Canyon Whispers
The desert wasn’t a place I ever visited as a child. It wasn’t a place that pulled on my heartstrings with a longing to return. It’s a foreign land to me. It’s a native land, a place etched by the traces of ancient civilizations. I am a visitor here. I can pass through the landscape and enjoy its natural beauty, but I may never fully understand it’s depths and folds.
By dedicating time and stillness to those landscape it may slowly and carefully share its secrets. The breeze whispers through the rustling leaves of Cottonwoods. Between the breezes the silence brings the gurgling of water or is it the giggling of women? Under the silvery night sky a waxing moon passes too across this land. I hear a screech owl cry and the monotone howt of a Long Eared Owl. A Coyote cries in the distance.
Indeed the desert is wild and raw and much of it is still a mystery to me. I walked the depths of a large canyon, cleaned out and deep from summer flash floods. Traces of water marks high above my head. In the creases stranded logs suspend distances across a gap. From rock to rock, from shadow to bright light, from warm sun to icy shade. A single cottonwood leaf rests on a ripple of sand. As I walk down the canyon stones gather from ruins of ancient civilizations just beyond my step and my recognition. I take in the beauty in this chaos and I am reminded once again that I am a visitor in this land.
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