the immediate sensation of walking in the desert is that of dis-orientation, not as though the earth is not located in gravitational alignment with the body, but just that local principles of verticality and level are distorted by the radiating fields of each feature of the landscape. the barrel cactus making a vortex, the Joshua Tree making a rushing multiplicity of whorls that snake through the air in frozen torment. the Saguaro, massive, rakes the moving air with so many spiny teeth that there is a rush not so different from that through the branches of a live oak, in the fall when the leaves are stuck in crinkled brown misery, waiting for some winter storm to end it all.
I stumble slowly in random directions. stopping every few minutes to examine some thing, no, some tableau, of intricate intensity. first it is the flowers, the huge ones on some of the smaller barrel cactus, the color of which cannot be mapped on a spectral scale. it is beyond red, crimson, scarlet, and carnelian together. then the small yellow-orange poppies, scattered widely, punctuating, defining vertices. then there are the rest of the flowers, purple, white, yellow, spectral and brilliant, defining scale. then the variety of cacti. birds, seldom actually seen, unlike the red-tailed hawk that signaled the place to stop for the night. but there is plenty of song throughout the air. stone and earth given from volcanism, basalts and pyroclastics, with rare SiO2 thermal depositions. what looks like a man-chipped white quartz flake in one stream bed. nothing else of interest locally. one wash has some standing water alive with insects and larva in the water. butterflies and hornets, wasps drinking. water seeming fresh, but another week and it will be gone. for the rest of the 4 months until the monsoon brings an occasional flash-flood. then the sky, with a patterned layer of high-altitude clouds coming from a NW low pressure, bringing something from the Pacific. not rain, but only the dimness of vapor sun Light. something of a relief here in the day, at night, keeping the land-warmth in a bit. I walk for perhaps four hours, stopping frequently, in an outward spiral from the space-vehicle that brought me here. seeing it on occasion, far off and small, alien. near it’s track. forward advance was halted by a hill a bit too steep and rutted and graveled to gain traction. the powerful urge to buy a 4×4 Tacoma nags at my hydrocarbon-nurtured soul. the soul born of the road-trip. a extravagant luxury in the near future. and only a strange memory for the next generation. grabbing food, bedding, tents, stoves, chairs, axe, bug-repellent, sun-screen, and some good friends, and head out, some where. topping the tank off at the last outpost.
with the clouds, Phoenix announces itself 120 miles away with a malevolent reddish glow reaching up about 15 degrees from the southeast horizon between two mesas. it brightens while I watch Jupiter, led by its four main satellites, pulling it like a globular puppet on invisible strings up the ecliptic plane. the two main tropic bands easily visible, the spot not apparent. (more images)
For me there is only the traveling on paths that have heart, on any path that may have heart. There I travel, and the only worth-while challenge is to traverse its full length. And there I travel looking, looking, breathlessly. — Carlos Castenada
