Water in the River

I went walking by the Rillito this afternoon. Most of the time, it's a broad river-shaped depression between concrete banks, with a sandy bed churned up by feet and hooves and paws and overgrown with half-dead desert broom. Today there was water, grey-brown, flowing quietly and steadily westward, taking up as much as half the river-bed in some places. In the past I've seen rabbits, ground squirrels and lizards along there, but I didn't spot any today, though the ground was riddled with little burrows. The weeds by the side of the path were fresh green, and the saguaro cactus looked as fat as barrels. The saguaro down there are a rather battered lot, and I have a notion, though I could be wrong, that they are mostly refugees from construction sites. Many of them have an odd narrowing a foot or two below the top, almost like a neck; I wonder if that reflects damage due to relocation some years back.

Familiar Landscapes

I've just been watching The Princess Bride, which seemed a nice way to spend a lazy evening. I saw it once before, years ago, but that time I didn't notice that bits of it were shot within a few miles of my childhood home. The moor that Wesley and Buttercup escape across is in the vicinity of the Burbage valley, if I'm not mistaken, with Higgar Tor on the skyline, and the ravine they fall down is Cavedale, near Castleton, though in my world it ends in a quiet back street, not a scary forest. I've sat on those rocks and walked among that heather all my life; it's the landscape of my heart, the place I come back to every year and know for the one true countryside.
( Photo behind the cut )