Arizona highways have speed limits of up to 75 MPH (121 KMH). Zooming down on-ramps and through the flat desert landscape, you almost miss it. Countless roadside memorials are decorated with flowers, prayer candles, and sometimes toys. Maybe some memorials have no decoration with a blank white cross because family can’t make it out far enough into the desert to decorate it, or they’ve simply forgotten. The memorials, shoved and propped up in the desert dust and sand, decorate our highways like ornaments and mark the spot where a life was lost during a fatal traffic accident. 

Along the same highway, less than a mile down, there’s another morbid site. A coyote lies dismembered, while the underside of its body sizzles and melts onto the 180°F (82°C) asphalt. A little further, a javelina’s body has been shoved up against the side of the highway as semi-trucks and cars zoom by. The white bushy tail of a desert cottontail is blowing in the wind, while its body is stuck, pressed flat onto the highway. 

This morbid reality becomes a beautiful yet dark and romantic scene against the beautiful Arizona landscape. Mountains, cacti, wildlife, and the beautiful cotton candy colored sunset engulf you as you fantasize about the lives behind each roadside memorial. How the coyotes and javelinas used to run free before being pummeled by oncoming traffic. You can’t help but wonder how it ended. Drunk driving? Speeding? Texting? Vehicle malfunction? Suicide? Though a little gruesome and morbid, it’s beautiful how you glance for less than a second as you speed by, and give life back into these lifeless objects.