Chris M Morris, "Rainbow Gardens from Lava Butte, South Las Vegas Valley in background," 2012
The temptation’s to imagine a city gone, surface pristine, unmarred by subsidence and jitter. To look at red rock sandstone, the tops of the ridges, transport myself there and back to a bird’s eye view eons ago, as if I were a red-tailed hawk riding thermals from the valley below—sparse settlements, blending in with the earth. The temptation's to fictional idylls of this place, in that past, while the magma stirs underneath pavement and glitter, deep under carpet, our bare feet: the shifting gyre of our ever-mother who secrets the largest crystals, reserves her liquid gems for the next racking cough or burning sigh.