I love the desert.  I experience a solitude and grandeur in the mountain deserts of the Southwest.  They never fail to whisper the sacred presence into my life.  One of the places that spoke to me in our last trip to Big Bend was Sotol Vista.

This is a pull-off from the main road on the Westside of the park.  It has restrooms which was the reason we made the pull off in the first place.  We drove down to the end and took a few pictures because that is what I do.  I saw a photographer sitting in a chair with camera poised on a tripod.  She explained that she was holding her spot for the “show” at Sunset.  I was intrigued.  Marlene and I made a quick trip to another spot and came back about 45 minutes later.  All I can say is WOW!  I found my spot amid all the other photographers and began my journey into a magical time.

This image is just one of several hundred that I took that evening.  The shot looks all the way into Mexico.  Actually, it took me a whole lot farther than Mexico.  I was able to see far beyond my borders, beyond the familiar and expected.  Generally, I spend most of my time “up close and personal” with life.  I deal with the daily.  I pay bills and return calls.  I spend time on social media and read the newspaper.  I do laundry and wash dishes.  From time to time I bump into a sacred moment and may pause briefly, but then I quickly move on with my daily chores.

The price I pay for living too close to life is that I see less of it.  I see what I have always seen. I look past the important stuff because it is hidden in the changes.  I notice a tree.  I tell myself that it is the same tree I have walked past for years.  I fail to see the buds that are just beginning to swell, signaling one of the first signs of Spring.  I have been too familiar with my life to see it.

But when I stood behind my camera on Sotol Vista I was able to step back from my life and see a whole lot more of it!  As I watched the Sun settle into the West, I remembered other sunsets. I recalled the places I had been and the people who shared them with me.  These stories bubbled up from long-hidden depths.  I experienced my life in the richness of memories; lessons learned and unlearned and relearned, moments of beauty, moments of wide-eyed wonder, and places so extraordinary that they continued to speak to my soul.

As the color in the sky began to shift toward brilliant reds and deep oranges, my imagination began to take me places where I have not yet journeyed.  I looked to the far horizon and imagined the Mexican Desert.  I saw the grass and flowers, foxes and rabbits.  I imagined people struggling to make a life out on the caliche plains and dry creeks.  As the sky began to darken and the planets and stars began to appear, my imagination took me to other places and people who were looking at those same stars.  As I continued taking in the view, I journeyed far beyond my place and time.  I was out among the stars.

As the day came to an end, the sky was filled with the wonder of a near cloudless sky.  I became filled with awe and wonder.  My heart beat with joy.  My skin tingled with anticipation in the quickly cooling air.   My mind grew calm as the moment embraced me with arms of wonder and gratitude.  It was good to be there, taking in the view far beyond the horizons of my life.  I can say, with the poet John Gillespie Magee, Jr.:

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth…

…and touched the face of God.

Blessings,

Bob