Photos from the Borrego Springs area of the Mojave Desert in Southern California.
It's the annual desert spring bloom and Christa and Richard took to the wilderness for some camping.
All Photos © Christa Thurber
The exhilaration of climbing to the plateau made the view more spectacular.
Hovering clouds hold in the eerie timelessness of the vista.
Screaming pink! Easy to spy along the dusty old hillsides.
The rock citadel drew us like a magnet with its domineering royalty.
This hefty messenger wears a crown of golden flowers on a head of thorns.
It felt like walking the ocean floor... a sea of blue-gray, heat and slightly
humid air.
space in the meadow to spread and grow great-grand children
finely crafted jewels
flesh of the rock
molten silver with pepper
nesting
Greetings. Survival is always precarious in fantasyland.
A red haze covered the valley. We grew close and recognized a mass of
ocotillo in bloom.
starkly demanding attention from the wind
the sun moves slow, quiet into serenity
prickly ball finds hard rock comfy... how can this be?
cholla cactus glows, a halo of light
a writhing animal captured in a plant, ready to pounce and get you
dead and living tangle together in opposite compliment
getting to know those small and close to the ground, I lie among them
exquisite beauty above its sandy gravel bed - too delicate to long survive
I know this plant! For many years it's perched here among the rocks
at the end of Moonlight Trail.
Maybe the shelter of rocks is more important than its lack of soil.
All those fuzzy seed pods and orange flowers remind me of apricot trees.
The birds and bees think delicious too.
Marble cathedral stairs beckon, humbling me with hands-on climbing.