More randomness! Today, while stalking the wild and crazy bonsai tree in the Santa Rita mountains, I got to see an oddity. That is, just over a ridge was this sudden area of white. Apparently, amidst all the high-desert scrub of juniper in red-brown dirt and clay, (we learned this from a geologist) a bit of a different kind of material welled up from the ground at some point in the distant past, and kind of...well, popped or something. And voila - white clay! Which isn't horribly notable except for being a bit creepy in a hidden vale kind of way, but: there are these really twisted, stunted, strangely trunk'ed, and ancient trees growing in the little gullies and crags. It's just odd, as these are the kind of trees that really only grow in California, and there aren't any super-old (talking hundreds and even up to thousand year old trees, here) anywhere nearby. Just in the white clay. Yep. Weird.

      Also, the last full moon was fun, though I forgot to write about it till now. I went out for one of those getting-home-really-late walks, and after a bit realized the clouds were moving at a relatively break-neck speed. What was particularly interesting about this was that the moon was so bright that as the clouds moved past it, a kind of bright-dim-bright effect that you'd normally only see during the day with the sun was happening, which made for an odd very-dark-version-of-daytime feeling. Also, I noticed that the city lights were reflecting off the clouds to the south in a lovely rosy-orange way, and then I noticed that the clouds were moving along in this stately parade or river or basically in a a certain line across the sky. They didn't fill up the entirety of the dark, but were instead all travelling along the same current, and in that wind-current were moving fast and low enough that I could even watch the vapors change shape and form as they passe the moon. Good times.

Random Question of the Day - how did ancient people figure out which herbs and plants had medicinal properties? Did they just walk around trying stuff, or perhaps more intelligently foist them off on people they didn't like, maybe?