For many years I have had an abiding love for the desert. The smoothly stark landscape superimposed with jagged life and alien species can always make me pause for a moment of peace. There is something ancient, something primal in the desert. Instead of the cacophony of life one can touch in the mountains there is a delicate roaring of solitude. Every plant seems individual, special for its very existence and the lack of brotherhood in which it manages to thrive. And with this comes a sense of the extraordinary in every rock, tree, bush and animal. Colors never seem more vivid than when there are only 3 or so from which to choose and varying degrees of those.
Moab, Arches, Zion, Goblin, Bryce, these are places that visit me in my dreams but often seem unreachable through the fog of reality. Children are born, careers thrive and trips are delayed. I want my children to experience the magic of desert, the beauty of a sunrise flanked by hoodoos, to learn to follow cairns and stand behind a waterfall.
But until they are a little older, until I can show them some of the splendor of their world, I will try to experience it without them and write it down for them to read one day, if they wish.
