our red rock wilderness {part one} : another reason we love living here

"something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the
remaining wilderness be destroyed...we simply need that wild country
available to us, even if we never do more than
drive to its edge and look in."

-wallace stegner

have you ever looked in to the mysteries and grand beauty
of the red rock desert?
it changes you. it slows your breath, and opens your heart and mind...
but it closes your mouth.
all you want to do is listen and watch to find out just how much this
seemingly empty place is moving and growing...thousands and thousands
of years of constant, but steady, change.

our red-rock wilderness pulls at my heart-strings.
it is a place that is incredibly stormy:
at one moment the sun shines and the dirt is cracked,
and before you know it a thunderhead has burst
and flash floods can be a danger that i have, luckily, never experienced.

it is stormy in another way:
there are tensions as to whether it should be preserved
as the great wilderness that it is,
or if it should be interrupted for our energy consumption,
or opened to development that, simply, there is not enough
water in this desert to support.

we fight to keep this wilderness...
because when it's gone, our children will miss it.
i know nature is much more powerful than us,
and could possibly heal after hundreds or thousands of years...
but i desperately want my children to know this wild place
as i have known it. and i desperately wish i knew this wild place as
it was for my grandpa as he traveled its canyons and plateaus so many decades ago.

this place will heal you.
it will whisper the most simple, but awe-inspiring secrets to your heart.

this is why we love living here. the wilderness is at our fingertips.

{by the way, did you know that much of this red rock wilderness is yours? if you live in the US, and pay your taxes, then you have a right to say what happens to this land...pretty rad, huh?}