Desert Spring

These High Plains are the estranged sibling of the Fens, determined to be different, yet underpinned with the same sinews and bones. The Fens are at sea level and water is never far from the surface. The High Plains are a mile high and thousands of miles inland. Where the Fens are a natural extension of the ocean, the High Plains are extensions of the desert. In summer the Fens steam, if not with water then with miniature thunderclouds of water-bred insects rising from every bush. In summer the High Plains burn with thin heat and it rarely rains but when the rain comes it comes in mighty thunderstorms. The Fens are always damp and never far from rain or the soft, damp mist. In winter, the dying vegetation of the Fens rots away and anything that is left is more often than not blackened with mold so that in the winter the Fens darken further. On the High Plains, winter dries and bleaches every standing plant so that some, like the Tumbleweed, dry up and break away, rolling across the open spaces. Where the Fens are graduations of dark green and black, the High Plains are a consistent sage green on grey and red soils, run through with rivulets of pale matte gold.

In the spring, around the many sinking creeks, the High Plains show their true and glorious colours. The tall, dried grasses sit on the shelves of the river-margins in thick yellow clumps like sunbursts. At this time of year they are as pale as ghosts. Imagine acid yellow with the acid faded out and then dried. This land is a mile high and flat in every direction and the winters dry out these grasses until they are almost like glass. The dryness means that they have hardly a dot of mold. In amongst these grasses, the blue-green sage bush creates a matte background. This dwarf forest of wormwoods with their thick, water-conserving leaves have a texture as dry as bones. I'm convinced that all of those artemesias fill the air with an indetectible but addictive fragance: an arid, airborne absinthe. The boles of cottonwoods rise from this straw-misted hinterland, following the rivers. Cottonwoods are the counterpart of willows on these riverbanks, although the willow has colonised America just like her European human counterparts. The trunks are grey with wounds of darker brown and black split out here and there. Higher up the branches are clay-grey as though dipped in river-mud, but washed with that same sage. In the sun they also glow with a curious brilliance. There is something strange about these trees, a limerence which drew me in. Like the deep black-greens of the Fens which radiate such powerful and obvious life-forces despite being as dark as the Earth, these desert trees are obviously alive and, more than that, virile. I stopped my car to investigate and despite pulling well off the  road, I encouraged a couple of truckers to curse my cultural insensitivity with their air-horns. The noise disturbs a red-tailed hawk which lumbers into the air stops its wings and banks into tight circles. It is no longer afraid and now it slips around the bare branches of the trees silently looking for any other creatures that I might have frightened from cover.

 Walking into the grove, I saw the source of that strange wash of bright brilliance. A fen willow will glow at the edges against black soil and black spring skies as they burst into leaf. The cottonwoods are no different. As the air warms and the winter rivers sink back the trees explode into growth, putting on two feet a week for a young tree and sustaining five feet of growth every year all their lives. On these trees the brilliant new leaves were showing through the cracks in their buds in brilliant spills of yellow and sage, subtly colouring the entire tree so that it shimmers with health. The desert pauses for breath in the tiniest crack of opportunity between winter and summer, and leaps into life.