desert

Born in the desert

Red rock formations in The Valley of the Gods in southern Utah. Sky is cobalt blue with fluffy white clouds. Photo by Betsey Crawford.

I was forty-six when I first saw the desert and I’ve never been the same since. The lush, green landscapes I had known all my life peeled away. What was left was spare in all ways. Few plants, few colors, nothing to impede light, air so hot it became a presence, a sky so blue […]

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Cactus lingerie

Desert prickly pear cactus (Opuntia phaeacantha) along the trail to Corona Arch in Moab, Utah by Betsey Crawford

I had never been a fan of cactus. Prickly, tough-skinned, ungainly. Leaves so attenuated they’ve become sharp-tipped spines. Interesting shapes, perhaps. Fascinating as examples of environmental adaptation, thriving from western Canada to Patagonia. But nothing to love. Things have changed. When I first came to the southern California desert and hiked in the spare open

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Happy Easter

Anza Borrego desert wildflowers: luminous magenta flowers of the beavertail cactus by Betsey Crawford

My first post on The Soul of the Earth was on March 30, 2015. That was the Monday before Easter and this past Monday I finished a heavenly week in the same place I was nine years ago: the Anza Borrego Desert. To celebrate this Easter, I thought I would send a bouquet of the

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A season of butterfly lilies

Lovely white with red and pink markings butterfly mariposa lily (Calochortus venustus) by Betsey Crawford

The way Earth tosses beauty about fascinates me. She doesn’t save splendor only for grand vistas and awe-inspiring mysteries. She spreads it at our feet the minute we leave the pavement we are so attached to. She invites us to pay deep attention, often to the smallest of treasures. She strews exquisite mariposa lilies in the unlikeliest of places.

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Native language

When I started my landscape design business in the 1980s, the staff at plant nurseries nicknamed me ‘the weed lady’. I kept asking for plants that most people were removing. As much as I could, I wanted to plant the grasses and wildflowers, trees and shrubs native to the glacial moraine known as Long Island,

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Mysteries at my feet

The lines showed up one morning, on a section of my walk where the sand, driven over by a tractor, is unusually soft and easily shows imprints of desert wildlife. Lizard tails, I thought. I checked carefully for signs of tiny lizard feet but didn’t see any indentations along the lines. About a mile on,

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