One such example, my favorite actually, is ShipRock in northwestern New Mexico. Picacho Peak, northwest of the Old Pueblo, is another such place even if its closeness to the freeway disennobles it to a mere landmark for the tired traveler.
I was on the way to Tucson when I saw a sign at Picacho Peak state Park announcing a Civil War re-enactment. It was a strange place for one, but I had always wanted to see such a show. Since I was following no schedule...
On the way to the parking lot I noticed an extreme case of the irony that desert wildflower enthusiasts know so well: wildflowers grow more profusely along highways than in the pristine fields where our 'inward eye' sees the poet, Wordsworth, seeing his 'golden daffodils.'
And what a show! Miles of purple sidewalks squeezing the frontage road from both sides. There were other lines nearby such as the Union Pacific rail line and Interstate 10, both very busy and noisy. And there was windblown litter, death-dropped on barbed wire fences, like foot soldiers in the Great War, who died in Flanders Fields.
Why had Wordsworth's Daffodils chosen to disennoble themselves in such a place? Water running off the pavement doesn't really explain the irony of it.
It's as if Nature has a sense of irony, or humor. Ahh there he goes again, anthropomorphizing nature, you say. After all these years of traveling and exploring I don't see how you can avoid it. I no longer believe the prejudices of historians like Toynbee who saw Olympian or Vedan gods as crude anthropomorphisms, ultimately replaced by the "higher religions."
