Quote of the Day - 2/21/2012

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The very air here is miraculous, the outlines of reality change with the moment.  The sky sucks up the land and disgorges it.  A dream hangs over the whole region, a brooding kind of hallucination. – John Steinbeck, 1941 as quoted in John Annerino in Canyons of the Southwest: A Tour of the Great Canyon Country from Colorado to Northern Mexico

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canyon 1.jpg

I’m remembering vacations in the southwest…both the visual and the warmth…while I am in Maryland with the outdoor temperature in the 20s and the trees still leafless.

The Steinbeck quote evokes the place quite well.

Maybe in all places ‘the outlines of reality change with the moment’ but it is easier to see in the canyons with the ratio of rock to vegetation so high. The shadows have more significance. Consider that ‘the moment’ may be elastic rather than finite time element depending on perspective. What is a moment in the geologic timeline of a canyon?

And the sky. I am drawn to the southwest by the sky as much as anything else. The daytime blue seems so pure…the sunlight so bright. The light bleaches during mid-day or adds golden color in the morning or evening - changing the scenes. The nights are not so polluted with light that the stars blink out. Does just about everyone spend more time looking at the night sky in the Southwest?

Quote of the Day - 2/4/2012

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Love me or hate me, the desert seems to say, this is what I am and this is what I shall remain. - Joseph Wood Krutch (books)

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Our surroundings leave an impression. Krutch gives us one for deserts - “Love me or hate me…this is what I am and this is what I shall remain.”

What impressions do you have about the place you are right now --- or places you remember? Here are some ideas to get your brain storming started.

Forests say “We’re better as a diverse tribe.”

Plains say “It’s best to see things coming from a long way away.”

The mountains say “While being closer to the sky has its challenges, it has the advantage of being above the fray.”

The shores say “Ending and beginning are often combined; the boundary can change.”

Quote of the Day - 1/11/2012

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To say nothing is out here is incorrect; to say the desert is stingy with everything except space and light, stone and earth is closer to the truth. - William Least Heat-Moon

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When we think of deserts, sand dunes are likely the first image we have…space and light…sand (a phase of stone turning to earth dust)…the blueness of the sky a welcome change from the mono-color of the sand.

Another image is of a lone saguaro cactus. I’ve made several trips to locations within the Sonoran desert (the saguaro’s desert) over the past year; while the saguaros don’t grow as closely as trees in deciduous forests, there are indeed forests of them. And there are lots of plants growing in the rocky soil around them. It would be hard to walk cross country and not be caught by the thorns almost all the vegetation seems to have. The vegetation creates a fortress for the land. There is a beauty in these places that hold their own before casual interlopers.

Do we look at land and see ‘nothing’ because it isn’t in a form we know how to exploit - to grow food, to generate energy? The desert is a place to recognize that too often we decide to change something before we understand it.