Desert Wash

Amidst the awfulness of our global pandemic, there are a few personal silver linings.

For instance, Barry lives in San Francisco where he works for the school district.

His spouse, Grant, works as an environmental planner in Palm Springs.

They have been together for 24 years, but as a long-distance relationship for the last decade, until the pandemic arrived and the two were finally able to live and work together on a daily basis again in Palm Springs.

Last Sunday we went on a walk down the major desert wash that runs through Palm Springs and further into the Coachella Valley, diverting flash floods after sudden rainfalls.

The riverwalk off of Palm Canyon near Sunny Dunes is a lovely, little-known, wide sidewalk where bicyclists, dogwalkers, and pedestrians are slow and considerate with each other, a miracle in itself.

There are trails in the wash itself that are improbably beautiful...

...partly because they are so wild...

...with a minimum of the usual Palm Springs manicuring of the desert.

We walked back to downtown through the Warm Sands neighborhood, which is midcentury modern posh at its eastern end.

Above one household, a flagpole defiantly displayed a Trump 2020 banner...

...a reminder that the fascist lunatics activated by that monster are still in full battle mode.

A couple of blocks away in the sluttier, gayer section of Warm Sands, we passed a delightful house with a cow and a flying pig on the roof, and a flagpole with a gay pride and a U.S. flag resting together. It's time to take our country back.