A little ditty about the Big Bend...

The desert surrounds me, as deep and rolling as any ocean: a vast, unobstructed sky framed in languid mountains; a stair-step mesa to the west; a hulking elephant butte of a thing to the north; a table-top peak to the south. The ridgelines unfurl slowly. Shape and color evolve with every passing cloud, every degree of the rising or setting sun.

In the full moon the ground glows, a white iridescence. In the new moon it disappears, sunk into the earth, black as silk, a million stars above. Who knew there were so many stars?

Weather here is a work of art - a light-play on velvet mountains, a powder blue sky, a thin rake of clouds to curtail the day and then nothing. The sun’s wake is splashed unhindered in every possible direction.

Water: translucent, opaque, murky, stagnant, trickling, flooding. Lifeblood of the land. Sculptor of dirt and rock. Mover of stone and brush. Dictator of survival. Her calling card is a vocal perfume of musk and dust and petrichor rising from the freshly damp earth, the bloom of a dry, brittle cactus, the roar and flash of a narrow ravine. What gives life here can also take it away - but what can shatter you can also sustain you.

In spring the wind is insistent, lost, unsure which direction to follow; in summer, a cooling agent. The sun cracks and warps everything in her view – she owns the place and she knows it. The plants and animals: ocotillo, prickly pear, creosote; fox, coyote, elk, javelina; all have a tenacity not seen in places where the living comes easy.

Adaptation is key. The resurrection fern curls inward, dead and shriveled, yet rises again with each monsoon rain. The ocotillo appears dry and brittle then suddenly lush and green. Kangaroo rats survive without water. Jackrabbits thrive. An owl swoops in. The fox and coyote come out at night; they know the way.

At home I have a bench. It waits for me, silently. No cell signal, no Wi-Fi, no roads, no other sign of life, just a bench lost in waves of red dirt, burgeoning canyons, mesas and jagged ridges, the gnarled roots of mesquites who have given up on life.

The little dog, the younger dog, the one who likes to howl along with the donkey’s bray, lies beside me. I sink my fingers deep into warm, black fur. The wind plays in my hair. The earth calls bare feet. And the rock, warmed from the sun, wants my palm against it.

It is strong. It is quiet. It is safe. And there is sky unending.

It has always been this way.