The desert.

Its plants and trees--the yucca, prickly pear, cholla, the acacia, blackbrush--adorned with thorns and spines, hooks and needles, all seem to want to grab you or stick you or cut your skin with each passing footstep.

Its winds blow incessantly, gust ferociously, down canyons and across ridgetops and basins, wanting (maybe hoping) to knock you off your feet even on flat ground, and push you over precipitous cliff edges.

Its soil, that fine sandy grit, swirls in the air and invades your eyes and ears and mouth, irritating and choking you.

The sun, on most days unimpeded by atmospheric moisture and thus any sheltering clouds, burns your eyes and bakes your skin and quickly dehydrates your underprepared urban-oriented body.

But that's the desert. Wind and sun. Light and shadow. Rock and sky. Cactus and juniper. Space and distance. Color and contrasts. Simple yet complex. Harsh but beautiful.

And ever defending itself without impunity against all comers, man or beast, friend or foe. As it has for millenia.

A hard place to visit. A harder place to leave.

Note: As you might have guessed, I've just returned from another trip to Joshua Tree National Park in southern California, 825,000 acres (that's four times the size of our own Baxter State Park) of magnificent desert landscape, 2/3 of it designated as wilderness and spanning 2 major ecological zones, the Mojave and Colorado deserts.