Sonoran Desert

   "To the desert go prophets and hermits; through deserts go pilgrims and exiles. Here the leaders of the great religions have sought the therapeutic and spiritual values of retreat, not to escape but to find reality."
            ---- Paul Shepard in Man in the Landscape: A Historic
            View of the Esthetics of Nature

   One of four deserts in North America (the others being the Chihuahuan, the Mojave, and the Great Basin deserts), the Sonoran Desert is different in that it has two rainy seasons every year -- one in the winter, and one in the late summer (what we in Arizona call our "monsoon").
   Tall Saguaro cacti also distinguish it from the others.  Many people consider the Sonoran to be the most exotic looking and feeling desert in the world, due to the variety of rock formations and desert plants that are found in it.
   The Sonoran Desert occupies most of southern Arizona, a tiny bit of southern California, and most of the Mexican State of Sonora.

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