One of the reasons I moved to California was the call of the desert. Even as a young boy, I felt the call of the desert. Family friends in California, having learned of this passion, sent me cacti by mail and I had, within my home, quite a collection of cacti, the offspring of which still live in my home more than three decades later. Before moving to California, tired of my job in Massachusetts, I once boarded a plane just to fly to California and drive, alone, through the desert for a week. The harshness and loneliness comforted me in a way that only another lover of the desert would understand. It was my love for the desert, a love that has never ceased, that drove me out west.
My California years, especially those between 1990 and 1994 were the most difficult years of my life. I found myself entangled in multiple crises, all based in contradictions within my life. I had a wife I loved but did not wish to remain with. I loved another person who would not love me back. I struggled with working for an industry I despised and I struggled with living in a society the values of which I despised.
I found two places of solace - the desert and the beach. Of the two, the desert was by far the greater source of comfort. During my California years I saw more of the desert than most Californians see in a life time. I camped out alone in the desert many a night, hiked in the desert, read in the desert and spent many an hour sitting on top of ridges, looking over the vast emptiness, contemplating life. I covered Southern California, all of Baja California, all of Arizona, some of Sonora and some of Utah.
In the desert I read Nietzsche and Heidegger. I wrote poems and buried them under rocks thinking of the surprise that some hiker might have a century later. I slept in my car or in a tent, depending upon the conditions. Sometimes I would even drive off without a map and intentionally take random turns down small dirt roads, camp for a day and see if I could find my way back out. I never told anyone where I was going. I would just pack up and leave.
I felt free in the desert. I could spend days never encountering a single soul. And if I was convinced that I was alone, I had no concern about what I wore or did not wear as the temperature rose well above 110 degrees. I felt free. It was my way of untangling myself from life.
If you spend enough time somewhere, it becomes part of you. The desert has never left me and though I now live far from it, I can return when I wish by revisiting in my mind any of the places where I left my poetry and troubles behind.
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Copyright © 2004 - 2008, Stephen DeVoy. All rights reserved. No permission to reproduce is granted without explicit permission, in writing, of the author.
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