Meet Bob the Cactus

Let's see what this turns into... Still in the early stages. If you have any suggestions or criticisms please feel free to voice them as this is my first attempt to writing a full story.

There was a cactus. His name was Bob. The cactus had been around for a while. It had seen many things since it rose out of the Arizona dirt and tasted the dry Sonoran air. The red and orange that gilded the western skies and prism-ed the clouds with a Pearle-sque glow at the end of a desert day.

Bob was a saguaro. Other cacti claimed they were better than Bob, but he knew they would never understand the way of a saguaro. How that a saguaro would spend half a century to reach recognition and yet even then still persevere in it's quest for the stars. How a saguaro appears to mimic man, but as the years would pass and the earth spun men would mimic the saguaro more.

Bob liked his life and although it may have seemed monotonous to most, every day was an adventure to Bob. Today the sun had shifted a centimeter to the west and the clouds moved in a way they never had, and never would again.

A family of birds tested his arms for durability and his trunk for stability before being scared off by a group of hikers. Bob took a picture with the hikers, which they kept of course, Bob would wish for a new day tomorrow and had no need to reflect on the past. One of the hikers would treasure this photo until their dying day, and upon their death the hiker's children would find the photo. Maybe one or two of them might even visit Bob one day and Bob wouldn't mind if they took a picture with him as well.

There was one thing that saddened Bob as he thought about this and that was the simple fact that he would forget these hikers. Bob wanted more than anything to remember those people! They were headed down the mountain and now fading from his memory as quickly as the most pleasant dream you might ever have would. Sure you could fight to remember it and write it down, but then that would only be the memory of the dream and not the thing itself. Of course I have now lost track of Bob... Oh Yes here we were talking about the hikers disappearing down the pass and from Bob's recollection altogether. So Bob forgot about the hikers, even though he wanted to remember them more than anything in the moment beforehand.

Bob was a cactus. Cacti do not remember. They sit in the dirt and the sun and watch the wonderful beautiful world pass them by every day. If no man ever appreciated the rising and setting of the great ball of fire we so fancifully call the sun, ever again, then there would be a million cacti to take their place. Some of might find this sad and determine within yourselves to never miss another sunset or sunrise for the rest of your life. This, I would not speak for or against, but Bob would wonder why you ever missed them in the first place. You see there is a beauty in the stillness and quiet of nature that we highly advanced bipeds have abandoned for the rush and din of a thousand machines that call our own name. Now this story is about Bob though.

The next day he saw a prairie dog run by. It was filled with fear. A terrible thing had tried to eat it. Now of course this is the part where I describe a bulldozer or some-such other terrible thing that represents man's ever encroaching progress into destroying the world that gave birth to him, but I know better than to fill your heads with such things.

Plus there is the fact that Bob lived on a wildlife preserve. You may not know what a wildlife preserve is, so I shall explain it to you in simple terms. A wildlife preserve is a place in which no one can legally destroy any piece of nature, no matter how small the destruction. So what happened next is entirely unlikely and of course that is where all the best stories begin.

Reviews

[David McNeeley]

Update:
I have some of Chapter 1 done, I'm just struggling with time constraints to get edits done and finish the chapter. I can promise you though that I will have something posted by Friday.

[Andrew Dane Parker]

This story just makes me happy and I don't really know why. Lol. I just really like it and would actually love to find out what happens next. It just seems different from other writings, not too serious, which is good. Well done.

[David McNeeley]

Some of those I wanted to read this said that the one big block of text was intimidating. So I made some paragraphs and edits let me know what you think and if you want to find out what happens next.

[Connie Lenser]

I love the story and the concept. I also love Cactus Bob. I'll talk more about him later.