From a distance, the desert is a beautiful place.  The rocks and canyons, the color and all that goes with it.  But from a distance the desert looks dead.

But this place is teeming with life up close, in the details.

There is life if one just stops and waits and watches.  I have been visited each morning by the local bunny population.  Lizards watch curiously as I sit and write this.  Or eat dinner.  Or just about anything.

The other evening, as I was perched on my rock watching over what I have come to think of as “my valley,’ I saw a family of Pronghorn Antelope.  So I put dining on hold, grabbed my camera, (the real one), and took a walk.

I took about 30 minutes to slowly and quietly walk a few hundred yards to photograph them.  Pronghorns are very skittish animals.  Any hunter that has tried to bag one can tell you that.  But this family, mom, youngster and a big buck let me come up to about 150 yards.

Daddy posed rather nicely.

After several photos, I slowly backed away to finish the dining experience waiting for me on my rock.  When I sat down to my cajan pasta, I saw that they were following me back.

I finished dinner and wandered back down.  This time I was able to get within about 60 yards from them.

Nice neighbors.

I’m not a flower guy.  I don’t photograph flowers often.  But it amazes me how the tiniest of delicate flower can grow in the harshness of this place.  I find it a great metaphor for life, especially where I am in my life right now.

Even in the harshest, most negative environment and through all the evil demons that seem to, at times, dominate our lives, we can persist.  We can flower and blossom and persevere.

No matter what life throws at us, we can thrive if we are determined to do so.