Deserts
I’m coming to love the associations I have with deserts. They’re so vast and silent and dangerous and barren, and yet paradoxically filled with so much possibility, so much life where you least expect it. Some of the periods of my life that I associate with deserts are:
- periods when old frameworks for understanding life/God/people haven’t worked anymore, and reality has become increasingly difficult to interpret or make sense of.
- periods of vast unknowns
- periods that, at least on the surfaces, have lacked the kind of community or “shelter” or security I’ve wished for
- periods of going more deeply inward, trying to (re)connect with my soul and with a sense of the Holy.
I came across a passage in a book last night that made such a strong impression on me, I spent some time this morning meditating on it, contemplating it as an allegory of the path I’m currently on – not deep in a desert, but moving along the edges of one. I think I’ll write the passage out fully, here, and then share a bit of what it sparked in me:
(From pp 122-4 of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, a novel by Alexander McCall Smith, set in Botswana)
Mma Romotswe drove her tiny white van before dawn along the sleeping roads of Gaborone, past the Kalahari Breweries, past the Dry Lands Research Station, and out onto the road that led north. A man leaped out from bushes at the side of the road and tried to flag her down; but she was unwilling to stop in the dark, for you never knew who might be wanting a lift at such an hour. He disappeared into the shadows again, and in her mirror she saw him deflate with disappointment. Then, just past the Mochudi turnoff, the sun came up, rising over the wide plains that stretched away towards the course of the Limpopo. Suddenly it was there, smiling on Africa, a slither of golden red ball, inching up, floating effortlessly free of the horizon to dispel the last wisps of morning mist.
The thorn trees stood clear in the sharp light of morning, and there were birds upon them, and in flight–hooppoes, louries, and tiny birds which she could not name. Here and there cattle stood at the fence which followed the road for mile upon mile. They raised their heads and stared, or ambled slowly on, tugging at the tufts of dry grass that clung tenaciously to the hardened earth.
This was a dry land. Just a short distance to the west lay the Kalahari, a hinterland of ochre that stretched off, for unimaginable miles, to the singing emptinesses of the Namib. If she turned her tiny white van off on one of the tracks that struck off from the main road, she could drive for perhaps thirty or forty miles before her wheels would begin to sink into the sand and spin hopelessly. The vegetation would slowly become sparser, and more desert-like. The thorn trees would thin out and there would be ridges of thin earth, through which the omnipresent sand would surface and crenellate. There would be patches of bareness, and scattered grey rocks, and there would be no sign of human activity. To live with this great dry interior, brown and hard, was the lot of the Botswana, and it was this that made them cautious, and careful in their husbandry.
If you went there, out into the Kalahari, you might hear lions by night. For the lions were there still, on these wide landscapes, and they made their presence known in the darkness, in coughing grunts and growls. She had been there once as a young woman, when she had gone with her friend to visit a remote cattle post. It was as far into the Kalahari as cattle could go, and she had felt the utter loneliness of a place without people. This was Botswana distilled; the essence of her country.
It was the rainy season, and the land was covered with green. Rain could transform it so quickly, and had done so; now the ground was covered with shoots of sweet new grass, Namaqualand daisies, the vines of Tsama melons, and aloes with stalk flowers of red and yellow.
They had made a fire at night, just outside the crude huts which served as shelter at the cattle post, but the light from the fire seemed so tiny under the great empty night sky with its dipping constellations. She had huddled close to her friend, who had told her that she should not be frightened, because lions would keep away from fires, as would supernatural beings, tokoloshes and the like.
She awoke in the small hours of the morning, and the fire was low. She could make out its embers through the spaces between the branches that made up the wall of the hut. Somewhere, far away, there was a grunting sound, but she was not afraid, and she walked out of the hut to stand underneath the sky and draw the dry, clear air into her lungs. And she thought: I am just a tiny person in Africa, but there is a place for me, and for everybody, to sit down on this earth and touch it and call it their own. She waited for another thought to come, but none did, and so she crept back into the hut and the warmth of the blankets on her sleeping mat.
Now, driving the tiny white van along those rolling miles, she thought that one day she might go back into the Kalahari, into those empty spaces, those wide grasslands that broke and broke the heart.
* * * *
As I reflected on this passage this morning, here is what I wrote in my journal:
I wonder if this is like the path inward (and, paradoxically, further outward), beyond the sound of the crowds, beyond the bandwagons of dogmas and clubs and creeds that demand our allegiance. The path begins in darkness, where the traveler isn’t sure where she’s going, and can’t yet make out the scenery around her, let alone up ahead.
In this night, there are those who would thwart the traveler’s journey. Some of them are fears that would tell her she’s crazy for taking this path at all. Some are hitchhikers who would convince her to turn off of her path to accommodate theirs, even though, in this wilderness, she’ll likely not find her way back to her own if she strays too far from it. Maybe some are relationships and involvements that alleviate loneliness initially, but, by their lack of understanding of her path, ultimately make her loneliness deeper.
She is wise to pass these by, despite how dejected they look in her passing. They are dangers to her, or at least many of them are, and in this period of darkness, she cannot differentiate between those that are and those that aren’t.
Further she drives along the desert path. And dawn begins to break. On the horizon the sun shows his face. Her territory is illumined, and she begins to make out all kinds of life surrounding her—animals and vegetation at home here, in the desert, though not effortlessly.
She looks off into the distant dryness and sees lands that would be too dry right now, too uninhabitable for herself to survive—places where she could sink into hot sand, spinning stuck wheels to her death.
She respects these lands and the dangers they hold. She knows that caution here is necessary, and that she has not the tools, nor the physical or spiritual strength to survive just any desert, just any path.
She remembers a time when she went into the deep desert. She was with a friend–a guide who knew the dangers and how to avoid them. They went when it was rainy season, and the desert’s barrenness transformed by rain to green.
She was afraid, and her friend said she didn’t need to be afraid; her friend lighted a fire and told her that lions and evil spirits are kept away by fire. Fire is hope, is connection with one’s soul, is connection with the soul of another, sometimes, or the soul of the world. Fire is a spark of light and warmth in the desert’s vast darkness. And it’s enough.
She awakens in that darkness and realizes her fear of it is gone. Instead is left the thought that she is small, in a vast, desert land…and yet she has a place in it, a space to occupy, a space that is all her own. Everyone has this always—a home—despite what we often think.
As her memories of that last desert trek subside, she thinks to herself that she’d like to go there again one day, into the empty spaces that, though holding danger, are paradoxically pregnant with a deep connection for her with all that is, and with the many forms Life takes. Like silence, and constellated skies, and lions, and tender shoots along dry paths.
Hope to you who are traveling now through deserts. May your spark of fire keep you safe. May a friend help it stay lighted, and speak courage to your fears.