Seeing form with the whole body and mind.
Hearing sound with the whole body and mind.
One understands it intimately.
~ Eihen Dogen

When I am in the desert, I have two responsibilities — to listen, to see.

I watch as nature busies herself doing the quiet things not easily seen, sometimes only sensed. A lizard scooting from under a cooling rock. Cactus wrens darting from their nest holes in the saguaros to the top of the cactus, on alert, the look-out. Then swooping about, catching an insect or two, and a return to the nest inside the huge saguaro.

A pack of coyotes sing. A second pack joins, in harmony. Silence. Then the who-ooo of an owl. I hear it, I never see a twitch of movement.

I am content, also, to hear the sound of silence. Silence has a sound. I feel surrounded by the desert, as if she has a hold on me. The desert wakens all my senses — sacred senses.

Now is the time to remember that all you do is sacred. ~ Hafiz

I stayed in the desert overnight. There was no roughing it for me. My days of primitive camping ended decades ago. This time I had my car, a sleeping bag rated warm enough to keep me comfortable in the desert night. (The low reached 38˚F — not too cold.)  I had a backpacker stove and a French press coffee cup. I had coffee and soup in a box for dinner and granola and fruit for breakfast and lots of bottled water. I had a lantern. I had the necessities. I also had my iPad, a last minute addition to my camp gear. I was set. Luxury camping.

When I woke up at 4 AM and couldn’t fall back to sleep, I sat in the car and read The Turquoise Ledge by Leslie Marmon Silko on my iPad. Now that is really desert camping in luxury. I didn’t wait the first touch of daylight to make my coffee. The sun rises late in the desert — I don’t know why — and I got cold. I finally maneuvered in the dark and heated water and made my first cup of coffee by the yellowish-orange hazy lights of Tucson reflecting off the clouds.

By the time it was light enough to follow a trail and not walk into the desert plants, I was dressed in layers and had my hiking stick and coffee cup in hand. I followed a trail along an arroyo and was quite pleased to be out in the desert, alone, at dawn — until a pack of coyotes ran across the trail twenty feet from where I stood.

Once I got my heart out of my throat and back into my chest where it belonged, I turned around and hiked back to camp. All those sacred senses were on alert.

But it was a great explore.

My first overnight camping trip in the desert.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  She is exploring the Sonoran desert.