Desert: The Ironwood

The ironwood is old--older than the saguaro, and the much older the palo verde, but also older than the other ironwoods anywhere in this patch of desert. It took me a long time to understand its grandeur, and now that I do, I find poignant pleasure in contemplating it.

The ironwood sits a little further down the wash from the palo verde, separated as I've said by the Sandy Bottom.  One could say it is on the opposite bank (the west side), but really it is half within the bed of the wash, its root structures rising out of the sand in a promontory from the bank.

The ironwood might have been here before the ranch. It saw many years of cattle. Then a road was built. Then development came, and the wash upon which it sits now descends as drainage from a shopping center.

In a way its layers of growth remind one of the stages of maturity one sees in the noble sequoia. Both are noble in their own way. The sequoia is built of the lightest wood, feeling almost like styrofoam, so it can soar to great heights. The ironwood is hard and compact, as durable of wood as exists, so as to conserve its growth in the dryness of the desert.

The distinctive pink and white petals make the ironwoods unmistakable this time of year. It was exquisite to see this tall one outfitted in bloom all the way to its top branches. As of this morning there will still blossoms on the lower branches of the trees, the ones at eye level as one stands in the sandy creek bed.

The ironwood has a secret, one that tells me that I am not the only person to appreciate this tree. Others, anonymous to me as I am to them, have discovered it. This is not the place to tell the secret, but it brings a great peace to know that others are aware of the beauty of this place.