You pull the string on a folded-up Chinese paper flower and it pops into being, replete with many serene oriental colors -- so the mesa sprouts alive just seconds after the rain and hustles full-tilt toward its own brand of muted glory.

Although the sky often reverberates with bombastic folderol, the burgeoning on earth is more subtle and restrained. Yet once I am tuned in to the drama, the diversity and energy of its unfolding life forms takes my breath away.

Grasses rise in delicate profusion. Sagebrush grows bushier, adopting a pastel-blue shine. Dry branches of rabbit brush flush verdant and produce bright yellow flowers. Wild milkweed plants pop up in Coyote Gulch and blossom pinkly; monarch butterflies arrive and lay eggs which spawn caterpillars. Overnight, round ring muhly discs become fluffy halos which soon cover portions of the mesa with a gauze that resembles platters of mist or clumps of soft fur. Lemon-yellow blossoms erupt among prickly pear spines on the stock pond's northwest shore. And a band of greasy green nettles matures along the western slope of the dam.

Everything materializes in a hurry, racing against time. The rainy season began six weeks late; August is half over; a freeze could occur on Labor Day; snow should brighten mountain peaks by mid-September.

Moisture makes the plateau shiny, perfect for photographs. In the early mornings, steam rises off the damp earth. Afternoon mists sweep lazily across the reams of sagebrush. A world, which previously smelled of burnt earth and drying grasses, perks up, unleashing a heady redolence. I stash an extra asthma inhaler in my camera pack.

The soft brown soil emits a deep musky odor. From the sage a sour incense of almost medicinal sharpness arises. The bitter leaves of soaked rabbit brush reek of fox or skunk. Mixed in are funky vulgar fumes of sheep dung. Millions of borrega droppings have been washed into foam-crusted ridges along the sloping ground; air currents are lubricated with hits of ammonia from animal wastes. The aroma blends perfectly with all the tart fermentation of the barren flatlands.

Other spicy odors contribute to the invisible brew. An occasional trickle of vanilla fragrance is wafted over from the warm bark of tall pines on Tres Orejas. Four-wing saltbushes just beyond the Western Gully beanpot exude an unpleasant stink that resembles the spray of tomcats. Horehound mint emits a sweet, faintly stinging bouquet.

After the smells, I most notice colors. Rabbit brush green wakes up; its flowers have a cadmium-yellow intensity. Low, mound-shaped snakeweed bushes turn apple green, then amber. Hair golden aster vibrates with pollen yellow.

The mesa, which only yesterday seemed mired forever in burnt ochres, umbers, and sepia tones, flushes with plush pinks, vague lavenders, creamy yellows, and sensuous purples. Even the ugly, kochia tumbleweeds flash pretty, canary-bright branches. Thorny Russian thistles display a coy verdancy. Western Gully Apache plume bears small white flowers that endure but a moment before turning into russet silky seed tufts. And sunflowers blossom at the northeast corner of the pond; their bright yellow petals are the most vivid growth on the mesa.

As water recedes from the western inlet, lush grasses spring up in the muck. Western wheat, galleta grass, muhly, blue grama, and sand dropseed soon carpet The Swales with many subtle tones of green, beige, and yellow.

Farther up that gully, wild sweetpea twines between blue grama stems, producing pink and white flowers. Amaranth prospers everywhere. On higher ground the haredum grass captures afternoon sunlight in its feathery inflorescence. And even locoweed germinates in a few shadowed nooks and crannies, waiting to play a cruel joke on the undiscriminating grazer.

Naturally, as vegetation grows higher and wider, the birds, animals, and insects of the mesa begin to proliferate.

IN HOT JULY I COULD SPEND an evening at the stock pond dusthole without hearing a sound. But water touches the insect world with an immediate fecund spell, and a noisy evening ballyhoo ensues as a million crickets launch a contest to see who can first wear out their wings.

Grasshoppers abound. Because I'm alert for rattlesnakes, the small hoppers whose vermillion wings crackle as they launch themselves often give me mini heart attacks. I squat, straining down as if constipated -- the old Valsalva maneuver. That stops my fibrillations and gets the old ticker beating normally again.

Hours after the water is impounded, mosquitoes and other bugs are running rampant. I begin to see the splash rings of insects being born. It isn't long before green darning needles zip over the muddy pond, chased by aggressive blue and gray dragonflies. Tiny things grab each other, kick and fuss, chew and dismember, eat, digest, and defecate, and then look around hungrily to see if there is anybody they : life, elucidated by unending holocaust; the natural world as total war!

However this bucolic slaughterhouse is perceived, on the mesa the spadefoot toads are the first real gauge of the stock pond's awakening. I've read that these small toads spend most of their lives dormant underground: books suggest that the toads sleep for months, "perhaps years" at a time. I have never seen a mature spadefoot, in daylight, on the mesa.

Text from the book "On The Mesa" by John Nichols, Copyright © John Nichols.
Reprinted with special permission from John Nichols - All Rights Reserved.
Photography © Peter Staats - All Rights Reserved.