Dry Tranquility

CABEZA PRIETA NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE Dry Tranquility

There is a desolate place in the heart of the desert covered with rough urchins of stones. A dry wind sails among its cacti and broken ranges of rock. It is perhaps not an attractive place, ugly in some eyes, terrifying in others. There is very little water, and even now people walk into it and often do not return.

But when you hear that the desert is tragic and that its inner-most reaches are meant for nothing but anguish, do not believe what you are told. Go and see for yourself. Stand on the parched ground of Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, looking across brittle mountains that rise like icebergs in the distance and you may be struck by aninalienable sense of tranquility offered by no other land. The dome of sky feels like a shelter, and the ground is laid bare with the cleanness of a prayer. This is the deep desert, a place with a sharp sort of peace, a beauty that comes only when we open our eyes to these long and desolate miles.

Once on foot out there, I came upon a block of white granite 600 feet tall. After a day of carrying my camp on my back, I slipped into this first shade. I had pulled off my shirt and was resting against the granite when I noticed a low humming from nearby. I stood and followed it, realizing there were bees in the rock. Bees meant water. I found them in a crack where they busied themselves in and out of a deeper, shadowed cavity. As I came closer, these commuting insects thudded into my bare back and chest.

I had not seen water for seven days other than what I carried with me. In this hole, however, I could see a smooth, shaded mirror vibrating slightly against the wing beats of several hundred bees. The color quieted me, like a purple dusk sky suddenly masking the hot white of noon. I bunched my shoulders and squeezed in as far as I could, reaching until my fingers touched water. Circles spread over the barely lit surface. The circles fell back on themselves.

This was not the kind of water that could make war on the desert. It was a secret, spoken so softly that the surrounding desert could not hear. If the sun ever found it, it would vanish in days. This was an artifact of the last rain, which had sheeted over the face of this isolated hunk of granite and caught in this dark place where a block of stone had fallen, leaving a hole like a pulled tooth. Bees had come seeking the only water in their range. They distended their abdomens with water to carry back to cool and moisten their hive. In this guarded hole were about 20 gallons of rainwaterter. As I looked in, bees started bottlenecking against my body, troubled by my movements. Nervous, I pulled my head backward into the light.

This particular island of granite was so heavy and white with quartz that it was hard to look at in the middle of the day. After I found it, though, it became a landmark for me, a place I could rely upon for water when traveling through here. I came back later, on the morning of a crescent moon and again in the last light of evening, climbing and drinking just enough fresh water begged from these bees to keep walking, refreshed.

This is startling country, full of secrets, yet utterly exposed. Naked ridges stand high over broken-down cliffs. I remember once setting a camp along one of these ragged mountains around Cabeza Prieta, getting up on a tightrope ridge and dropping my gear. It was sunset and the molten light broke through gaps and notches, sending shadows for miles. I could see far south, into Mexico, the crescent shapes of great dunes, while all around me were seas of desert broken by arid mountain ranges. I arrangedmy belongings carefully, making sure nothing came too near the edge to my left or right where a cup or a pen would fall a thousand feet from my reach, twanging against rocks, sailing into the air and vanishing into the desert below. I stayed tight, my knees drawn up to my chest. There was just enough room to lay down a sleeping pad and my bag. That evening I watched the sun clip out behind the horizon, and after the royal colors of twilight passed, stars swamped the sky. There was no moon, and so the land beneath me was black. I felt as if this mountain were holding me up in a realm of oblivion, lifting me like a newborn into this great and perilous world.

Above me were stars. Below was a darkness deeper than space. Maybe this sense of desert is truly terrifying, where you find yourself pitched into the void. But at that instant also comes a calm like no other. Infinitude saturates the dry air. It feels like flying, like floating out of this body to touch a place some call heaven and some call hell. You realize here that it exists beyond heaven and hell, a place so perfect and endless that such labels do it no justice.

It is desert, a truce made between day and night, between dry and wet. It is a peace that comes from before time and will last far beyond our final memories.

Craig Childs, now of Colorado, is an Arizona native and author of 11 books of natural history and travel. He is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times and a commentator on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition."