Friend, Teacher, Home
A Creative Nonfiction Exploration of the High Desert
What was so fun about this piece to write was that it asked me to remember in stillness all of the ways I experience the High Desert, of which I am now a full time resident. What does she look like, how does she smell? What emotions does she evoke with her mere presence? What sounds emanate from her and permeate our beings? How does the air taste on my tongue?
I wrote it for submission to the 2023 Waterston High Desert Prize by the High Desert Museum here in Bend, Oregon. The contest is more literary nonfiction focused so I might be disqualified on that alone, and that’s ok. I am putting my work out in the world, challenging myself to write about topics I might not have had such an acute focus on and my writing is improving along the way. It’s all progress. And I’m here for it.
I hope you feel more connected to our deserts and Mother Nature herself while (and maybe even after) you read.
Friend, Teacher, Home
It’s in the way she rolls across the horizon. How from afar when you squint your eyes you can’t tell if the manzanita is on her or is her. She causes the birds to recite their melodies with just a touch more sing-song in their undertones. A thing to be missed if you’re just a passer through. Because to know her is to be one with her. To stay. To home here. To be here. To be free here.
And she welcomes you to heal here.
I speak for her of course, because her language doesn’t translate to letters on a page. She prefers to remain nameless, though most of us refer to her as the High Desert. She’s defined by her elevation in conjunction with her reduced rainfall. This description at its face is somewhat unnoteworthy, leaving much to be desired, I know. Allow me to introduce you to my friend, my teacher, my home. Because she is so much more than her height and humidity.
With feet planted, skin to dirt, you can feel her hum, sometimes even attuned to the blood pulsing through your veins. Connection. It’s here she guides. Follow the scent and you’ll find her hidden among the juniper berries, resting among the branches that fro amidst windswept dust. Hiding in every ounce of lava’s orifices, making friends with their lightless sunken tunnels and bounding across their rocky faces. She hides her face only for rest. Because to be her requires a strength unknown to the creatures inhabiting her gifts. And she must replenish.
Companionship is earned. We owe her that. One must prove their loyalty and she will respect you in return, showcasing her majestic obsidian lined paths winding alongside laked volcanic crevices that remind you of your humanity. You’ll feel small at times communing with her, and that’s ok, it’s part of your healing to know your place among the dirt laden lands of Mother Nature. She’s taught me how to know myself by knowing where my feet fall. Because it’s there you are ground into a new essence of your being.
When my soft gaze at her night’s drama unfolds into floating among our flaming friends above, I want to trust the earth that will catch my return. And I want to be one with the howls of the bands prowling among the sages. What is there to fear in what we do not know? It is simply yet unlearned and requires only our delicate yearning for the ever-evolving truth that lives just outside of our reach.
She will teach you life. You must listen.
Because her wisdom flows with the bends as the rivers unfurl their rage in echoes who jump from wall to meadow, from ponderosa to cottonwood. And when they’re finally at ease succumbing to their inevitable peace, the rivers yawn to the slow wake against their banks and thank her.
She will teach you perseverance. You must watch.
She braces against the long awaited heat shearing any semblance of her winter coat. Embracing how it warms her bones, removing the shiver of her past. It is both harsh and welcome. She endures as the unlocked potential of her vibration releases the wild grasses from their chosen hibernation and green turns itself yet again from the spotted dog of spring into its full potency along the river’s edges, across the expanding meadows, up and over the buttes who lay like moles on her dusty skin.
She will teach you love. You must be a vessel.
Her arms open wide to welcome their return as wings flutter through the air. Perched among the sagebrush, these sparrows pitch their songs through the meadows of their warm seasonal home, while the warblers flaunt their brilliant yellows from the flora of the nearby waters.
She is not one without the other - peace and fury. And she feels the frequency you leave behind with your footfalls and the way the rubber spins on her skin while the wheels rotate in firm conviction of their destinations. Excavating her away, digging, promising a trade she did not accept, left with a mask of black and white that she does not get to wash away.
Slow, she says. Still, she cries.
Lay with me.
And taste my nectar. Sweet lullabies for your soul.
She homes me when I need reprieve. She teaches me a stillness only learned among the dirt laden paths under my bare feet. She befriends my weary soul.
She is fierce and gentle and will swallow you whole if you let her. She will be your guide when you’re ready. She carries the essence of life and lays it upon your shoulder as the wind bellows through your mind.
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