Through Renewed Eyes

This past week I have realized how I've already settled into a routine here, that the desert has become common place. I've been looking back on the journaling I did in the first few weeks I arrived here and it reminds me how I felt to be in such a new environment. I'd like to share some of that writing with you now. This passage below was written only two days after I had arrived at Hovenweep.


Morning.
I sit on my back porch basking in the sunlight like a snake on the sandstone rock. The sun feels good and gives me a warm energy.
Still early, the cool breeze rising from the Mountains miles away give me a slight chill. I am in awe of the raw beauty that surrounds me.
This desert is very much alive.

The air alone is clean, fresh and almost spiritual.
I feel at peace here, hearing nothing but the wind make its way among the juniper trees. An occasional bird chirps.
It feels as though this desert is mine.

I am outside the expanse of time, free to take in even the tiniest detail around me- The wide, expansive sky, the seemingly never-ending horizon,
Each sway of the flowers in the breeze,
The march of the ants, the scurrying of the lizards,
and the careless flights of the birds.

I linger longer, beginning to feel my skin warm under the sun,
Little by little.
Pictures can’t capture the beauty,
Words fall short.
The desert must be experienced with every sense, every fiber in your body.
Am I listening?

The desert asks hard questions.
Can you take comfort in the silence?
See the beauty in the small things?
Are you content being alone?
I feel as though I am living like a monk in the desert.

Truly this is the best part of the day
The chill of the morning,
Breathing,
Sensing every change upon the skin,
Basking as a child under the sun
Time just “to be”.

I lie here staring up like morning will never end.
Alas, a plane cuts across my perfect blue sky.
A magical moment lost to the human world.