5.9 All the Elements in the Desert

I lived for four years surrounded by the desert in Arizona. When my partner and I moved from San Jose, California to Tuscon, Arizona we were struck by what at first glance appeared to be a stark and empty desert. Where is the green, the grass, the bushes, and the trees that we grew up with in California? In the beginning, I did not know how to listen to the elements in the desert.

Over time I learned to listen to the desert. Nature writer Idah Strobridge captures my later experience of listening to the desert:

If you go to the Desert, and live there, you learn to love it. If you go away, you will never forget it . . . it will be with you in memory forever    . . . And always will you hear the still voice that lures one, calling–and calling.^[1]

In time, I began to listen more attentively to the desert. I saw the beauty of the palo verde trees, the majesty of the trident saguaro cacti, the sunrise over the mountain near our home, and the thunder and lightning in the summer evenings. The desert contained other surprises. There was the discovery of a small scorpion near the entrance of our apartment, the encounter with a large diamondback rattlesnake on a path we walked near our home, and the regular mid-afternoon storms that flooded the streets making mechanical-powered transportation nearly impossible.

In the desert, all the elements are present in their majesty. The earth rises as plateaus and mountain ranges. There is endless sand. The air is dry and penetrating. Water periodically pours like a river from the sky momentarily flooding the land. Fire from the sun scorches everything but the plants and creatures that have adapted to the heat. One of the greatest lessons I learned from listening to the desert is that by adapting to (rather than trying to control) the elements, we not only survive but also flourish.