The spareness of the desert: a small hill was home to seven clumps of terra cotta-pink grass. Beyond it, dark piñones echoed their humped shape. All carefully spaced; plants form a community, yet they’re individuals who live with each other at a social distance.
I drew the fossil of a spiral snail shell embedded in a gray limestone boulder.
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WORLD-BUILDING and WILDERNESS: 
I would love to know where you are when you write these wonderful word pictures, maybe a simple “location” at the end…
Dick, usually the answer would be “New Mexico,” because I’m such a poor orienteer–I’d never dare hike alone, they’d find my bleached bones. This was in the Sandias, mousing around above Placitas.