A Cholla Garden's Equinox Dusk • Equinox Mar 2006
19 Mar 2006 Equinox WWP Shoot • © 2006 John E Schwarzell | www.exophrenic.com
STORY: Joshua Tree National Park is special. It's particularly nice to depict its beauty while interpreting the WWP theme of Borders. I really wanted to make it to Key's View, but timing is everything. Night fell early this Equinox due to the stormfront, and I had to recover and rethink Borders. I returned to the Cholla Garden near the Ocotillo Patch expecting some sunset/dusk cloudplay, but the sky had greyed out.

The Cholla Garden sits on a fuzzy border between the high Mojave and low Colorado deserts. The Colorado (3000' and below) is part of the Sonoran desert and reaches as far East as Tucson. The Mojave (above 3000') occupies much of California and winds into Nevada. The Bigelow (Jumping) Cholla and Ocotillo are indicative of the lower desert. The high desert's signature plant, the Joshua Tree, does not grow near the Cholla Garden, but this Cholla Garden is indeed situated on the border between the deserts.

So, I am proud to present to you this aquamarine wonderland: on the edge of night, on the dusk of the Equinox, by a wash's gulley, between two deserts, and with cresting stormfronts, the Cholla Garden glows green, basking in the eerie day's-end stormy glow of dusk. I love this place.