I love the desert. It is not a pleasant place to be. I first visited the desert on a round-the-continent bicycle trip which took me through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. I came away with memories of timeless desert nights, waking up at the mouth of a cave at the base of a cliff in a narrow canyon, unsure what century or even millennium it was, truly lost in time for a while.

But the real desert is harsh. I forget about the wind, and the relentless sun. There is no place to hide in the open desert, very few comfortable places to be. But accepting the harshness, and being prepared to deal with it, we see the absolute beauty of the desert. The sharp plants poke at us, but we admire them for growing where we could not live for long. We see a tiny yellow flower all by itself in a sea of browns. And when the desert is in bloom, it is an absolute explosion of color.

I visited the desert this past spring originally to photograph it, but I ended up working on a book most of the time. One morning I woke up and decided to climb a nearby peak. It was glorious after bushwhacking through nasty thick brush in southeast Alaska to simply walk through open desert, even while watching out for teddy bear cholla and ocotillo, and the many unnamed but still sharp plants. I didn't see much in bloom, but on the ridge there was one barrel cactus in bloom. That is the desert; subtle reward for the willingness to explore.