The haunt of the dry wind

I suppose I am a little sad to have left. OK, maybe more than a little... but I am also glad to be here so that I might interpret the awareness and newness that I came home with. I went out to that sweet desert land, and I found what I wasn't looking for. Because I hadn't really been looking for anything, it just arrived. How I wish I could coast through my daily life with such little expectation.

What did I find? I found something ineffable and something that lives inside of my own heart. I found that I love the earth with such admiration and awe and reverence, and in all the holiest moments it seems she loves me back. I found that I need far less than I think I need on a daily basis. That really all I need is air, water, a tent, some food, music, and my good health (and of course I do need others to share the visions with because so goes my eager and selfish ways...) but that when I arrived back at my perfect and giant house it seemed museum-like and distant. Getting water from my bathroom sink to drink before bed seemed ridiculous and strange. Fresh shampoo, lotions, and a shower were all far too close at hand. Plug-in coffee makers, instant stovetops and light bulb action, shiny clean floors and an overflowing refrigerator- they all seem so easy and yet somehow I harbor a disdain for their promotion of my laziness. I have thoughts of moving away alone back into that vast land where I pitch tents nightly and brew my coffee in the open desert air. I dream that my life will one day consist of endless days of such activity. That the full moon will light my footsteps bright as any lightswitch again and that just a few groceries and supplies will suffice for weeks. I want my toes to feel dusty in their shoes, my arms to be leathery with too much sun, my smile to be pure in the early morning light and I- forgetful of how others see me.

But in the clean and modern house that I dwell in I do believe the week away in the Land that My Heart Lives In brought changes that I will cling to. I want to get up early and feel the morning cool before the heat and see the way the light streams upon the world from that other side of the sky, the one I am so shy of. I want to work every day inside my own skin, to climb hills and run mountains, to sweat and feel the sore of my muscles, to tire myself out before I fall into my bed. I want to stop and be quiet and witness the still language of the wilderness around me and its messages of perfection. I want to believe there is never anything to fear because there is a reason for everything. And know that these are not reasons able to be thunk of by human minds, but ones that far surpass our petty reasonings- they are universal and wild reasons beyond our imaginations. But I want to be able to recognize them, mysterious as they may come.

I try to figure what it was, what it IS about that desert scape that fills my heart with so much wonder and idea and inspiration. Mandy put it into words with "humble" and "humbling". Such hugeness, such insane natural majesty that sits so quietly, asking for so very little, is perhaps some kind of heroic example to my own selfish nature. I wonder why my fascination came so late in life and how much it really had to do with Ed Abbey and how much was lying dormant within me, a true love waiting to be awakened. But I DO know that the love is true. Anything that, in pure silence and stillness, moves my eyes to tears for no reason other than awe and gratitude for my aliveness has to encompass what love means to me. And when I say that I felt as though the earth loved me back I mean that is the closest thing to saying what I really mean. As we drove in the warm night through nowhere roads in Nevada we were guided to a sweet, brilliant place of shooting stars and kit-foxes and the rum poured just so and the light shone just right and the food tasted perfect and the air was clean and new. And each road led to what seemed like a perfect destiny, as though every wrong turn was only right, never wrong. Or maybe I could just see things much more clearly on that open road, and here at home all these appliances and wants and needs and obligations fill my eyes with specks and stones and I cannot see the Way of everything and nature and her smile.

The lush land is one thing, fertile and green and full of surprise. But maybe it is what seems like emptiness in the desert that I find so amazing and teeming with sources of life and beauty, because within it lies the kind of life that I admire the most. Life that can meet the utmost challenges. Humble lives that ask for little and live in the grandeur. The most paradoxical creation, the most majestic barren, the cleanest and darkest slate of stars. It is with that sweet humility that I am so taken. Creatures and canyons that know no different, know not of the fertile mountains of many rivers and flowers, know not of abundance or luxury, but yet live so gracefully within their simple and harsh surroundings. Flourishing in the minimum and existing within the raw. Those kinds of spirits break my damn heart. Kingsnakes and lizards and cottontails and coyotes. Hummingbirds and tarantulas and tortoises. Sandstone, cliff, boulder, alluvium, red Wingate, salt and limestone.

I can't be gone for long. I wrote all the words prior to this sentence three days ago but the photos wouldn't upload and then I got busy with the ins and outs of every day life... but even since this writing my heart has been literally hurting in the center of my chest. It's like I left a little piece of it out there, it honestly feels like something's gone missing. Some part of its core and I am not quite sure what to do about it. I guess I'll spend a lot of time reading Everett Ruess and Ed Abbey and Mary Austin and other desert writers, try to find some people who share and understand such a love, and save up some scrap change to get back across Nevada as soon as possible.