Desert Sky, Desert Ground

In the California desert, surrounded by a constantly varying and ever receding horizon, shifting light, alone with clouds or clear blue sky, silence prevails. Every moment is extra-ordinary, every vista in-spiration. Traveling in the desert Southwest, looking for nothing in particular, touched by the wonders along the way, one longs to capture the feeling the landscape offers. Photographs, mere reminders of this experience, still function to evoke that desire, to remain forever in the desert. As author Mary Austin says in “The Land of Little Rain,” If one is inclined to wonder at first how so many dwellers came to be in the loneliest land that ever came out of God’s hands, what they do there and why stay, one does not wonder so much after having lived there. None other than this long brown land lays such a hold on the affections.