Years ago as an undergraduate student I took a field study class that required me to camp in Death Valley for two weeks one January. I remember thinking how in the world could anyone find enough to occupy two weeks worth of time in the desert? It’s going to be so boring. Yet, I had to get through it, as it was a required class for my degree in Geography.
Well, the two weeks came, and after only two days trekking up and down water carved, marble like, canyons with photo worthy panoramas at every turn, I soon rethought my reticence about camping in the desert. I found a beauty there that I never expected. The monotone palate of the landscape was soothing. The Blue of the sky seemed bluer and the night sky would make you gasp. I used to think nothing was better than to look up at the stars at night in the mountains. Well that was until I spent one clear, cold night in the desert. The blackness of the moonless night created a velvet like drape on which God had scattered billions of diamonds, just for me to enjoy. Even the coyotes howling in the distance seemed oddly peaceful out there.
I hiked all day one day to do nothing more than find a tiny plant. The Death Valley Bear Poppy lives only it seemed in one place in the world and that one place was on a rocky slope of an alluvial fan, miles from the closest parking place. A patch of ashen soil left over from an ancient volcanic blast created the perfect microcosm for this little plant with leaves in the shape of a bear’s paw. Along the way one passes the remains of hunting blinds created by Native Americans some hundreds of years ago, if not older than that. There you can also find their primitive art or was it merely graffiti back then? The Petrogliffs that dot the desert there seem to be scratches of pictures on random rocks. You could find pictures of animals, or stick figures, swirly lines that we figured were water, and still others we had no idea of what they were. Again we joked that they really were prehistoric graffiti, but they were oddly beautiful in their simplicity, just like the desert. I did have my ideas though as the most significant ones seemed to be along what was clearly an old trail that eventually led to the very slope where the Bear Poppies grew. Was this the only place they grew hundreds of years ago too? Did the ancient natives find this little patch of poppies as unique as we did?
So that is how I came to view a desert as a place of beauty when once I had thought I would never find anything to keep me interested for two weeks. Now I just came home from a trip to another desert. It was a desert on the other side of the planet. It’s a land of deserts that I’ve wanted to see since I was younger than ten. As a little girl I loved stories of Bedouin and their Arabian horses and camels. Tents with colorful woven rugs standing near the green palms of an oasis with the brownish, scrub mountains in the distance. It’s a harsh world there, with a history of turmoil and yet I have been drawn to somehow being able to travel there for a very long time. I remember back in early 2000 before the last Intifada started in the West Bank, I had been planning on somehow getting to this part of the world. I was determined to get to Israel, Jordan, Syria, and then Egypt. I even looked into trying to do a year abroad of graduate school at a university in Ramallah. However, than that fateful day came when Ariel Sharon had to go and start trouble by taking a group Israeli soldiers to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. It was not a good day especially after he made that fateful statement, "The Temple Mount is in our hands”. He was only talking to the Israeli people they say in hopes that they would vote for him, but what the Palestinian people saw and heard was something else I’m sure. Everything changed in that one day. Yet, I feel guilty for even thinking of my own loss in that as I only lost out on a possible trip when so m any lost their lives and everything they held dear in the years that were to follow. But I do still wonder what my life would have been like if I had traveled to the Holy Land back then. Would I have felt the same way about the place as I do now? Would the yearning to return be so strong? I will never know.
I only know how I feel about the place now. There is a deep love I did not know would exist. The first glimpse I had of the desert east of Jerusalem was a quick look out the car window as we drove to our hotel on the Mount of Olives the first day we arrived. Even though I was excited to be in Jerusalem, which is a city I must go back to, I couldn’t get that feeling out of my heart I had from that view of the vastness of the dry land East. It was a feeling that shouldn’t have been there, a feeling of homesickness. Strange to feel that in a land I’ve never been to before and yet it was very real. All I saw was beige to chalky brown hills with washes (wadis) cut deep through them and not a hint of green anywhere. Yes, I’m sure is brutally hot there most of the year and could kill you without even trying very hard, but it was beautiful. Why are things that are the most deadly so beautiful? Nature is odd in that. Yet there are people who live out there and I would love to someday learn more about them. How do they do it? What are their lives like? What makes them happy? What is it that keeps them out there? Bedouins are a unique people to my way of thinking and seeing how they make it in one of the harshest places in the world would be an experience I hope to have someday.
The closest I got to any of it was driving with friends through the desert in Jordan, seeing herds of camels wandering not far from the roadside and seeing Bedouin boys riding donkeys herding their goats. I saw rough land carved by wind and mountains that looked like they could be on some other planet. I saw a far off dust storm black out a brilliant jewel blue sky and looked down marble like canyons polished by years of water rushing by creating twisting chasms barely wide enough for two horses to pass side by side. I took a photo of a young man just at home astride his camel as most young men are sitting in their tricked out cars, and he looked just as cool. What was his life like I wondered? What did he do for fun? Did he have an ipod; did he have Facebook, or love football? What’s his family like? I wish I could just go ask him. I wish I had. Next time I may.
I will be back in that desert in the Holy Land someday, sooner than later. I now know why the Death Valley desert so many years ago had such a hold on me. It was somehow a reminder of a place I had been in some other life, a place I would someday go back to. It taught me how to love the desert as I had once in a previous life. It taught me to see the beauty in a world where others might only see beige hillsides. It taught me to seek out other deserts and that love of deserts finally led to a yearning to go to the Middle East. Now I’m planning my way back.
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