Excerpts from Cabeza and the Meaning of Wilderness

From Chapter 1, "In the Beginning"

 But if one day . . . you went astray. Off the freeway . . . off the highway . . . and followed the dirt road . . . then the jeep road . . . as far as you could. Then crossed on foot the rough rock-strewn terrain; tall saguaro here, blooming stand of ocotillos there . . . on a low white ridge striped with black. If you followed a wash . . . up a steep-sided, twisting, turning, winding, climbing ravine cut deep into the flanks of—call it Sheep Mountain for the desert bighorns that are up there, somewhere, you knew they must be. Past what seemed small palms: the soaptree yucca with its three-foot narrow pointed leaves radiating from the crown, all swaying with every breath of air. Then carefully around the low-growing agaves with their similar but firm leaves, dagger sharp and dangerous, yet a beautiful blue-gray green. Agave: the “century” plant. After years and years of slow, determined growth, finally sending forth a twelve-foot stalk to flower, and spread its seed . . . and dying with the effort.

 And then, if on you clambered . . . over the red and gray boulders fallen from the towering crags above . . . or on the smooth streambed rock—so smooth you almost fell—polished and burnished from the torrents that cascade down these slopes every ten? . . . hundred? . . . or more? . . . years. But unimaginable in the day’s dryness. . . . Enclosed by walls of granite into your own private little world . . . of rock . . . and sky . . . and sparse desert vegetation. A world perfect . . . whole . . . and complete.

 And then, if then . . . you caught a glimpse of the tiniest things: a pair of Costa’s hummingbirds, half the size of the eastern ruby-throat . . . flitting back and forth . . . hovering around your head . . . just out of reach.

And then . . . you saw it. Dangling . . . swinging . . . gently . . . on the end of a mesquite branch stretched almost across the steep gully. Smaller . . . than your palm. Swaying . . . to and fro . . . to and fro . . . to and fro.

A nest. And two miniature eggs within.

Maybe . . . maybe then you’d understand. And maybe not.

From Chapter 10, "Three Vignettes" (Goes with photo below)

 It was the summer of ’73. The day before I’d made the long trek down to the desert in Owens Valley to retrieve a buried food cache. Now back high in the Sierras, after following the John Muir Trail for a few hours, I branched off the beaten track, as is my preference, across high and open country. Later in the day a strong gusty wind came up and dark clouds menaced, so I decided to make camp on the only spot available: a slightly tilted, sort-of-flat rock. After a mighty struggle with the wind-whipped tent, tying it down to small boulders, finally I was done. But just as I settled in with a hot cup of tea to relax and enjoy the storm . . . darn it all . . . the wind died, the clouds dispersed, and the sun came out! With an easy peak beckoning to the east and a full moon on the way, there was nothing to do but put my boots back on . . . and head up. Two-thirds up I looked back and beheld . . . the few remaining clouds drifting across an immeasurably vast space . . . the windswept surface of the lakes far below . . . and a ruby sun nestling gently into a notch in the distant peaks . . . and took a photograph . . . of the Whole thing. On the summit, with hardly a breath of wind, I sat for a few hours . . . surrounded by mountains, lakes, and an infinite array of stars . . . waiting for the moon to rise high enough to guide me down. I didn’t need my flashlight.

 From Chapter 21, "The Heart of Cabeza"

Life . . . is beautiful. Can be seen as beautiful, when one has the luxury not to be constantly battling to survive. Anne and I appreciate and see that beauty especially well in the desert and at high altitude where life is hard and sparse. A field of flowers is beautiful. A single flower sprouting from a crack of a vertical high rock . . . even more so.

 I once had a friend I will call Crazy Laurie—because she was, but. . . . I showed Laurie the first pictures I ever took, in the Sierras, and we came to one of a few red flowers surrounded by cold, hard, gray-white granite.

 “Oh Phil, Phil, Phil,” she cried. “That’s it! That’s it! That’s what life is! That’s what we all are! A tiny flower surrounded by rock. A tiny flower growing from the rock. Oh Phil, Phil, Phil! God made you take that picture for me!”

 I made her a big enlargement. . . . And I don’t think I can disagree with Crazy Laurie. For all I know, maybe God did make me take that picture. Something made me take that picture. There was Beauty and Truth there. Genuine beauty. Not the artificial, feel-good, comforting allure of some constantly tended, human-designed garden. (Aren’t gardens a constant battle against bugs, drought, weeds, and animals?) And genuine beauty is . . . Truth. It is . . . a revelation . . . of what, perhaps, we cannot say. Of That . . . which is beyond all words. So “Crazy” Laurie did see . . . that life is beautiful . . . on our pale blue dot called earth . . . floating in an otherwise overwhelmingly hostile universe. A tiny flower surrounded by rock. A tiny flower growing from the rock. Yes.