How green was my desert

If you don’t live in the desert, “green” will probably not be your overwhelming impression of these pictures of Albuquerque’s Piedras Marcadas Canyon, one of the petroglyph sites on the city’s Westside.

But that’s how they looked to me yesterday.

I usually hike at the petroglyphs in the dead of winter, when the sites’ total lack of shade is alluring rather than terrifying, and the landscape’s colors are muted. I’d never the petroglyphs in May, let alone seen them fresh off several recent spring rain and snow storms.

We headed out there because a friend who was visiting from Santa Fe wanted to hike, but had been having some foot issues. We needed a hike that was not too long or strenuous, not too steep and not too far away.

The high in Albuquerque was 89 yesterday, but when we decided to hike the petroglyphs, the morning was still cool, with a nice breeze and some cloud cover.

Had we not made that decision, we would have missed seeing butterflies fluttering around the basalt boulders along with the jackrabbits and lizards that always hop and skitter there. We finished the hike at midday, just as the heat of the direct sun began to become its own entity.

I loved seeing the desert green because it’s beautiful, and because it means the ecosystem’s getting a level of replenishment it hadn’t had for a while.

But selfishly, I really loved seeing the desert green because knowing our land has soaked up that much extra water means we have a pretty good shot at a summer with lots of hiking, instead of a summer with lots of fires and closed forests.

Hike length: 2.5 miles

Difficulty: Easy