The Confessions of Ira Short

Living in the desert is to have a front seat to life at an almost primal level. That is, if you're paying attention. For some, like the desert marigold, life is a brief event, a brave foray into an inhospitable world. According to my reference it "thrives in dry, poor soils, in "extreme heat". The volunteer rye grass that sprouted up after the early rains has withered and died all around it, but the marigold soldiers on. Here on the sun-baked strip of bare dirt next to the street, it puts up a handful of small flowers to attract a pollinator, so that it can go to seed and spawn a generation of children it will not live to see. In more favorable areas, there are armies of marigolds crowded along the street, bright yellow advertisements for spring. But here there are only a few, like pioneers trying to stake a claim in a new land. It is not simply a matter of enduring the heat and lack of water and nutrients that the marigold is facing. Jostling for resources a

Ahead of me, the freeway is dotted with cars, white and black and shades of gray. In the distance, a single red Mustang maneuvers its way through the monochrome blocks. A bank of clouds hangs ominously over the freeway ahead, black and white and shades of gray. San Gorgonio Pass Runs about 20 miles from the Highway 62 junction (where I get on Interstate 10), to the summit, roughly the junction with Highway 60 in Beaumont. Wikipedia informs me that it is one of the deepest passes in the contiguous 48 states, as it divides two peaks rising 9,000 feet above the valley floor on either side. From the desert floor to the summit of the pass is a rise of about 1800 feet; it's a long and gradual incline for 20 miles. This is one of the reasons the railroad came through this way in the middle 1800s. The steam locomotives still had to work pretty hard to go up it, so they put in a station to re-fill the water tender. Banning grew up around that. The freeway follows the railroad tracks.