Situations like the oil spill in the gulf tend to leave us deflated and discouraged.  It’s good, therefore, to be reminded that amid the rubble that we have created in God’s world, he occasionally shows us that there is (still) beauty and wonder when we can shout “Stop!” and look. This post from our friend Donn Ring is a perfect counterpoint to the last one on praying over the oil spill.  Enjoy, and spend some time pondering his fantastic photography.  Then get yourself *outside* today and look for some wonders yourself!

A few weeks ago we heard rumors of wild flowers in bloom on the south side of the Superstition Mountains east-northeast of Phoenix. We hopped in Dennis’ Honda Element “Pudge” and charged up the road from Arizona City. Once spring temperatures heat up, desert flower displays can be very short lived. We must move!

We left behind all our Taoist Wu Wei philosophy of moving naturally and contemplatively along the energy contours and flow of the topography (what we unceremoniously call “dinking”), and blasted down wide highways that had been blasted straight and level through rolling deserts framed by ghostly slag heaps and bare naked tailings of recent mines shut down. We were aggressive voyagers in the mode of Nietzsche’s Will to Power to possess our particular currency of beauty no matter what.

(It amazes me in my many years of wandering the sanctuaries of religion that zealots in the pursuit of the most intimate, profound and beautiful insights can shove and bully and legislate and condemn and destroy, leaving ugly slag heaps of bitter history as witness to their rape of truth meant to liberate. One of the greatest Taoist sayings is found in the ignored Beatitudes of Jesus: “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the Earth.” We were not meek this morning. — Excuse this brief diversion to scratch an itch).

As we barreled up the road at 75mph (120kph) a flash of brilliant red caught the corner of my eye. I yelled at Dennis, “STOP!” Dennis did his best to pull Pudge over onto the gravel shoulder while semis rumbled up our tail and roared by. A few other cars, pickups and trucks flipped their greetings at us. He backed up slowly along the gravel strip. The car rocked with the air compression wake of every thundering truck.

Here, isolated, next to this racetrack highway, growing out of a pile of rubble in a ditch collecting scattered debris was a most brilliant Firecracker Penstemon (pentsemon eatonii) in full bloom. Dennis pulled Pudge further off the road and we unloaded our cameras. This was the only Firecracker Penstemon we saw on this trip. But as we nestled down with macro lenses to get our close-up photos we were dive bombed.

A female Anna’s Hummingbird (calypte anna) did not take kindly to our intrusion of her feeding spot. She whizzed around us, stopping, backing up in mid air, buzzing this way and that, her iridescent green back flashing in the desert sunshine. She was sizing up the danger of these strange interlopers, finally whirring up to the top of the gully and sitting on a pile of dead branches and waiting for us to leave.

(Hummingbirds are the only bird that can make such maneuvers. Their variable wing attitudes can beat as high as 90 times per second; they have been clocked flying 60mph in spurts, their heart rate pumping up to a 1000 beats a minute. Their metabolic rate is so rapid that daily they must consume their body weight in nectar. Without a source of rich nectar they are only hours away from starvation. No wonder she was disturbed at our visit. We could see no other flowers in sight. At night, to conserve energy, they go into a hibernation-like state with their heart rate extremely reduced.)

Dennis and I decided to sit absolutely still and become part of the landscape and gain her trust. The cacophony of noise from the highway echoing in this bulldozed gully with a carpet of tossed fast-food wrappers didn’t lend itself to bucolic nature watching. With some caution she approached the penstemon, ignored our motionless hulks and then with determined necessity began feeding close to us. So delicate and agile was her dance from blossom to blossom — truly a winged ballet among the rubble. We were blessed by this island drama of beauty-in-the-wasteland that forced us to stop cold in our thoughtless rush.

Related posts:

1. A Hymn for Earth Day (and Easter)
2. Old Literature (II): Cry the Beloved Country
3. Present at the Creation
4. Here’s a bit of good news: Deforestation is slowing down – in some places
5. Water, water everywh…? Not exactly