For the Beauty of the Desert

I worked in the desert today refilling water stations. During the drive, my group listened to Spanish radio, read, or slept (we had to get up at 5:30!) In the harsh landscape of the Sonoran desert, I thought of Immigrants who may be looking back, unseen by us, as we drove by in our shiny Chevy Suburbans. How could people walk for three days in this heat when we shied away from mere minutes out in the sun? It's still unfathomable to me.
The filling stations were all pretty close to the road with the exception of one. We left most of the group with the suburbans and six of us joined the group of four in the water truck. Obviously we all couldn't fit in to the cab... So as I clung on to a bouncing, rocking truck which I was on the back of, I realized how insane I was to volunteer to go along. Three miles through the desert with three other people on the back of a water truck with a notable lack of good hand holds (much less any sort of grate or truck bed which to sit on) seems much longer when you're dodging trees and cacti that hang over the road. But in the midst of the gripping journey I saw more and more of the beauty in the barren ground, the squat cacti, and the otherworldly rocks that thrust themselves into the sky on the horizon. The spectacle spoke to me of the tenacity with which life, all life, will cling to its existence and subsist. It may not be spectacular to look at, but it is there and it thrives.

Matt Dickinson