The desert conceals more than it reveals

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Some passages may not be suitable for those in the middle of eating a meal)
When you are in search of the crosses, you first have to find Las Cruces. If you're traveling, there are four primary routes.
You can come from El Paso on I-10. You can come in from Deming, from the west, on I-10. You can come in from the north on I-25. Or, you can come from the east on U.S. 70.
After living in Alamogordo for 11 years, I'm most familiar with the route from the east. Even more so now, since I'm commuting every day.
Until I started driving U.S. 70 on a daily basis, I didn't realize how much wildlife you can encounter on the route.
For years I've noticed the hawks that perch on the telephone poles in the late afternoon/early evening. If you're heading east the ideal number of minutes before sunset, it seems like there's a hawk on every other pole.
They appear to be checking the ground for a wayward ground squirrel or some other tasty desert meal. Or, since I've never actually seen one diving after anything, maybe that's just their favorite time to hang out.
Either way, they are beautiful, majestic birds.
Sometimes, from a distance, you'll think it's a hawk but it turns out to be a crow.
Lately, I've noticed a trend of much smaller, yellow-breasted birds chasing crows five times their size. The little guys are the aggressors, chasing the hawks up, down and all around.
And while there's lots of wildlife floating gracefully above, there's also lots of less mobile wildlife right on the ground. I'm referring, of course, to roadkill.

Aaaah, roadkill. The roadkill on U.S. 70 provides pretty much a living (well, actually, dead) textbook of desert animal life.
The most noticeable example is the coyote. On any given day, there will be three or four coyotes, or parts of coyotes, strewn about the highway. Currently, there's one that's been there about three weeks. In that time, the coyote has desiccated from a normal, bloated dead coyote to one that's about as thick as a piece of cardboard. Yet all of his body parts are intact and contiguous.
He's so thin now, I fully expect in the next day or two a gust of wind to lift him up, and send him flying through the air like a Frisbee.
Predictably, perhaps, I almost never see a roadrunner.
I'm sure most of the dead coyotes don't actually get hit by cars. More likely, they've come up with some elaborate scheme to capture a roadrunner (probably with a product from Acme), and it backfires, killing the coyote while the roadrunner speeds blissfully away. Meep-meep.
But I digress.
The aforementioned ground squirrel shows up as roadkill from time to time, as does the mighty rattlesnake.
One day I saw a squashed ground squirrel, and about four feet to the left was a squashed rattler. I wondered if the rattle snake was chasing the critter for a light snack, when both were hit by tires of the same vehicle.
I don't know if the driver got his 2-for-1 intentionally, but if so, he probably should have let the little ground squirrel go. He was probably going to get it from the rattler's brother later anyway.
The most disappointing roadkills are the small rabbits. Something about seeing that little cottontail that kind of breaks your heart.
Occasionally I'll see a tarantula, but most of the time, they've managed to escape with their eight legs intact.

Aside from dead animals, there's lots of other nature to see. Right now the yuccas are in full bloom, and when you look across White Sands Missile Range you can see hundreds of them. When the light is just right, they seem to be glowing.
In addition to the coolest state flag, New Mexico, with the yucca, also has the coolest state flower.
There are also hundreds of the supposedly endangered prickly poppy plants.
I was traveling recently with my parents, from Phoenix to Alamogordo. All the way from Las Cruces, my mom would look at any patch of light colored dirt and ask, "Is that the White Sands?" I said, "Mom, when you see the White Sands, you'll KNOW it."
And indeed, they are the whitest dunes you could imagine. White Sands National Monument is one of three places I've been where I felt like I were on another planet.
The clouds can also be incredible, particularly when you're cresting the San Augustin Pass (going in either direction), and you can look across the whole range, and the sky seems utterly immense. It's great for watching rainbows and lightning strikes.
Still, it's hard to beat the animals. The ones that are still alive, I mean.

And I don't mean the little boy I saw recently. His family had pulled their van over to the side of the road, and the little boy was joyously and unabashedly peeing skyward into the desert. With the wind.
What I mean most are the oryx.
Used to be I'd see the beautiful oryx frequently on U.S. 70. But the past four or five years, they've stayed mostly in hiding. I almost never see them.
However, they have a tendency to be summon spirits, appearing only when conjured.
Twice in the past year, people who were making the trip with me said before the trip, "I hope we see an oryx. I've never seen one."
I said, in both cases, "No chance. They stay away from the road these days."
"I think we'll see one," they said.
In both cases, when we actually made the trip, sure enough, about midway, there appeared a flock of six oryx.
If you haven't seen them, these horse-sized deer-like creatures have towering horns and striking black, white and tan markings.
There's another really cool animal, at least it's named for an animal. It's the F-117A Nighthawk, more commonly known as the Stealth fighter. If you don't know, it's a jet based at Holloman Air Force Base. It looks more like the Batplane than a typical aircraft.
A couple of weeks ago, I was cruising down 70 just west of Holloman. I noticed the car ahead of me made a brief, quick swerve before correcting. As I was wondering what had happened, my vehicle was enveloped in a sudden shadow, right before I heard the crushing, vibrating, Who-concert-volume whoosh of jet exhaust. I looked up to my left to see the Nighthawk pulling up and preparing to land at the base. It felt like it was only 20 feet above my vehicle.
And true to its nickname, the Stealth had approached so stealthily, I did not even see it until it was literally right on top of me.
Sadly, the Nighthawks are yet another endangered species. The Air Force has decided to retire them, and they'll all be out of commission by the end of next year.
But, as much as I love seeing the oryx and the Nighthawk, there's another animal I find even more stunning, more fascinating.
I've only seen one once, at dusk, when the setting sun was producing the purple-hued alpenglow on the Organ and Sacramento Mountains.
I saw the animal leap from the side of the road back into the desert.
Sure, the light was a little tricky, but the animal was unmistakable.
The rare, benevolent and beautiful jackalope.
He paused when he got into the desert and, I swear, he looked me right in the eye. A glint of sunlight bounced off his left antler.
I know you may not believe in jackalopes, but I'm pretty sure they exist.