Scrawny Thistle Plant Ready To Bloom, Found Among A Very Thin Stand Of Even Scrawnier Grass.
…How Can Plants Survive The Very Dry And Super Heat Of This Tortured Land?

…"… it’s already too hot to sleep. … Beyond the pines are burned grass and clumps of earth and sand so bright they are hard to look at. The heat, silence, and barren hills and blank sky give a feeling of great, intense space. .. Not a bit of moisture in the sky. Today’s going to be a scorcher. …”

Shadehill Reservoir, SD. The ZMM Narrator emphasizes again and again in ZMM. He repeatedly says how desolate, and dry, and burnt-up this landscape is, especially from Shadehill Reservoir, SD (South of Lemmon, SD), through the super awful badlands at Marmarth, ND, to Locate, MT (at the Powder River), a distance of some 160 miles.
…However, this is a considerable contrast to most of my photos, which generally show lots of green vegetation, in this area of the Dakotas and Eastern Montana.
…We must remember that Pirsig came through nearly a month later, well after the complete exhaustion of water from winter snow and spring rain
…Yes, “burnt to a crisp” landscape would be the finishing result of the “duesey of a heat wave” they experienced as they traveled from here into Eastern Montana.
…Moreover, the actual recorded Weather Facts actually well fit Pirsig’s writing concerning the narrator’s “scorcher” heat wave. An 108 Degree Fahrenheit Heat Wave actually did happen, in EXACTLY this same area, and IS CONFIRMED in the 9 July 1968 weather record!

LEARN MORE …In Western Dakotas, The Thistles Will Be Similar to Montana. =>

Ten native thistles and five exotic invasive thistles grow in Montana. The Montana State University Extension published a guide to identify thistles in Montana in 2015.

A Guide to Montana Thistles.PDF:
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(Photo = 103-0442_IMG.JPG ...... ZMM Page = 057 ...... WayPt = 068 2210ft. Photo at 075x 2820ft near Cascoyne ND. HSG stopped here, 20 miles East of Bowman, ND at a slightly higher rise in Rt-12, to take 8 photos for a 360 degree panorama. )