Saguaro (sa-WAH-ro)

Photo by Mahesh

The tall, green. succulent arms are everywhere here adorning the golden desert landscape. Their dark-green brooding bodies look like the random strokes of wishful painter on a golden-brown canvas of the desert.These elusive warriors who have long sprouted from the arid earth seem to guard a secret of aeons. Perhaps, humankind would never know their closely guarded secret. These wily conspirators look as if they could besiege you if you trespass into their privacy. Who knows,once upon a time, they would have walked the earth just like the dinosaurs. Unlike the extinct dinosaurs, there is an air of triumph surrounding them giving one the impression that 'I am now here and thriving'. Their other siblings do not seem to add such a mysterious touch to this land. They just exist insipidly amid the other beings.

Their blossoms arranged like a wreath on the crest is a stark contrast to their thorny reptilian bodies. These tiny cream-coloured blossoms lend a childish air to them in spite of the other callous parts of their physiognomy. One needs to approach them as gingerly as possible; not due to what they might actually do (or not do) to you, but due to the preconceived notion they give you about them the moment you look at them in awe. These look creepier at night. If a struggling artist tried to personify night it would look like these beings.

They vanish into the horizon slowly like a mirage when the ground raises and the very air and land once their friend, becomes their enemy. Wonder what God had in mind when He set to create these mysteriously interesting form of life on earth!

These serpentine beings stand in mute testimony to the changes happening around them. They brood all day and night, plotting something which they would do when the world would think about stopping its existence after growing very very old.This jewel of the Sonoran desert has arms that seem to gesture you against the merciless Arizonan sun trying to convey a million things at a time. No one, I suppose, has been able to understand their mysterious language.I think no one ever will!