Saguaro Wanderings: Seeing 2013 (#17)

For your consideration:

An instant of pure bliss: the pristine, sublime atmosphere of cool desert solitude, in nocturnal transition. Capturing this scene was just as surprising as my willingness to voluntarily arise from bed at 4:30am.

I was intensely motivated: I yearned to simply encounter the virtually silent terrain just west of my cherished, native Arizona's Gates Pass 'ere the intrusion of modern society's buzz and bustle du jour. Never before have I had the insight or consciousness that greeting the Sonoran landscape on its own terms, before the onslaught of tourists and partying locals, might be both restorative and deeply healing.

And perhaps an opportunity doomed to be ever more elusive . . .

Yes, sadly — the tentacles of my metropolis birthplace now threaten to utterly surround this spirit-laden refuge, effectively smothering any last chance to authentically experience a last bastion and harbor of severely, uncompromisingly beautiful scenery.

Thus it was an extraordinary and fleeting gift to witness the wonderfully balanced moment when night's last shadows blended perfectly with the sun's impending greeting. Discovering the Moon's thin crescent, still just visible before sol's overwhelming emergence, was quite simply exquisite to behold.

I was able to pass nearly the entirety of the day roaming among my beloved arid soil and its denizens.

Yet, even without any competition for having the expanse all to myself (I encountered but two other people), after mid-morning the blessed peacefulness quickly evaporated: unbelievably — absolutely beyond any prior desert weather I'd known — winds exceeding seventy miles per hour appeared out of nowhere (well, literally from the southwest) . . . Sustained and unrelenting, enshrouding Tucson and its environs in a murky blanket of dust and causing lengthy power outages (I later was told) at both the University of Arizona and the hotel I shared with my wife, this unexpected and frankly unwelcome development cast a challenging pall on my agenda of reading, writing and perhaps even a Siesta.

Ah, well, no matter . . .

Sonora Desert. Gates Pass. Camera. Spring. Palo Verde. Ocotillo. Saguaro (stationary, of course). Paradise.