an eternal fascination for me.
if I had to place the center of my world on a map, it might be there, despite the fact that all the time I've spent there wouldn't add up to more than a few months.
Georgia O'Keeffe lived there at the foot of the
cliffs, looking out over the plains toward Mount Pedernal, painting it over and over. she said it was her private mountian... God had promised her that "if I painted it often enough I could have it."
the desire is fierce to absorb something about that place into the skin, and when I think back on it now I feel it well up into me, a trapped helpless longing to fly away to the red sand and the quiet and the swirling stars. I want the dry rustling under grey-green brush that might mean a rattlesnake or just an errant breeze. I want the ants, everywhere, busy with their tiny concerns, mapping out roads and defending territory, oblivious to me towering over them. The rocks probably feel the same way about us with our nervous humming and skittering about.
usually it's enough to know that it's there, unchanging, the slow erosion of rain and wind invisible to me. but when the hunger strikes I feel like some part of me is denied oxygen away from Ghost Ranch, like my thin root tendrils are stretching farther and farther away from the home soil, exposed to the merciless sun.
away from the desert, I am parched.
