The Mighty Fallen

Even for those of us lucky enough to live among them, the great columnar cacti remain eery, so foreign that we can talk about them only in terms of other creatures. Standing in their estimable prime, we think of them as “giants,” anthropomorphic monsters that can inspire a chill in the most level-headed hiker through the night-time desert.

Saguaros are even stranger when they fall, though.

Who can look at the toppled cactus without thinking of a sea creature, a leviathan beached on desert sands? And the saguaro grows less and less plant-like as it decays; its skin dries into reptilian scales and its internal structure assumes an ever more skeletal presence.

What a place, this Sonoran desert of ours!