Pagan in the desert


That's me

There are still places in the continental U.S. where you can get away from the light pollution, the noise pollution, and the road pollution. My desert is one of those.

I say mine, it's not really. It covers a good portion of four states and doesn't belong to any one person. But it's in me and I'm in it. I was born here, not too far from where I am sitting now. My family has a long history of being tied to the land. Add this desert to that and you get me.

Well, mostly anyway.

It's a high desert, cooler than what you would expect. On a winter's night you can lose yourself in the jeweled sky. It's like the stars surround you and sing to you softly.

In the summer's night just after dusk you can feel the Earth giving up her heat to the Sky. Sometimes it can seem more sexual than the quiver of flesh during a lady's quiet orgasm.

I've seen other deserts. Phoenix with it's deceptive beige inoffensiveness. Death Valley where the heat is a presence you've no name for. Salt flats where your sweat dries and crusts on your skin faster than it can cool you.

But only one haunts my dreams with the colors bleeding through Kodachrome.

I can take you to a place where the sand is white on one side and red on the other. I can show you where the black volcanic sand still isn't strong enough to mute all the colors. I can show you where the sky is stretched so thin that you would swear the occasional cloud is really a rip into beyond. I can show you canyons where the sound never dies. I can show you where eagles leap to grab the wind. I can show you a place where one single tree is the only living thing you see for miles.

I can show you my desert.

I can show you the edge where Nature looks back into you. I can show you the place where the river ties itself into a knot during flood season. I can drag you along a twisty way where the desert becomes a forest full of pine and aspen where the wind whispers the deepest secrets you need to hear. I can show you the sacred mountains of the Diné and let them thrum through your feet.

This is where you can't lock the Divine away in a church.

This is my place.

This is the place that calls me.

Posted: Sat - December 27, 2008 at 01:20 PM
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