In a desert I feel…

Posted on December 5, 2016 in Prose Arcana Travels - So Cal Writing Exercises

…free. My mind stretches over the cactus, the Joshua trees, the yuccas, and the sage to the mountains and dunes that surround me. Sometimes I stretch to the thin line of the horizon. All is “hollow, hollow all delight” as Tennyson wrote. Hollow in the best way. I could live here, a hermit in a stone house with thick walls where I could keep cool in the day, not cold at night. I would rise in the morning and take in the views, the light as it changes during the first increments of morning. The flow of the light until it floods the sky. Then the fall of the Sun to the west, the flames of the end of the day. Satisfaction.

Not everyone feels as I do about deserts. A friend who completed the writing exercise at the same time wrote about how she hated them — the heat, clunk of the air conditioner, etc.