Mouse Canyon, Big Bend Nat'l Park, Tx

Weather in Big Bend is a work of art. The light-play on velvet, mountains stretched across a powder blue sky, only 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. The lifeblood of the desert, sculptor of rock and earth, mover of stone and brush. The dictator of survival. Her calling card a vocal perfume of musk and dust and petrichor rising from the freshly damp earth. The roar and flash of a narrow ravine. What gives life here can also take it away.

In the spring, the wind is insistent, lost, unsure which direction to follow. In the summer, a cooling agent. The sun, cracks and warps everything in her view – as if she owns the place. Summertime in the Bend can seem as isolating as winter in Alaska.

This desert does not create character, she reveals it.

This morning I chased a draw into the canyon, the natural runoff of the mountains. A pebbly sort of thing, crunching and giving beneath each step, sand that has not yet become sand – and without the soft landing that sand affords.

Eventually, rocks turn to leaves and around a bend an oak appears, cohabitating with ocotillo and prickly pear, with yuccas and sotol.

Twisted roots flank me on both sides, stretching outward as I follow this chute deeper into the earth. The birds become more plentiful – the closer to the roots of this canyon. A woodpecker, towhee, flycatcher, a mourning dove.

In the desert, life happens where it can.

And there is no trail here - according to the maps – it’s a kind of make your own path thing, so I move carefully. Slowly. Ducking under branches when the way becomes too narrow, stopping now and then to listen, to look. A rock outcropping balances on the ridge above, testing the law of gravity, teetering as if it might fall at any second.

For a moment, I think I will ascend, I give it a try even, but years of erosion and loose rock make a challenging path. I call the retreat halfway up - there is simply nothing to hold on to which doesn’t stab you.

Back in the canyon wash, a small boulder serves as perch and rest stop. A hawk floats above, dipping and swooping on updrafts and thermals. Wings open wide.

As with life, this land is not one to cross with head in the clouds. Feet must be watched. To look around properly one must stop. The very act of progression must cease – if we are to see the raptor soaring above. The teetering rock. The rabbit watching from the brush.

But everyday we tell ourselves… as soon as…, once I…, when I…, then I will be free. Then I will see the world. I will sail that ship across the ocean. I will climb that mountain and shout from the very edge of the thing.

It doesn’t work that way.

Life doesn't wait for us, and I for one, got tired of waiting for it.