The Peace of Wild Things

Badwater Road

Winter quarter was a difficult one.  With the terrible weather here in Seattle, the non-stop workload, and various student issues, I found myself waking up a couple times from some mighty angry student-related dreams, which was strange because I didn't think I was really that angry.  But clearly instead of becoming more zen about things, I have just been becoming more repressed. :)  I began daydreaming of the desert.  It was time to hit the road.

Wendell Berry's "The Peace of Wild Things" reminds me of how restorative venturing back out into nature, into the "peace of wild things" can be.  We flew into Vegas to go to Death Valley and a common response when I told people I was going to Vegas was enthusiasm followed by a quizzical expression when I told them actually we were heading into Death Valley for part of the time.  The man at the rental car company even outright said, "It's not worth it," but I would disagree.  The hot sun (in the 80s!), salt flats, sand dunes, blue skies with gorgeous clouds and the starkness of the desert landscape was just the antidote to rain and more rain.  Even the lovely Ingrid who thought at best to survive the experience without having to drink her own urine found the park to be beyond her expectation in terms of its austere beauty.

Badwater Basin: Lowest elevation in the US below sea level

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

--By Wendell Berry

Salt Pool in the Devil's Golfcourse

Par for the Devil's Golfcourse

Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes

View from Dante's Peak

Zabrieski Point

Rhyolite Ghost Town

Flora

Waiting for rain