The Hobo Camp Fire Is going well #VII.. Stop In!!!

[ezdays]

Even the desert can get scorched. Lots of brush, cacti and trees around to burn and it does happen.

That's for sure. I lived on what was then the edge of El Paso in 1969 on Galveston street. There was nothing across the street but desert. Back then Foothill Drive and the Patriot Apartments weren't even an idea. It was nothing but desert out to the highway (now Patriot Freeway) and beyond. Sometimes fires would start for various reasons and could spread quickly. Windblown tumbleweeds would allow it to spread farther than one would think possible.

Some people might think of the desert as what you might see in an Arabian movie, sand for as far as you can see in any direction and totally devoid of any life. There is a place just across the California border that is like that, many people from here go out to the "sand dunes" with their dune buggies. A lot of "desert" movies are shot there as well. Our desert has a lot of growth, not green hills and lush trees, but enough to support all sorts of life from bugs to snakes and coyotes. We have a occasional brush fire here that might grow to several thousand acres, but a lot of times, you go up I-17 and you see a few acres of burned landscape where someone had tossed a cigarette butt out the window, or pulled off the road with a hot catalytic converter or a car fire that spread. When it's dry, many desert plants will shed their leaves (if they have any), just to conserve the water they have. A lot of cacti will store water as well. We even have a species of frogs that hibernate underground until the rains come, then like dehydrated potatoes, the come to life when they get wet.