If you are planning a trip to Carlsbad, New Mexico, don't miss the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens State Park. This gem in the rough offers a chance to get up close and personal with some fascinating creatures and plants. And it is all easily accessible from a short walk (or roll, for those in wheelchairs or strollers).

We visited in May, when the desert was truly alive, especially once we turned into the park gates just off Highway 285 north of town. After driving through stark scrub desert to the north, we were greeted on the park road by tall, snaking ocotillo with fiery red tips and prickly pear cacti covered with large yellow blossoms and furled pink buds. Perhaps because of an unusually rainy spring, the blossoms were budding not only on the edges of the spiked pads but even in the centers of the pads.

The road wound up to a low building on a ridge overlooking the Pecos River valley and town of Carlsbad. We would soon learn we were at 3,200 feet, atop the Ocotillo Hills, named for the bright cactus that had greeted us. Around the large parking lot were large soaptree yucca, also covered in enormous, spiky white blooms, and many species of agave, or century plant. These giants grow close to the ground, storing energy for about twenty years before sending up a single blossoming stalk to

reproduce, after which the plants die. Those twenty years must have seemed like a century to whoever gave the agave their common name.

The staff were friendly and helpful, and the exhibits inside the building were well-designed and interesting, covering the geology, flora, fauna, and human cultures of the region. We especially enjoyed the long table with animal horns, antlers, fossils, rocks, and other items to touch and feel. We also learned that the Ocotillo Hills, like the Guadalupe Mountains to the west, were once limestone reefs in the Permian Basin, the ancient sea whose millions of tiny creatures were transformed into the deposits of oil and gas that have enriched West Texans.

The 1.3-mile paved trail winds through the various ecosystems of the Chihuahuan Desert. This desert stretches from southeast Arizona across southern New Mexico into Texas and far south into Mexico. The largest desert in North America, it covers 200,000 square miles.

The trail winds first through the Sand Dunes habitat, with sagebrush, prickly pear, mimosa, and mesquite. Next is the Riparian habitat, an area where a spring or other water makes it possible for trees to grow. (Riparian comes from the Latin ripa, "river bank.") The trees here include pines, junipers, oaks, and maples. The Riparian habitat, naturally, features the bird aviary with owls, hawks, eagles, and turkeys. Like the other animal displays in the park, the aviary features natural habitat but allows you to get quite close to the birds. I never tire of seeing these magnificent creatures, such as the bald eagle, up close.