She is not easy to love
She is not easy to love.
The desert.
If you swoop in, briefly, catch her at her ‘best’ season
and pick off her wonders with ease and head home
the holiday romance will certainly stay with you.
Yet, if you dig deeper, her story is,
like so many of ours,
so much more complex.
She is light, shade,
heat, cold,
welcoming, inhospitable and everything in between.
As always,
there is richness in the nuance.
She is not easy to love.
She tests me with fierce sandstorms
dust, unrelenting heat…
my feet and hands never truly clean,
skin slick with sweat as soon as dressed…
I’m on the alert for venomous creatures
hiding in the sand and rocks as I camp…
She insists that it is only
for those who look past the harshness
of how she protects herself
for those who care to sit in the stillness
and to stay a little longer.
To venture more widely,
to forgo the comforts of the age.
Then she reveals her secrets
that keep us returning.
The richness of the colours at every turn,
the rocks of millennia carved through wind and rain,
volcanic beds forced through the earth,
remains of petrified forests…
The beauty of the ochre rocks
and the exquisite shapes -
which cause the eye to imagine
all manner of forms in them.
The oases suddenly appearing …
swathes of impossible green
in the arid landscape,
revealing the underground water sources
amongst the dry river beds.
We feel the history
of all those who came before us
who have used places of natural shelter
to sustain them;
to meet, to gather,
to love, to eat,
to sleep, to celebrate,
to grieve…to live.
We feel both significant and insignificant here.
She rewards us with the stillness
in the sunrises and sunsets,
the variety of hues that greet us at both dawn and dusk.
With the wild animals and tenacious plants
found nowhere else on this planet.
With the people with a rich and proud history,
surviving in the seemingly harshest of places.
With the stars painted
across the sky’s canvas
as far as the eye can see -
planets and shooting stars clearly visible,
each of us silently wishing as we watch them…
With a brief moment of generosity -
a gently cooling breeze -
that sweeps in when most needed.
She calls out a commitment
that few want to make -
and some attempt, and find it too much.
She is not easy to love.
And still…
something compels me to return.
For the Earth,
she remembers me.
And when she sings her song of ancient knowing
- sometimes silently -
as if only to me…
I am once again fully in love
and I know I will return.
