The desert is the environment of revelation, genetically and physiologically alien, sensorily austere, esthetically abstract, historically inimical... It's forms are bold and suggestive. The mind is beset by light and space, the kinesthetic novelty of aridity, high temperature, and wind. The desert sky is encircling, majestic, terrible. In other habitats, the rim of the sky above the horizontal is broken or obscured; here, together with the overhead portion, it is infinitely vaster than that of a rolling countryside and forest lands...
In an unobstructed sky the clouds seem more massive, sometimes grandly reflecting the earth's curvature on their concave undersides. The angularity of desert landforms imparts a monumental architecture to the clouds as well as to the land...
To the desert go prophets and hermits; through the deserts go pilgrims and exiles. Here the leaders of the great religions have sought the therapeutic and spiritual values of retreat, not to escape but to find reality.
[Paul Shepard, "Man in the Landscape: A Historic View of the Esthetics of Nature]
It's been a while. Things have happened. I went to the desert, viewed art, visited friends and family and put together my first chapbook which I've begun shopping around to various publications. All things that I am thankful for. Tuesday night, I'll be on the evening train back to California. I wouldn't have wished to spend this time anywhere else.
Arizona has a unique and interesting vernacular. Words I've never encountered seem to wait around every corner: Kokopelli, chollo, saguaro, arroyo. Writerly folks would do well to bask in the musicality of the language, heavily influenced by Spanish and Native tongues.
It was half-a-life ago that I first visited the Southwest. Although, I'm now sure that one can never visit the same place twice.
Time tables & minutemen rush you from La Crosse into a metal tube filled-to-the-teeth with strangers. Find your seat, there on the left. Through the window, the crest & trough of power lines--a silhouette in reverse behind a sapphire sky. Landscapes roll by while the passengers remain motionless. Each with her own story, each with nothing but stories & old folks & everything else all at once.
Dorothy will introduce herself. She tells you she can give you a ride to Port Townsend, help you with the ferry. She shares some vegetables, takes off her stocking cap. Zander hasn't slept in days. The oncoming trains are flashbangs of light & silent violence. Push here, door opens. Pay seven dollars, get a drink. Sparrows tightrope a rusty fence.
Flat-forever Montana turned into Rocky Mountain bliss. Shelby, Whitefish, Libby, Montana. Snapping pictures of people snapping pictures through the stained windows of the evening train. It's nearly twelve o'clock, and Central Time has changed to Mountain has changed to Pacific. Try to sleep on a reclining seat. Seattle will be here on the count of three.
