Desert

I’ve been dreaming about the desert a lot lately.

I’m not sure where these dreams are coming from, exactly. Maybe it’s a reaction to the incessant cold and snow and dreary, grey Northeastern skies that I’ve been laboring under these past few months. Maybe the dreams are trying to tell me something. I could probably try to decipher hidden messages contained in the sprawling vistas of my subconscious, but I feel like that would somehow cheapen the dreams themselves. Sometimes it’s better to just let the message wash over you than it is to pick it apart looking for something that might not be there.

In one of these dreams, I sat on top of a flat outcrop of rock high above a canyon of red rock and scattered mesquite. The sun was rising, its rays illuminating the landscape in an unearthly glow of reds and purples. I watched this sunrise advance across the desert floor in a wave, seeming to bring the landscape to life as it crept along. When it reached me I was awash in light and heat, and it was so vivid that it was like I was there. Who knows…maybe I was. At some point in the dream I looked to my left, and sitting beside me was the old Indian man that I’ve dreamed about regularly over the years. (I’ll maybe get into him in more detail later, in a different post all his own.) He was drinking from a steaming mug of coffee, and as I looked at him he smiled and gestured to the canyon with his coffee mug. I woke up after that.

In another dream, I was hiking in a slot canyon. The walls were smooth, red sandstone dappled with sunlight. It was hot and dry, and I was struck by the almost crushing silence. I know I was subconsciously referencing the silence I experienced while hiking into Havasu Canyon many years ago. One of the things that struck me the most from that experience was the deafening silence I felt while sitting on a rock and sipping water. I had never experienced a quiet that total before, and I haven’t since. There have been many times since then that I’ve yearned to bask in that total silence again, if only for a few minutes. Maybe my brain was desperately trying to drag me back into that place of pure peace and tranquility, if only in my own head. Again, it’s best to not try and read too much into it.

Sometimes I ponder my own internal extremes. My two favorite places seem to be New England and the Southwestern desert. Could there be two places that are more different? More at odds with each other? What does that say about the inner workings of my psyche? That I’m well rounded? That I’m an extreme personality, not content to sit comfortably on the soft, safe middle ground? Does it maybe mean nothing at all? Maybe I’ll never know. Maybe it’s best that I don’t. What I do know is that I will often feel the gentle tug of the desert, calling to me across the miles. When I feel that pull, I’m overwhelmed with the desire to get in my car and just drive until the land flattens out, and I’m once again in the clutches of that desolate and beautiful place.

Whatever it all means, it’s good to go there to a land of warmth and sun while outside the snow falls and the cold wind howls and pierces me like tiny knives. It’s good to go there – even if it is only in dreams.