All along its length grew willows, and in a few places white-bodied sycamores.
Everywhere over the walls red above it that vegetation could find a footing grew mosses, vines, flowers, and shrubs.

On the shadiest side homed most of the ferns and the Cotyledon.

In the sun, larkspur, lupin, and monkey flower; everywhere wild rose, holly, mahogany, gooseberry, and bayoneted yucca all intermingling in a curtain of variegated greens, brocaded with flower arabesques of vivid red, white, yellow, and blue.
Canyon wrens and vireos sang as they nested.

The air was clear, cool, and salty from the near-by sea.

Myriad leaf shadows danced on the black roadbed, level as a barn floor, and across it trailed the wavering image of hawk and vulture, gull and white sea swallow.