Daily Dose of the Southwest: A Prickly Focus

Does it feel like your face is pressed dangerously close to a jumping cholla cactus?

Something I love about photography is how it can take the viewer somewhere they would never go on their own.

Let’s take these cacti, a species known as Teddy Bear Cholla — but you don’t want to cuddle with them. Frank Lloyd Wright even called them the dangerous blondes of the desert.

When I take people on hikes out in the desert, they often ask how close you can get to a cholla before it will jump on them.

The truth is, jumping chollas don’t actually jump. They do have barbed spines that will hook onto your clothes or grab your skin and hitch along for an unwanted and painful ride.

But they don’t jump! The name is — like many things in the Southwest — an old cowboy’s exaggeration. To prove it, I’ll hold my hand right up next to a cholla, even letting the tips poke me without grazing the barbed shafts.

It’s a “don’t try this at home” moment. Nobody wants to take the risk that the jumping cactus will live up to its name.

And so it’s fun that I can point my camera lens right up by a cholla cluster, snap a photo, and share the feeling of entering the zone that nobody wants to enter.

If looking at this photo gives you a certain feeling or reaction, I’d love to hear about it.

That’s it for today’s prickly Daily Dose. Stay sane out there, my friends.

-Jake

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