A nephew’s wedding in Phoenix in mid-January and Brian’s cousin’s wedding in Las Vegas in mid-February provided the events around which we planned our travels for the winter.  Being in the desert for the winter met our criteria of staying out of the snow and being in a warm climate.  I worried a little about having enough to do in the desert.  We have our golf clubs with us, so I knew that we’d have that outlet for activity, but what about the rest of our time?  Would I tire of sand in my shoes every day?  Would Skipper need to wear boots to avoid the spines from the cacti?  Would the desert be boring to drive through?  Surely, I would need a book or two to read while we were driving.  What would I find about which to write?

Over the forty-eight years that I’ve been alive, I created an image of the desert for myself.  Since I had neither spent any time in the desert until just a few months ago nor had I studied the geology of the desert, I guess the image that I pieced together in my head came mostly from Bugs Bunny cartoons that I watched when I was a kid.  In my head, the desert was full of sandy hills.  In the distance, you might see a mountain or plateau (particularly if a roadrunner was involved). 😊  Plantlife existed in the form of one or two cacti dispersed randomly across the sandy terrain with considerable distance between them.  If you were lucky, you might come across an oasis where many palm trees surrounded a small lake or pond.

According to the Google dictionary, the noun, desert, is by definition:

1. a dry, barren area of land, especially one covered with sand that is characteristically desolate, waterless, and without vegetation.
2. a situation or area considered dull and uninteresting.

So far, of the four deserts in North America, we have only spent time in two of them.  Our visit to Joshua Tree National Park had us seeing the land where the Mojave and Sonoran Deserts meet.  Our time in Palm Desert, Quartzsite, Tucson, and, now, Phoenix allowed us further exploration of the Sonoran desert.  And this is just a fraction of the 260,000 square miles that makes up the Sonoran Desert!  From what I’ve seen, this desert is anything but barren, dull, or uninteresting.   I mentioned how lush the desert seems in my blog about Saguaro National Park.  The density of plant life is not unique to the national park.  I find myself continually in awe of the desert plants around us and how they seem to be coming to life.

Included in our plans for our time later this year are three weeks in Needles, California.  About an hour east of the Mojave National Preserve, where we hope our time will overlap with prime desert bloom.  We also plan to spend a couple of weeks in Bishop, California, which lies on the western side of the Great Basin Desert.

I realize now that the desert I imagined is mostly the Sahara Desert.  I hope to see it someday.  I’m sure when I do, I will need to correct my image about the Saharan desert as well.  I foresee a sense of peace looking out at a sea of sand, of wonder in the patterns created by wind, and of calm in the quiet solitude of the desert.  Since about mid-October, I’ve added many new images to my mind’s eye of the desert.  I have a feeling that my image of the desert has only begun to evolve.  And I’m excited to share what I find.