botanizing

Desert rain

We drive a desert highway in the rain.  Water sprays from the wheel wells of on-coming cars. The truck feels as if it floats.  Rivulets of water run down the highway, following the straight channels where traffic has grooved the lanes.  The straightness is human; no natural river would run like these rivulets.   Nature would curve, evade, find the easy slope, and erode slowly any obstacle.

Old West Books, Tombstone

Under normal circumstances I would drive through a place like Tombstone, Arizona, while trying as much as possible to ignore it; however, I don’t do that today.  Why the special day? I happened to notice a bookstore, and I’m always reluctant to pass a bookstore without stopping.

In Tombstone’s Old West Books, each volume sits on a shelf with its covering facing outward.  The presentation emphasizes every book.  It also limits the inventory. 

There may be as many as 100 books in the store—the fewest books I’ve ever seen in a bookstore.  There are more cowboy hats than books.  The hats perch atop the bookcases and on counters.   The book inventory consists of western lore and history, mysteries, suspense, and some contemporary nonfiction of the sort that I don’t read.  It’s the first bookstore I’ve visited in which the hats were more interesting than the books.