I am currently reading
Into the Wild. For those of you not familiar with the story, see this
link. Let me be clear, I don't intend to embark on a reckless journey which puts my life in peril; such an excursion would be selfish. But there is definitely a part of me that yearns for adventure in its rawest form. What is it with males in their early 20s? Lately, drawing upon my roots, I have acquired a renewed interest in the desert. I love the following quote from Paulo Coelho's
The Alchemist:
"But the desert is so huge, and the horizon so distant, that they make a person feel small, and as if he should remain silent."This was the exact feeling I had recently as I looked out over the inspiring contrast of sand and shadows at dusk, near a quiet rest stop somewhere around the Arizona/California border.
I think a camping trip to the little Sahara will do just fine.
5 comments:
Ah, I love the desert. Here's my favorite desert quote:
The highway went down into a narrow and immensely long, thunder-of-hooves valley, then, like a chalkline, headed north, running between two low mountain ranges, the higher eastern one still in snow. A sign: NEXT GAS 80 MILES.
…Squat clumps of white sage, wet from a shower out of the western range, sweetened the air, and gulches had not yet emptied. Calm lay over the uncluttered openness, and a damp wind blew everything clean….there was no one. Listening, I walked into the scrub. The desert does its best talking at night, but on that spring evening it kept God’s whopping silence; and that too is a desert voice.
I’ve read that a naked eye can see six thousand stars in the hundred billion galaxies, but I couldn’t believe it, what with the sky white with starlight. I saw a million stars with one eye and two million with both.
--William Least Heat Moon, Blue Highways, 1982
Sheesh, Jeebs. Just when I had decided I like where I live, you remind me about the desert.
When you were 7 months old Tracy and I drove out to CA with our little boys and when we reached the Sierras, William, age 7, got a slight case of claustrophobia seeing all those trees on the mountains. He didn't like how you couldn't see in to the distance.
Is that photo from your camera?
What's with you guys and all the desert quotes?
I just bought several cacti today. That's my deserty contribution.
Nope. That is actually the Namib Desert.
Jay, only two kinds of creature get fun in the desert: Bedouins and gods, and you're neither. Take it from me, for ordinary men, it's a burning, fiery furnace.
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