Creosote Bush, greasewood, chaparral, she considered the names more or less interchangeable.
Chaparral rolled off a more romantic ring. Greasewood wasn’t a particularly antiseptic moniker. So as far as she was concerned, those nondescript plants she soared past along the desert highway would always be creosote bushes.
They would never wind up adorning the gardens of the Hotel Bel Air. No landscaper could ever coax them beyond something spindly and unkempt. Their inner grace and gorgeous strength, such impenetrable protection from the elements, was too well hidden.
She figured the creosote bush would be forever shunned by ardent xeriscape enthusiasts. Chances are the plant would never fall into fashion.
This didn’t matter. She considered them her friends. To race past a stand of blurred creosote bushes at a hundred miles an hour gave her a rare sense of kinship, something which faithfully connected her to an otherwise uninviting desert.
Out on the broad expanses of alluvial emptiness, the creosote bush was her fellow outcast.
She followed the frenzied arc of its pale grey stems thrashing in the hot wind.
It wasn’t unusual to feel as if she was bending back and forth along with them.
