I love the word sierra, and not just because you get to roll the r in Spanish. It means a range of jagged mountains, or a sawblade. The serrated complexion of the desert cuts into me. It makes me cry out, if only silently. If I did cry out loud, it would sound like the Muslim call to prayer, a lament, a curse, or a mayday alert. That’s the desert to me: a place that wounds and sends me into what would be a panic if the desert weren’t so wondrous, holy, and vivifying. The Muslim call to prayer includes the invitation, “Come to the flourishing.”
I grew up in Indiana, and I loved visiting the state parks, with their hardwood canopies, wildflowers, and meandering creeks. And for six years I lived at Nova Nada Hermitage in the woods of Nova Scotia. Forests are soft, nebulous. From the monastery’s summer lake the forest looked like a wall, but owls made their swift, silent way through the maple, birch, and white pine limbs. Woods don’t cut like a blade. Like a sieve, they filter the light or snow that falls through them. Filtering is slow, subtle. Sifting takes time.
Undone and Blinded
In the desert, I feel suspended by a rope, with God’s glory like a scimitar. One fell slash can cut me loose to fall into the abyss. But in the woods, I experienced a slow unraveling. God was cloaked in weather, rot, and rodents that soaked, weakened, and gnawed the rope, the umbilical, or leash from which I hung. Instead of a slash, a nibble could bring death and, God willing, new Life at the end of a slow assault on my shallow fictional self. In the woods, the undoing, like filtering, is almost imperceptible. A fiber at a time. After years of quiet, a surprise dawns. It feels natural and miraculous, gradual and sudden, like a monarch caterpillar wriggling out of its chrysalis into fresh air.
If the desert makes me feel exposed to the blinding light of jagged Mount Sinai, the woods wrapped me in the dark faith, hope and love that incubated in my solitary chrysalis.
Now, a half-century later, I’m back in the land of of sierras and arroyos and loving it more than ever. I think of my Nova Scotia years as an arranged marriage. I came to love the maritime wilderness. But my “unarranged” marriage is to this shining landscape that burns, bursts clouds, then blossoms. Yes, the serrated horizons cut into me. But so does spring’s explosion of color, from yellow acacia and palo verde blossoms, to burnt-orange cholla flowers and waxen white saguaro petals. Last night a warm wind blew, blossoms scattered, and today a rare bit of rain may fall. Flourishing.
Photo at top: The author at Nova Nada Hermitage in the late seventies.
There you are, standing on the porch of St. Joan, the chapel in the background and a ladder in front of you. You have a back-pack on. What are you doing? You must have just came back to NN from a town trip, or a time away – I know this because you have clean clothes on! Yes the desert is searing and the woods are weighty and powerful. And you clearly have been winnowed and purified by both reducing you to essentials. Thanks for the post.
Shall I address you as “Mr. Holmes?” Your powers of deduction are keen. I cannot recall whether I had been in town or was just fresh from my weekly shower! As for the clean clothes, I’m sure they emitted the fragrance of wood smoke. Thanks!