I looked at these pictures and I just sighed. There’s something about that desert country. I remember the very first time I visted New Mexico. I parked my car, grabbed a jug of water, and just walked about a half a mile into the desert. I sat down in the shade of a shrub. The air was cool, but the sun was hot. There were all these tiny flowers. When you looked at them closely, you could see a dozen species withing inches of each other. Sitting there, very still, all these animals started coming out. Birds, cute little rodents, snakes, lizards, butteflies, and then, the stealthy pad and musky scent of Mr. Coyote, and I thought, “Wow. this place is TEEMING with life.”

I told a friend about that and compared it to the pucity of specicies in the California Sierra Nevadas, and he said, “Yeah, the desert is an oasis in disguise, but the Sierra Nevadas are a desert disguised as an oasis.” .