Postcards from Desert Conference – Saturday evening: We visit deserts with Craig Childs

Here are a few notes I jotted down during Craig Childs' extraordinary talk. 

Gazing at Craig's photographs and listening to his stories, I think about my introduction to North American deserts that began in Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon, and with a backpacking trip in the Escalante (before its National Monument designation) where I asked as we took our first lunch break on a knob of rippled Navajo sandstone, "Who owns this?" "You do," said one of my friends. I think about the Alvord, about standing on a ridge atop Hart Mountain on a day of pulling fence, about camping in the Pueblos and watching night hawks dive at dusk. 

I think about the high spirits in the room and how love of this hard and amazing and elating landscape has brought us together.

"You find things in the desert," says Craig. "They are a memory of water."

"This dry landscape is in a rain shadow. The desert is a shadow of rain," he says. 

In the desert, Craig tells us,"You start moving toward water all the time. It's a place where the earth looks like bones exposed.

"Why are we drawn to places that are dry?"

"Water is different in the desert. It's unedited,"  says Craig.

"In this landscape, it's all about water," he says. "Water leaves a mark wherever it goes."

"Desert is water leaving its mark – writing its story in the ground."

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