03 july 2025
today i finished a really good book: Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott.
it is a book about stories and remembrance, and it had a big impact on me.
after i got home on the bus, i went on a really pretty walk too. it seems cheesy to say, but i think it'd be accurate to call myself inspired. i noticed a lot of pretty things.
i took some pictures, but i also want to write about the things i saw. this way i will be able to look back here.
the first thing i took a picture of was a brilliant pink cholla flower. i stood on the wall to get a better angle at it.
maybe i will make pixelart of it sometime. it seems like a scope I can handle.
on the way out, i came across a labyrinth made out of stones from around the wash. a previous day i had decided to skip it because i was tired, but today i decided to walk through it anyway.
labyrinths have many associations, but i think of how they make you be conscious of the path you are taking. rather than step over the low rock walls, you follow them. a small one like this is also an example of a message left by someone else, an invitation to follow in their footsteps and partake in their creation.
then there was a piece of rusted rebar sticking out of the ground. i made an attempt to pull it out and move it somewhere where it couldn't stab anything, but it was stuck in too deep. there was a young rabbit brush growing from the same spot
i imagine that seed was able to take hold thanks to the piece of metal buried in the sand. it made me think of the ideas of displacement and home that my book brought up, the idea of taking root and becoming unmovable. the headstones carved by Reb Haim trip armies.
one scene that stood out to me came shortly after turning around. the trail was a thin line of red-brown dirt, and it was surrounded by all sorts of plant life. globemallow, tiny scrubby grasses, junipers. the thing that caught my eye the most was the snakeweed. it has a really lively color to it, a mix of the green stems and tiny yellow flowers that blend in and make the whole plant almost seem to glow.
the final image i stopped to appreciate was another labyrinth. at this point i was walking on a trail above the sandy wash bed, and the different perspective made me notice lined-up rocks that i hadn't seen on the way out. the difference with this one was, it used to span across the wash but was dismantled when the water flowed last time it rained. there were lines of stones, then nothing but a patterned wash bed, followed by continuations of the same lines of stones on the other raised shore.
this is another thing that i love about nature art. its impermanence. i never saw that labyrinth when it was whole, but i can still see where it used to be. some of those rocks may be a part of the new labyrinth, and some of them are out of my world. someday it will rain again, and part of the new labyrinth will wash away too. i'm glad i got to see it while it was still here.