Rattlers, cacti, and scorpions...oh my!!

Tuesday December 16 2008
Tucson, AZ

About a dozen years ago, I made a trip to the desert southwest with a friend of mine. We flew into Phoenix, used Tucson as a staging site, then went to Organpipe National Monument, Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, and finally across the border and into Sierra Pinacate National Park in Sonora, Mexico. Author and lifelong desert rat Ed Abbey confessed to being intimidated by the Pinacate, a bit more than by any other part of the Sonoran desert. He wrote of El Pinacate:

“This is the bleakest, flattest, hottest, grittiest, grimmest, dreariest, ugliest, most useless, most senseless desert of them all.“

But he loved it anyway. So did I.

I brought two books: one by Joseph Wood Krutch the other by Charles Bowden, and spent the days hiking in the early morning or late afternoon, the middle of the day watching the lizards watch me, and the nighttime examining the heavens. And this was only March.

Yesterday Debbie asked me what it was about the desert I loved so much. (She’s rainforest person, after all, and the bleakness of deserts stand in stark contrast.) I did not have a good answer, but to say that there was something visceral about them. This morning I woke up thinking about what it was that I loved and I realized that experiencing the desert on its own terms was a Zen-like experience. Or fasting. On its surface a desert appears empty and biological void. But beneath and within its dry, rocky shell is an environment bubbling with life…especially at night. Even during the day when you start to look deeper at what’s in front of you, the sheer biological diversity and spiritually enriching energy in the desert it humbling. The desert forces you to look deeper; beyond your mind’s own limitations. And once you do, there’s nothing like it—in heart or mind.

We didn't make it to Pinacate this time, but we came close. We enjoyed several days in the Sonoran desert and now it is off to the Mojave Desert where the Joshua Tree is the guardian, just as the saguaro is the guardian to the Sonoran. It looks like for the next two days we’ll still be fighting the weather…somewhat at least. Even heading to Death Valley isn’t reasonable, so we’re going to the coast. See you on the other side.