Desert Pictures

These are various pictures from the desert that I have taken.  I have included quotes from one of my favorite authors, Edward Abbey.  He wrote much of the desert southwest and his experiences there.  His quotes help bring light to the pictures below.

"...and I become aware for the first time today of the immense silence in which I am lost.  Not a silence so much as a great stillness --- for there are a few sounds: the creak of some bird in a juniper tree, and eddy of wind which passes and fades like a sigh, the ticking of the watch on my wrist --- slight noises which break the sensation of absolute silence but at the same time exaggerate my sense of the surrounding, overwhelming peace.  A suspension of time, a continuation of the present." - Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

"Strolling on, it seems to me that the strangeness and wonder of existence are emphasized here, in the desert, by the comparative sparsity of the flora and fauna: life not crowded upon life as in other places but scattered abroad in spareness and simplicity, with a generous gift  of space for each herb and bush and tree, each stem of grass, so that the living organism stands out bold and brave and vivid against the lifeless sand and barren rock.  The extreme clarity of the desert light is equaled by the extreme individuation of desert life-forms.  Love flowers best in openness and freedom" - Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

"We are preoccupied with time.  If we could learn to love space as deeply as we are now obsessed with time, we might discover a new meaning in the phrase to live like men." - Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

"The gradual cell-by-cell replacement of infiltration of buried logs by hot, silica bearing waters in a process so exact that the original cellular structure of the wood is preserved in all its detail forms this desert jewelry---agatized rainbows in rock.   Coming unexpectedly upon such a trove a man is sometimes overcome by greed; by the mad desire to posses it all, to load his pockets, his knapsack, his truck with these hard lustrous treasures and somehow transport them all from the wilderness to the shop, garage and backyard." - Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

"All that is human melted with the sky and faded out beyond the mountains and I felt, as I feel -- is it a paradox? -- that a man can never find or need better companionship than that of himself." - Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

"While many of the pictures may have had for their makers a religious or ceremonial significance, others look like apparitions out of bad dreams.  In this category belong the semihuman and superhuman beings with horned heads, immensely broad shoulders, short limbs and massive bodies that taper down to attenuated legs.  Some of them have no legs at all but seem to rise ghostlike out of nothing, floating on air.   These are sinister and supernatural figures, gods from the underworld perhaps, who hover in space, or dance, or stand solidly planted on two feet carrying weapons -- a club or sword.  Most are faceless but some stare back at you with large, hollow, disquieting eyes.  Demonic shapes, they might have meant protection and benevolence to their creators and a threat to strangers: Beware, traveler.  You are approaching the land of the horned gods..." - Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

"Looking out on this panorama of light, space, rock and silence I am inclined to congratulate the dead man on his choice of jumping-off place; he had good taste.   He had good luck -- I envy him the manner of his going: to die alone, on rock under sun at the brink of the unknown, like a wolf, like a great bird, seems to me very good fortune indeed.  To die in the open, under the sky, far from the insolent interference of leech and priest, before this desert vastness opening like a window onto eternity -- that surely was an overwhelming stroke of rare good luck."  Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

"'Don't worry', he adds, 'it'll all still be here next spring.' .... Yes, I agree, that's a good thought and it better be so.  Or by God there might be trouble.   The desert will still be here in the spring.  And then comes another thought.   When I return will it be the same?  Will I be the same?  Will anything ever be quite the same again?  If I return." Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

"...Even if we can get the Land Rover down this thing, how can we ever get back up again?  But it doesn't occur to either of us to back away from the attempt.   We are determined to get into The Maze.  Waterman has great confidence in his machine; and furthermore, as with anything enormously attractive, we are obsessed only with getting in; we can worry later about getting out."  Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

"...all true, all wonderful, all more than enough to answer such a dumb dead question as "Why wilderness?"  To which, nevertheless, I shall append one further answer anyway: because we like the taste of freedom; because we like the smell of danger."  Edward Abbey, "How It Was", Beyond the Wall

"Lake Powell, though not a lake, may well be as its defenders assert the most beautiful reservoir in the world.  Certainly it has a photographic backdrop of buttes and mesas projecting above the expansive surface of stagnant waters where the speedboats, houseboats and cabin cruisers ply.  But it is no longer a wilderness.  It is no longer a place of natural life.  It is no longer Glen Canyon." Edward Abbey, "The Damnation of a Canyon", Beyond the Wall

"We cling to our folly as we cling to our sense of freedom, though it lead us to destruction.  Never mind how many philosophers and how many psychologists and how many sociobiologists tell us that free will is an illusion, we will not surrender to the claims of mere reason and science.  And if we want to play the crazy game of treasure seeking, no matter what the treasure, we will play it --- and to hell with the consequences." Edward Abbey, "Fool's Treasure", Down the River

"The melody of morning.  Black-throated desert sparrows chatter in the willows: chirr... chirr... chit chit chit.  The sun comes up, a glaring cymbal, over yonder canyon rim.  Quickly, the temperature rises five, ten, twenty degrees, at the rate of a degree a minute, from freezing to fifty-two.  Or so it feels." Edward Abbey, "Down the River with Henry Thoreau", Down the River.