Flowering Desert Pepperweed (also Desert Alysum; Lepidium fremontii) and Desert Fir (also Schott's Pygmy Cedar; Peucephyllum schottii... and it is neither a fir nor a cedar of course 🤪 but rather, in the sunflower family, Asteraceae!) with some Arrowweed, growing out of the cracks and crevices in a rock at Joshua Tree National Park. For #FlowerFriday and such!

More Desert Florals: https://photos.alex-kunz.com/-/galleries/themed-galleries/desert-florals

#IntimateLandscape #Florespondence #FlowerFriday #NaturePhotography #FlowersOnFriday #BloomScrolling #JoshuaTree #Photography #Desert #SouthernCalifornia

Camel spiders might look horrifying but they're pretty chill guys, they don't spin webs they just march around hunting crickets the way a fox hunts rats and it's kind of fun to watch. Their bite isn't venomous, and if your feet are calloused enough just feels a bit like a pinch but never itches or swells. Everyone is afraid of scorpions but you almost never see them and they're pretty timid - they don't want to see you and you'll almost never get stung unless you're totally oblivious in the dark or picking on a mama with babies on her back. Rattlesnakes are even more flighty and they give you a long range warning - as long as you aren't stomping around with headphones in on summer nights you'll be fine.

Now, there are red ants and fire ants, and I'll be damned, I still can't always tell them apart. The red ants are little but sometimes have these big fat scouts that look exactly like a fire ant. So anyways, it's like roulette: you could get bit and it's mildly itchy and annoying OR you could get stung and it's some of the worst pain you've ever felt and it may or may not blister like a partial thickness burn for two weeks.

So honestly I think everyone is scared of the wrong things in the desert. It's the ants. Beware the ants.

#Desert #JoshuaTree #California

This is still my favorite. I would really appreciate inquiries for things like this - I would actually do them outside of my typical practice just because I love these kinds of shapes so much.

#Cholla #JoshuaTree #Tattoo #Inkwork #Inkwitch #Handpoke #Ritual #Pagan #RitualTattoo #Witch

Out beyond the poles
The mountains moan
Stretching as though awakened from a great sleep
They push their apendages towards me, and recoil
Yawning mouths-of-valleys,
Incisor peaks
Untold bodies sleep, embedded in iron and gold, lost in ferverent searching

#Poetry #JoshuaTree #Visions

U2, The Joshua Tree Singles: Remastered & Live, 2017 on Island Records

https://goatless.org/2026/05/10/u2-the-joshua-tree-singles-remastered-live-2017-on-island-records