This is my first time to the Sonaran Desert. It is located in the Southwest United States. This place is definitely different than what I am used to. My home in Baltimore City almost never got this hot; even during the summer months on the hot asphault. The sun was showing no mercy whatsoever today. There is no cloud in sight. I barely have enough energy to choke on the sand that finds its way to the back of my throat every time the wind picks up, or a tumbleweed blows by. One thing is for certain, the red clay tastes much better than the tannish colored sand.
Despite being such an inhabitable place, there were quite a few creatures who were more than hostile towards me. There seemed to be rattlesnakes under every rock. Just like me, they were trying to find refuge from this heat. As curious as they seemed, bearded dragons were not afraid to flare their frills at me anytime that I ventured too near their territory. I nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw my first tarantula in the desert. It must have been about as large as my hand. As with any kind of desert, there was always the humble cactus. It still remains as a staple in deserts, especially those out in Western American culture.
I went to the base of a mountain. To my tired eyes, it seemed more like a giant mound of dirt. I could see paintings on the side of it. It was probably drawn with some sort of clay many years ago. It looks a lot like a tribe of Native Americans out hunting. Whatever this masterpiece portrays, I hope that it will remain there in History for other travelers to marvel at. I finally waited a few hours for the sun to go down some before attempting to scale the mountain. There is no way I want to be any closer to the mid day sun than I have to. I reached the top in time to see the sun retreat back under mountains and mesas to the West. The sky was filled with dazzling hues of pink and orange. It was calm and serene like a bouquet of flowers. As I reached the bottom of the mountain, I was met with another surprise. What lie only a few yards ahead of my appeared to be an abandoned town. I ventured closer. I dusted off the sign to one of the buildings to see “Hyder Sheriff’s Department” written in bold red letters.
I was right on the city line for Hyder, Arizona. This is one of America’s ghost towns that was very prosperous in the Old West. The sun was almost set and I could already feel my nerves become tense. The howling wind was nowhere as terrifying as the howling coyote I heard over the mountain I had just trekked. If I ever want to tell others about my discovery of this ghost town, I must make it back home before I become a permanent resident of this place.
Emil: Great job creating an effect in this post. I feel thirsty just reading it. I also think you touched on something that’s important when you said, “I went to the base of a mountain. To my tired eyes, it seemed more like a giant mound of dirt. I could see paintings on the side of it. It was probably drawn with some sort of clay many years ago. It looks a lot like a tribe of Native Americans out hunting. Whatever this masterpiece portrays, I hope that it will remain there in History for other travelers to marvel at.”
One of the things we haven’t talked about is how tools such as Google Earth can be used to preserve vanishing historical, cultural, and natural features of our world. This is a mixed bag, right? Because we don’t want to say, ‘yeah, it’s preserved digitally, so we can trash it now.’ But we can leverage digital tools to make people care about things they wouldn’t otherwise see, and thus act to preserve them–just like Muir and the national parks.