The Desert Tells a Different Story

We just returned from a trip to the Southwest.

There, I met the desert.

When I think of the desert, I usually think of Tatooine: Luke Skywalker stumbling across treacherous landscape surrounded by sand people. A place where people die of thirst—where droids like R2D2 and C-3PO freeze up with sand in their joints.

In New England where I live, everything is green—or winter-white. The desert is so sand-colored in comparison. And hot and dry.

Clearly, I never understood the desert.

It always makes me think of the coyote and road runner. Of mirages that look like water but aren’t water at all. From the top of Kings’ Canyon in Tucson, we saw what looked like giant pools of water a hundred miles away and it turned out they were solar panels.

Hiking there, I was suspicious and on high alert, looking and listening for rattlesnakes, scorpions, and tarantulas. After reading Trixie Belden books growing up and learning from her little brother’s copperhead snake bite, I thought I might know how to save my friends and family.

In the end, we didn't come across a single slithering or threatening animal, except in the Desert Museum. Apparently, they were all hiding from the bright sun of the day.

And aside from creepy crawly things that could kill you, the desert reminded me of my grandmother Inez. She loved the desert. She found beauty in the hardy flowers. She thought we could learn from the green fortitude of palo verde trees; how succulents can go without when needed; how the barrel cacti lean southwest toward the sun. Inez loved to paint, and there was much for her to recreate in oils from the vast, open spaces of the desert.

Ever see something through someone else’s eyes and through them, you find a different world?

I was reminded of her trips to Palm Desert every year, and how she talked about feeling at home there. I never understood that as a child. But I can see now that in a desert, there’s openness. You can find anything there.

Even yourself.

We saw a bride being photographed, twirling in her wedding gown, and her small wedding party later climbing up Cathedral Rock. They were smiling as they climbed along the upflow vortex that can be found there, full of joy as they sought out a perfect place for serenity and oneness.

And then there were two guys poring over a book on Zen and a set of Tarot cards at the top of Doe Mountain. They were puzzling over deep and meaningful questions, connecting with the stillness of the Southwest.

Answers floated across the desert winds to them.

The hillsides there are not jampacked with pines smothering the forest, not allowing the rest of the trees to breathe. The layers upon layers of sedimentary rock are instead dotted sparsely with saguaros and desert brush.

What might you do with more stillness and space in your life?

Writer and activist Rebecca Solnit once said, “Drifting across the vast space, silent except for wind and footsteps, I felt uncluttered and unhurried for the first time in a while, already on desert time.”

I felt that when we were there. Desert time is a whole different tempo. There are plenty of rests between the notes.

We found time there to get proximate. First off, learning how to pronounce saguaro (duh). Second, touching spines with our fingers to see how sharp they are. I learned that these are the highly modified leaves of the cacti—collecting dew, creating shade, reducing air flow, and providing protection. If you gently tug at a cacti spine, you can see how attached they are to the cacti skin.

Stronger than one would think.

We wondered how these sentries of the desert stand up. It turns out that inside their structure is a wooden-like skeleton that holds it upright. When they die, they lose their fleshy and spiny cacti-ness and eventually, all that is left is a broken cylindrical frame that looks like it was nailed together with wooden sticks.

At first we didn’t know what the skeletons were. They just looked like old wood. We didn’t even see them, really.

But my niece pointed them out to us on a hike, and then we saw them everywhere.

As a saguaro is dying, it serves as a home for lizards, spiders, and rodents—later on to fly larvae and feather-winged and hister beetles—perhaps even a scorpion or two.

And as the saguaro dies, it produces minerals. It gives back to the desert that gave it a home for 200 years or more.

I wondered as I hiked with friends and family if I would ever hike alone there. It still felt risky—and isolated.

But one doesn’t have to be lonely in the desert.

Carlo Carretto said, “The desert does not mean the absence of men, it means the presence of God."

I suppose, just as the saguaros will return to dust, to dust we shall return with our skeletons also.

Title of this blog was inspired by a quote by Robert Edison Fulton, Jr., who said “The desert tells a different story every time one ventures on it.”