SPRING

Here is a trembling. Something has been waiting and the shell cracks and color gets out. The first signs come up from Mexico in February. Lavender beds of Nama demissum flowers, called purplemat, stretch across dune sands and into gaps between ragged mountains. The vibrant color crosses the border with no need for papers and moves into the long, vacant lanes of Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. This is how you know the calendar has turned.

When sunset-colored poppies follow in March, crowding the Sonoran Desert with their buttery, spectral orange, the season is here. On some years, we call it a "superbloom," and you can't help thinking you live in a fantasy, that the colors are too much for the ordinary world. Paloverde trees unleash themselves into yellow eruptions of blossoms humming with bees.

Snow hasn't stopped in the high country. It's grown heavier, flakes twirling to the ground wet and plump, almost turning to rain. The North Rim of the Grand Canyon remains closed until May, meaning it takes a while for spring to reach every last corner.

Water starts to move. The upper Salt River roars with snowmelt through its cathedral gorges. The Gila, dammed and diverted as it is, might peek up its head outside of Phoenix, where it flows underground and skylights here and there. The Verde comes in muddy and wild, and the Colorado does whatever its dams tell it to. Through the Grand Canyon, the Colorado often flows somewhat clear. When it reaches the springtime Little Colorado River high with spring runoff, the rest of the way the water is the metallic, earthy red for which the Colorado got its name.

The season is an infusion of color climbing up the state from south to north, greening as it goes, gaining traction in fits and starts. Sycamore leaves grow as big as your face, and a cottonwood leaf will fill your palm. Glens in the Rim Country fill with high grass, and the creeks are numbing to walk through.

Winter is the slow winding of a string around a top. Spring whips the string off and the top hits the ground spinning. Springs that might have dried up in the prior season are now running, rock cracks and fern holes issuing into the light, and in really good years, they gush. Pollen lifts up in clouds. Birds sing their hearts out for mates and to keep competitors away. The world seems to be kissing itself, making out with itself, procreation showing up in every form. You're almost embarrassed to keep watching.

PRECEDING PANEL: JOEL HAZELTON

Mexican goldpoppies (Eschscholzia californica ssp. mexicana) and lupines surround teddy bear chollas - both living and dead - in late-afternoon light in the Mount Nutt Wilderness of Northwestern Arizona. The 28,000-acre wilderness area protects the central portion of the rugged Black Mountains.

PAUL GILL

A long-armed saguaro cactus presents a bouquet of blooms near the Superstition Mountains, east of the Phoenix area. Bats, visiting at night, are the primary pollinators of saguaro blossoms, but bees and birds also contribute during the day.

Brittlebushes (Encelia farinosa) and globemallows (genus Sphaeralcea) thrive amid saguaros on a hillside near Theodore Roosevelt Lake. Both of these desert wildflower species typically bloom in March and April, but the exact timing depends on latitude, elevation and weather.

Brittlebush blooms carpet a slope with a view of Bartlett Lake, northeast of Phoenix. A reservoir on the Verde River, Bartlett Lake is known for its fishing, boating and camping opportunities.

EIRINI PAJAK

BYRON NESLEN

Boundary Cone, in the Black Mountains, rises over a sea of spring wildflowers in late-afternoon light. A drive along the stretch of Historic Route 66 between Kingman and Topock is ideal for exploring this Northwestern Arizona range.

PAUL GILL

An ant crawls on a saguaro cactus blossom, Arizona's state flower and a symbol of the Sonoran Desert. Typically, saguaro blossoms open at night and remain open for less than 24 hours.

After a rainy winter, sand verbenas (genus Abronia) and other wildflowers proliferate on a sand dune at Havasu National Wildlife Refuge in Western Arizona. The refuge, managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is northwest of Lake Havasu City, along the Colorado River.

Vibrant globemallows grow above a waterfall at Devil's Canyon, a backcountry destination in the Globe area, in late-afternoon sun. “This globemallow was practically begging to be showcased,” the photographer recalls. “It was a rare spring treat in the Sonoran Desert.” FUJIFILM GFX 50R, 0.4 SEC, F/29, ISO 400, 23 MM LENS

A Mexican goldpoppy emerges from an orange sea of its brethren at Picacho Peak State Park, along Interstate 10 between Phoenix and Tucson. A subspecies of the California poppy, the Mexican goldpoppy is native to the Sonoran Desert.

NIKON D800, 1/6400 SEC, F/4.2, ISO 200, 100 MM LENS

BYRON NESLEN

A variety of desert wildflowers fill a meadow at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, along the U.S.-Mexico border. The monument's size (330,000 acres) and varied elevation mean wildflower blooms can be found there from February to May.

CANON EOS 5DS R, 1/25 SEC, F/22, ISO 100, 24 MM LENS

A hedgehog cactus (genus Echinocereus) displays its bright red blooms in a rocky section of the Pajarita Wilderness, along the U.S.-Mexico border northwest of Nogales. More than 660 plant species have been identified in this 7,500-acre wilderness area.