Tag: Spanish

 A warm, dry foehn wind that blows from the west across the Andes and down into western Argentina, mainly in winter. It arrives hot and desiccating, sometimes carrying dust, and can raise temperatures by 10°C in minutes.

A large, flat, grassy, treeless plain — or, in the American Southwest, a broad, low-lying area of fertile, well-watered ground along a river, suitable for cultivation. Las Vegas was named for the meadows that the springs there sustained in the desert.

A tall, dense, freshwater marsh plant (bulrush) native to the western United States, growing in thick stands around lakes, marshes, and river deltas. Tule marshes once covered vast areas of California's Central Valley. The plant gives its name to tule fog — the dense, ground-level radiation fog that forms in the Central Valley in winter, reducing visibility to near zero.

A natural rock basin — a pothole in bedrock, typically in a canyon or wash, that collects and holds rainwater. Tinajas can be inches deep or deep enough to swim in, and in the desert they are critical water sources for everything that lives. Some hold water year-round; others last only weeks after rain. Knowing where the tinajas are is desert literacy.

An earthquake. The word carries a different weight than its English equivalent — less clinical, more physical, closer to the body's experience of the ground shuddering beneath it. In California and the American Southwest, temblor is used interchangeably with "earthquake" in both journalism and conversation, a linguistic inheritance from the Spanish-speaking culture that named the landscape first.

A corner, a nook — specifically a sheltered recess in a canyon wall, a box-end side canyon, or any protected natural enclosure in the landscape. Rincones provided shelter, shade, and defensible positions; many bear evidence of habitation. The word is common in place names across the Southwest.

A watering place for livestock in the desert — a natural or improved site where water collects and cattle gather. Ramaderos appear in place names and ranch vocabulary across the Southwest and northern Mexico.

An open-sided shade structure — a roof without walls. In the desert the roof is the essential thing; walls are optional. The simplest architecture: shade.

A dry lake bed in an arid basin — a flat, barren, often cracked surface of fine clay and evaporite minerals marking the floor of a lake that no longer exists, or that exists only briefly after rare rains. Playas are among the flattest natural surfaces on earth. The Bonneville Salt Flats, the Black Rock Desert, and Rogers Dry Lake (where the Space Shuttle landed) are all playas. After rain, a playa can become a shallow, perfectly still mirror reflecting the sky — and then it dries and cracks again.

A pointed peak or sharp summit — a mountain with an unmistakable, aggressive profile. Used in the Southwest and Latin America for peaks that rise to a pronounced point. Picacho Peak in Arizona, visible for miles across the desert, is the type example.