long. ”

“ There is nothing so beautiful as the dash of color painted by that great artist, Nature, on the canvas of the desert in the springtime and early summer. It is here that plant and flower families vie with each other in their parade of color and fashion. ”

“ Each slender trunk consists of a central woody core one-fourth inch in diameter, covered by a series of furrows to draw up the moisture which is stored in the fleshy beetlike root, weighing fifty to a hundred pounds and buried deep in the ground where it forms a reservoir of water and food lasting for more than two years. Thus, rain or shine, the delicate flower goddess may bring forth her lovely blossoms at their appointed time. ”

“ And now the borealis of desert color has passed us by in its rush to the coolness and stillness of the desert night, only to recuperate and renew its gay attire and appear in fresh array of hue and tint in the morrow’s pearly dawn. In ages long gone by, when worlds were in the making, with the swish of the eternal paintbrush the flowers received their colorings, and it is with awe and admiration we have greeted these colorful creations come forth at the touch of the Master Artist ”

“ For God has walked amidst all this seeming turbulence, and with infinite patience has brought forth verdure and flowers the like of which do not exist anywhere else on earth; and to-day when Man ventures into the great arid wastes it would seem that he little anticipates the hidden loveliness to be found there—the wonder of desert creations, flowers and then more flowers, blossoms of rare and seductive beauty, of exotic and sensuous fragrance. ”

“ When springtime comes it is time to be on the move, to see new places, new things, to enjoy, to learn. Early in April we start on a trek or trip by automobile across the Giant Amphitheater of the Sun, somewhere on the great desert along the Mexico-California frontier and thence on into Southern California; seeking out the plants and flowers which appear now in gay spring tints and hues, scrutinizing their wondrous beauty, their colorings and fantastic shapes, their scientific make-up and their dwelling places, and occasionally their grotesque appearance. ”

“ Out there under burning-hot dry winds, where water is mighty scarce, where the soil is pulverized rock or shale or wastes of alkali sand, life at best is but little more than a fight to survive against yearly drought, seasonal storm, and blazing heat; even the bold woodpeckers, the rodents, and the sly sand foxes play their part in this silent drama Nature stages in the struggle for existence. ”

“ This seeming annihilation was but part of that great plan wherein the desert regions of the earth have been transformed into the greatest flower garden of all creation; where Time has chiseled out the filigree of lacework and pattern for the hills and valleys; where erosion has painted the beautiful pictures on the faces of mountains and hills; where volcanic action has juggled the rocks and mountain sides into fantastic shapes and designs, piling them up and leveling them out again for ages untold, until the Divine decree was accomplished. ”

“ We are approaching the beautiful Santa Rita Mountains not far from Tucson, Arizona, nearing also the end of our long afternoon’s work, for the blue and purple haze that betokens the close of a hot desert day is gathering around the distant peaks and the sun hangs low over the horizon, seeming loath to bid farewell to mountain and desert cañons and to weary mortals here below. ”

“ From crannies and [63] nooks, crevices and rock-cracks, along the foothills and on the slopes, began to appear the haciendas of the flowers; in time they thrived and multiplied. To-day on the great deserts of the Southwest along the Arizona-California line and eastward, there are vast stretches of cacti of every weave and pattern imaginable, as symmetrical in design as though each were first wrought on the Infinite Draughting Board and then carefully and wisely planted by the Great Gardener to live forever. ”

“ No artist can paint nor pen describe the weird Fantastic Clan, as they are glimpsed peering out from under the rocks or gathered in clusters and patches surrounded with their [viii] dead-looking, drab-colored neighbors; or rearing their stately heads far above the ordinary walks of life in columnar pillars of towering strength. There is a fascination away out there on the desert; nevertheless, unlike the strange weird members of the cactus clan, we come not to stay, but only to enjoy the charm of the desert, to study and learn, and then to depart on our way. ”

“ The desert is not unlike some huge canvas stretched out over vast distances of mesa and foothill, valley and mountain, which takes on mysterious splashes of color during each cycle of the spring, fading then in the heat of summer and fall. ”

“ The perfume from a single blossom will fill a large room or a whole yard: a pronounced spicy odor somewhat like that of a tuberose. This beautiful flower resembles that of the Cereus Greggii, our own Night Blooming Cereus. Its delicate colorings and poignancy of perfume make it one of the finest blossoms of the flower kingdom, much in demand for cactus gardens and window decoration. ”

“ Likewise man, who is tired and hungry for the great open spaces with his year’s work behind him in the spring, seeks the hidden byways trodden only by the few, where he may tramp and meditate and commune with Nature. He loves to hunt new places, to see new things, and then on some winter’s evening to lean back in his comfortable chair and blow smoke rings around the places come back to him again in fancy, where he found that odd piece of cactus lacework and that patch-pattern of thorns and spikes and stems. ”

“ When this cactus meets with a log or stone the stem with its upraised tip gradually grows over this hindrance, up one side and down the other, and by the dying back of the rear end, in time passes over the obstruction. The stems, varying from three to nine feet in length and nearly as large as a man’s arm, are very spiny, with fifteen to twenty radial and central thorns of a dark brownish hue and dull tan, turning to grayish white with age, the tips translucent yellow. The flowers are bright yellow, the fruit delicious and relished by Indians and Mexicans both as a salad and as a preserve. ”

“ We might even fancy that the rush of the wind through mountain and cañon, with its piercing shriek or duller roar, the song of the desert, is music emanating from the giant pipes of this great Organ cactus of Arizona and Lower California. The flowers, like those of many others of its kind, bloom in the night and are usually closed [8] by nine o’clock in the morning; growing in the tops of clusters of slender spreading grayish spines, lining the fifteen or twenty ridges of the stems, and, it is to be noted, appearing only on the tips of the stems ”

“ Prostrate stems worming their way in impenetrable patches of six to twelve feet across the sandy soils of southern Arizona and Northern Mexico, a creeping, crawling mass of rough hairy spines and sheaths, stout sharp swords dangerous and effective in harshly repulsing advance of animal or ignorant human, is the Devil Cactus or Cursed Cholla, a veritable fortress on the desert. A welcome retreat for small rodents, snakes, and lizards, this terrible growth, Opuntia Stanlyi, is an object of fear to man and beast alike! ”

“ It is late on a sultry day in June and we are speeding along the dusty highways of Central Mexico, intent on our quest for a certain queer specimen of the weird Fantastic Clan, when the long low shadows of the afternoon begin to slant over the singular cactus growths for which we have been searching, and the blue haze of a waning day is seen to gather over the distant mountains. ”

“ Flowers that cannot be painted by brush or in coloring to do justice to the delicate waxlike originals. Flowers that seem like delicate souls wrapped in somber lifeless bodies, trying to gain expression through their beautiful colorings and evanescent perfume in the dry atmosphere of their monotonous existence, out in the great [33] stillness of the arid spaces with only the midnight blue of the heavens to caress them, and the dew of the night zephyrs to kiss them when the torrid sun has gone. ”

“ We recall having read a great deal about the magic and lure of the desert and its wondrous plants and flowers, and we realize now that one must come and see them to appreciate the beauty that lives and thrives away out there underneath the stars, forever guarded by that All-seeing Providence which placed them there so carefully and wisely that they might tell us something of His Plan of things entire, wherein the smallest blade of grass receives from Nature as does the wisest seer ”