Desert Oracle Radio, the voice of the desert.

Night has fallen on the desert.

Another hot August night.

I've been up at the Sacred Grove for a while,

surveying the pinions, conversing with the blue crows,

smelling the sage brush,

investigating the boulder spires,

tracking the evidence of several recent thunderstorms.

The mallow is coming up nicely.

There are a few silky yellow saffron blooms on the old man cactus.

The only cactus around up there, really?

They're about the height of a small rabbit and nearly is furry.

Best not to touch, though.

They look a lot cozier than they are, and there's nothing more overrated than cozy.

I got some emails about this tourist whose feet got burnt up pretty bad from losing his flip-flops in the sand dunes of Death Valley and having to get back barefoot

and the midsummer Mojave heap wave and the hottest place on earth.

Somebody sends me a link to this news story and says,

you ought to roast this tourist.

And I'm thinking, well, he's already pretty well roasted.

I'm sure he's not proud about it.

It can be rough out there, part of a great circle of life and death and whatever else, the sum of it all.

Every spring, which can last a good long time in the high desert, although it's totally forgotten

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