The low, rolling hills on either side of the road shivered as the wind rustled the knee-high grasses that blanketed them. The desert had never looked so verdant, its green film mocking the drought that had reigned for months before this unprecedented springtime growth. We drove away from the city, seeking a new experience, but finding memories. We were unprepared.
This photorealistic stand-in for Big Sky Country played host to cowboys and indians for years, dust settling in the fossilized hoof prints of countless horses. Eventually the stage was repurposed, the landscape of gnarled trees and ungainly boulders recast as intergalactic terrain upon which battles both practical and digital would be waged. We’d both seen it before, through car windows and on movie screens.
I’d read in books about places where the snow comes all the way to your front door, floating from the heavens like ash. Eventually, the crocuses penetrate the frost like chicks emerging from a shell, heralding the arrival of Spring. We see the snow in the distance, capping the peaks of mountain ranges. We have that snow to thank for the unfamiliar green hide growing on the nearby hillsides.
Our people are not subtle. We’re not content to refer to our own dramatic version of the seasonal shift by a hand-me-down name like “equinox.” No, the punch-up writers have been paid handsomely to make it sexy. The superbloom has arrived in the desert, and we city mice are drawn to it, now more than ever. Winter fell around us like a curtain in November, and we hoped the new year would bring some relief. Like protestors placing carnations into the barrels of rifles generations ago, we hope the fields of wildflowers will help to stop the bleeding. We were unprepared.
The poppies curl, but do not wither, pummeled by the icy, whistling desert winds. We’re not dressed appropriately for the weather. Our skin is as thin as onionskin, and the gravel whips our exposed feet and legs. I reach down to gently touch the petals of one of the orange-yellow flowers by the side of the trail. It is as soft as a butterfly’s wing, but withstands the gusts better than I do. I see snake holes every time I look down, but the only faunae brave enough to show themselves are a tiny lizard that looks as if it’s been decoratively beaded, and an industrious beetle scraping at the earth.
One foot in front of the other, inappropriate shoes slipping as we scurry up the hillside, our muscles remain warm with the exercise. The ingenious wind finds its way into our ears, deafening us with cold. It peels back our eyelids, and we must squint so we don’t miss the beautiful vista. We’re parched, and our noses are too numb to stop running. We’re too numb to stop running. At a distance, this place is like stepping into the frame of a Cezanne, patches of yellow daisies, purple phacelia, and orange reefs of poppies. Up close, buffered by the side of a mountain, it’s easy to be hypnotized by the vibrations of the flowers’ frantic dance, choreographed by their invisible marionettist.
Beyond the wildflowers a farm of tall, white obelisks buzzes. The turbines’ sails draw the eye upward. We’ve seen all that we came for. We turn and leave the desert behind, returning to the congestion of the city. At home, nothing has changed. The temperature is rising, but we still feel as untethered as we did before the new year began. We drove away, in search of wildflowers, and returned, tilting at windmills.
