Desert Survival

By Gina Putnam

(Note from My-West:  The following is a comment sent to us through Facebook in response to one of our posts about the desert. Ms. Putnam’s descriptions were so striking and poetic, we asked her if we could post them in our poetry section. She graciously agreed.)

I have lived in the desert for thirty years. I started out thinking it was dry, hot, desolate and a place God didn't forget ... He never even knew it was here, with good reason.

Credit: My-West.com ©

It took me awhile to discover that even the most desolate of deserts is vibrant with life and strength. I have seen a quiet creek explode into a 500 year event flood rampaging past my home. I have heard boulders bouncing through the water and watched trees float like barges through the chaos with a calm serenity.

Credit: Gina Putnam

The desert changes its shape but never its form. 

Credit: My-West.com ©

I've watched brush fires and timber fires thunder all around and envelope the desert in burning heat; Pinion pines exploding into towers of red flame leaving all the desert blackened and dead.  

Credit: Arbyreed

And then, a flash of color! A shout of hope! A prickly pear blossoms in neon defiance.

Credit: Fool-On-The-Hill

Credit: Gina Putnam

[Finally: video of a flash flood in Southern Utah by David Rankin Rankinstudio.com – listen to the sound of the boulders crashing together.]

Everett Ruess: "Pledge to the Wind"

Everett Ruess was  15 years old when he wrote "Pledge to the Wind," a moving and heartbreaking harbinger of a short, yet well-lived life.

Everett Ruess, Monument Valley. Image courtesy of Gibbs Smith Publisher.

Onward from vast uncharted spaces,
Forward through timeless voids,
Into all of us surges and races
The measureless might of the wind. [...]
In the steep silence of thin blue air
High on a lonely cliff-ledge,
Where the air has a clear, clean rarity,
I give to the wind...my pledge:

”By the strength of my arm, by the sight of my eyes,
By the skill of my fingers, I swear,
As long as life dwells in me, never will I
Follow any way but the sweeping way of the wind.”
__________
published in On Desert Trails with Everett Ruess, G.J. Bergera & W.L Rusho (Eds.), Gibbs Smith Publisher.