The Desert Is Not for Sea-Gulls

The first confrontation with our Southwestern deserts is always something of a surprise. It is never a "love at first sight" experience. The mind pre-conceives and pictures one thing. The reality of the desert is something else. In fancy we picture the desert as merely a sea of sand, dunes and possibly weird cactus shapes. We find instead, mountain ranges, plains, mesas and valleys. Through shimmering heated air we see trees, bushes - never clearly defined in the distance their quivering forms almost obliterated in a dreamlike mood of misty color tones and muted shades of light and shadow. Everything seems to be moving mysteriously as though touched by gentle drifts of air. We see a landscape serenely simple in form, restfully fine in color and sensually gratifying to the peaceful side of our psychic selves.

What is the attraction, wherein the fascination for the desert?

Why does the sailor love the sea?

Why does the gypsy love the open road?

Why does the Bedouin love the vast expanses of the Saharan sand?

The answer must obviously be that Mankind has always loved the open places. Man feels secure when he can see about him in all directions. In our Arizona deserts there is an uncomplicated simplicity in the land's breadth, space and distance. There is something very restful about panoramas and horizons where the visual image of things lying flat transmits a picture of repose, and the mind grows peaceful.

Yet with all its heavenly qualities, the desert is not for everyone, for the story of life and growth on the desert is not easily read at first glance. It is hard to believe that for all the seemingly silent peace, there is also an unceasing war, a constant struggle for life, a brutal competition going on hour after hour, day after day. This conflict is not generally obvious on the surface. One may walk the desert from sunup till sundown and not be aware of animate life of any description. If the wind has not covered them during the night the wanderer may see tracks of insects, birds, reptiles and animals as testimony that the law of survival is established by the barb and thorn, the beak and talon, the jaw and claw, and the numbing sting. The desert's secrets are revealed to the spirits of the night, and there are more things yet unknown than are recorded and documented. Nature does not ever make it easy for man to understand her ways. Nature works by law and all things in Nature are wonderful, beautiful and purposeful.

In the cosmos of the desert universe nothing is ugly save what is made ugly by man and by man's distortion, ignorance and misunderstanding. Too many men, when lacking positive proof, tend to condemn and upset the balance of nature. The great condor, the eagle, the vulture, the coyote, bobcat and Gila Monster are all part of the desert ecological pattern. Each in his way has a beauty of character, and each has a specific place in the great design of desert life and growth. There is no way to mea-sure the setback to the desert ecosystem caused by man's misguided attitude concerning the coyote. It is only a matter of little time until the magnificent saguaro will be extinct save perhaps for a few pampered specimens in natural museums and desert botanical gardens. Only one out of twenty thousand saguaro seedlings survives the killing insect infestations and destruction by rodents who were, at one time, kept under control by the coyote and other predators who reduced the numbers of these lesser denizens.

Nature will win out in the end, make no mistake in concluding otherwise. For every acre of desert reclaimed or bulldozed into subdivisions there are new wastelands evolving in now-favored climes. Our Arizona deserts differ from any other land only in the matter of water, or the lack of it. If the green productive lands of our eastern states were rainless for a relative period of time the result would be something like the Sonoran desert.

The face and character of a land is changed by rains and snowfall. After the rains and spring thaws, the flowers, grasses, trees, shrubs and crop plants combine with the creeks, rivers, lakes and mountain slopes to make the picturesque compositions which lend allurement to the livable loved lands of the world. The desert has none of those gentle and refined charms. For many people the desert is hardly a livable place. And yet for those worldwide wanderers who have fallen in love with the desert there is no place on earth more alluring, no other place on earth more beautiful. They cannot specifically tell anyone why they love this stark, gaunt land, the hot days and cold nights where everything that grows and lives fights for life with a ferocity unparalleled elsewhere, but love it they do!

In these complex times of group psychotherapy clinics, and super-organized, pre-planned airline and ocean liner escapes, it is wonderful to stand at the desert's edge and experience the feeling of wonderment of little children... to be bewildered by the vastness, the silence, the peaceful beauty of it all. It is not strange that without realizing it you suddenly feel a close to heaven, soul-tosoul rapport with Nature.

We doubt that William Cowper, the distinguished English poet who lived from 1731 to 1800, ever walked our Southwestern deserts when he wrote: "Nature is but a name for an effect whose cause is God."

Maybe we especially love the desert because it constantly challenges us to find words to match its strange and wondrous beauty. From the first light of morning till sunset's last glow we have learned to live with the truth that ugly and beautiful are one and the same as long as the sun shines into what otherwise would be the shadow places of our minds. We are in our place our querencia our favorite and frequent place of resort. We belong here and we are content, and that, in these unsimple times is something very special.