(From the Feb/March Z) An Entirely Different Vista Found… By Scott Thompson

Excerpt:

It was in 1975 when I was 27 that I first experienced myself as part of the wildness of the land. My older brother Dan and I had just crossed the Pecos River in Texas after midnight into the endless expanse of Creosote on the eastern edge of the Chihuahuan desert. Somehow those millions of spread-out Creosote bushes weren’t simply out there anymore, apart from me. We were wonderfully alive together. I was ecstatic.

I’m cautious about making too much of this experience because it didn’t touch my life as a whole. But ever since then, whenever I’ve been in the Chihuahuan Desert or in one of the other American deserts, I’ve felt a part of them in a way that I can’t describe. I particularly love the rough lowland desert terrain encircling the purple fortress of the Chisos Mountains in Big Bend National Park, and the wall of the Sierra Carmen Mountains just across the Rio Grande River there. And the northern fringe of the Chihuahuan Desert making its way through and along the Tularosa Valley in south central New Mexico; you can stand in the Oliver Lee State Park on the eastern side south of Alamogordo, and watch the dawn light spread across the wide valley floor, casting the long, distant line of the Organ Mountains on the other side in purple light.

To read more of Scott’s article, click the link below:

An Entirely Different Vista Found… By Scott Thompson