Desert Walks: The Last Four Hours of Light

R. V. Rasmussen

In mountain wilderness, I have a habit of travelling from sunup to sunset. My way of experiencing wild places is by moving through them.

Friends hint that I should sit more and absorb the places, that I should "be in" rather than "move through."

But, if a meditation serves the spirit, why meddle? Buddhists chant, Dervishes dance, and I hike.

So, I keep moving, wearing myself down, letting a sense of place slip in through chips in my body's urban armor.

When I first visited desert canyon country, I tried to travel as I do in the mountains - confident that if I hiked long enough, this strange new place would also find its way in.

But, desert's sun changed that.

Midday, the washes -- dry, sandy stream beds -- shimmer with heat waves.

I tried seeking breezes by climbing the canyon walls to white slick rock shelves. But, there, as on snow, the sun's rays ricochet and intensify.

So, mind's will to move surrendered. Where friends' platitudes failed, midday's sun has triumphed.

And, the body, which is wiser than the mind, closes down the senses-eyes, nose, even ears and skin.

When the urge to move once again dominates, I travel for short distances from pool to pool. Pools of shade and pools of water.

I seek out springs in lusty anticipation. If I find flowing water and a deep pool, I go in. Sensuous meanderings in muddy places shared with tadpoles.

If there's but a little water, I wet my neckerchief and search for shade.

At 4 o'clock, the sun finally begins to break, transforming the harsh, white flatness to gently contoured pastels.

In desert country, each day is a mix of seasons and the seasons are reversed. Spring slips in each evening after day's burning summer.

All through summer's day mind has nagged about the heat. But now, in the last four hours of light, mind's nagging stops and body's senses unfold for the celebration of desert's spring.

And, now, the slightest breeze is like a lover's touch.

As my eyes relax and begin again to take in, I realize that soft light is their natural habitat -- that they are inherited from a people who evolved in the filtered light of the canopied forest.

In these few hours remaining before winter's night, certain places have become associated with the time remaining for an unhurried return to camp.

Six O'clock pass - a twisting sandstone cleft between Squaw and Lost Canyons - leaves just 2 hours of light.

At seven O'clock pond, frogs begin to sing. Soon every seep and pothole resonates with their welcome to springtime.

The murmur of bats' wings, an owl's haunting call and a coyote's yip signal the presence of other celebrants.

Where dryness prevailed, now the washes offer hints of water-smell.

And a sweet mist reaches out from the yellow blossoms of a Barberry bush -- still more than 30 feet away. Dead in summer's day, it is now a rich haze of yellows and greens alive with bees and moths.

Where only an hour earlier the Junipers sagged like dusty tramps, their turquoise berries now glow like fireflies amid dark green boughs.

And, the light from a single Indian Paintbrush casts a wave of flame over a red rock basin .

Now, once lifeless desert grasses pulse with iridescent greens and yellows.

The setting sun highlights wildflowers amid islands of grey-black cryptobiotic soil.

And, the trunk of that long dead cottonwood, barely noticed in midday's fire, is resurrected as an ivory tusk aged with twisting ebony cracks.

And, now the alpen glow creeps up sculpted sandstone walls tinting them with golds, pinks, oranges, and yellows.

The desert is dancing in color!

As I reach camp, the landscape is lost in darkness. I'm ready for companionship, food and drink.

Pushing through the heat, my friends had made an early return. Like the Junipers, they look like dusty tramps.

I slide in to the campfire and someone mutters, "What a furnace! How you can stay out there so long?"