Desert Sky

Dream beneath a desert sky

If I had to choose between a desert and a jungle, I’d choose the desert every time. Not that a jungle isn’t appealing, of course, but a desert hides its beauty in plain sight, while a jungle flaunts it voluptuously.

I being me, I prefer the hide-and-seek of the desert.

Perhaps it’s because deserts make up about one-third of earth’s land masses, but they’re the least populated parts of the planet. Spending so much time in virtual places occupied by so many humans and bots, a deserted place holds a certain appeal.

There are no deserts of my youth, as I grew up in the rain-soaked Pacific Northwest, but Oregon being a mystery state to many Americans, is at least a quarter high desert, if not more if you count the sagebrush-covered Columbia River Basin. And so, the desert is where we often escaped the monotony of rain, even if we did not know we were going to the desert. These days, I will point my car toward the Alvord Desert any chance I get just to gaze at the stars at night, sit in a hot spring or watch the alkali dust climb the thermals.

We need new dreams tonight

I’ve visited the Sonoran, Chihuahuan and Mojave deserts in recent years with all the intention of going to spend time in the desert. I’ve sought out those forms of life most associated with those areas like the Saguaro cactuses of the Sonoran Desert or the Joshua trees of the Mojave Desert. Chihuahuan ravens, Greater roadrunners and desert tortoises sit on fauna wish lists I’ve created.

I used to think I could not live without an ocean nearby, and while I haven’t tested that theory in nearly a decade, it is the desert I long for when life starts to creep around the edges and bleed into the simulation.

It only takes two and a half hours of driving to reach the high desert by climbing over the Cascadian rain shadow, but it is only when I’ve left all traces of civilization behind, when I can look and see nothing but sagebrush and old basalt and not have another car pass me for an hour or more that I feel like I’m back in the desert.

I stand with the sons of Cain

As a child, I used to grow bored when the landscape was nothing but sagebrush sea as far as the eyes could see, but now I’m comforted by those non-saline swells and troughs. Something about traveling through the desert heals me like salty seawater only less like baptism and more like hanging out to dry the damp recesses of fear and inhibition.

I go to the desert today to erode the sediment away and find the hard lines that I never knew I had until I could start to feel them like the hornblende and quartz at the basement of the world. I go to let the wind strip away anything not fastened down.

I never would have guessed I’d find myself in the desert. Of all the richness of earth and its unique landscapes that can strip a person of the dusty business of humanity, I might not have picked one that hides such a diversity of life in plain sight, but then I didn’t get to choose this at all. The desert found me.