Deserts

The moon woke me. I was sleeping soundly in a remote wash tucked up a canyon in Death Valley, but when the moon rose to its zenith, full and fiery; I could no longer remain in my sleeping bag. I was compelled to rise and walk.  Actually, I had planned to take a night walk…

“It was like dying, this watching the world recede into deeper and deeper blues while the snow piled; silence swelled and extended, distance dissolved, and soon only concentration at the largest shadows let me make out the movement of falling snow, and that too failed.” – Annie Dillard. The most unusual thing happened last week…

Each year I go into the desert usually someplace in Death Valley or the Inyo Mountain Range, to spend four days and nights alone, without food or shelter, and to engage in what many call a “vision fast”. This has been my practice for the last ten years, and although it has become quite ordinary…

Last fall, my father was diagnosed with cancer. I had just entered the first week of my sabbatical when the news came in.  Something unusual had been found on his pancreas. A month later, the cancer was confirmed.  My world caved in. During sabbatical my goal was to make good progress on my book, but I…

  I finally enrolled in a map and compass class with the Desert Institute in Joshua Tree National Park. The instructor, Karl VonHalle, an animated, unruly haired man in his, say, fifties, captivated my attention with stories of hikers getting lost and found (some dead) in desert mazes such as the Wonderland of Rocks in JTNP.…