Last weekend, I volunteered to be on a work party for The Nature Conservancy. we camped out in the Juniper Hills in eastern Oregon, which is miles and miles of desert and we planted willows along a tiny stream. As would be expected from a place with such a name, threre were TONS of juniper around. The wildlife that I saw were pronghorn, garter snakes, a killdeer(a kind of songbird) and various arthropods (including some ticks that tried to suck my blood). Both nights coyotes were heard after midnight. When we hiked past the painted hills there I found the bleached bones of a doe.
        I bring this up because this experience has influenced my poetry over the last few days. Among the poems written are "A Standing Corpse" and "Shade's Reprieve".