Desert Driftwood

 "The ocean is a desert with its life underground and a perfect disguise above"
 America, A Horse With No Name

The desert has its own kind of driftwood.  It's not wave tossed, shaped and softened by the water and sand.  Instead, it's baked and cracked by the relentless sun.  Wind, sand and dust may smooth it out.  Any outer layer splits off and reveals what once was hidden.

I've spent a few hours in the desert.  I've seen the broken and desiccated corpses of many saguaros.  I've never seen this before.  It's almost like a root ball, but it's on what used to be a stalk.  So many intriguing shapes and textures.  

This is the kind of beauty that I would hope to incorporate or emulate in my set pieces.

This is the dry and cracked husk from the cactus.  It's a little hard to tell in the pic, but a bird made a hole in the living cactus and as it healed, the new skin formed a hollow for the bird to live in.

Just look at the texture left behind!  Most of the needles are gone now, but this crazy alligator looking skin remains.

A context picture showing the exposed ribs and some of the outer skin still intact.