Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend

Developing an appreciation of the desert has been a long process for me.  As a pedigree Pacific Northwest girl, I have associated the green terrain with beauty.  Full, evergreen filled, misty forests with dense underbrush, teeming with wildlife are my version of paradise.  Deposit me in an open landscape and I feel vulnerable, alone and struggle to see past the barren, dry and dead backdrop to the actual beauty and life that exists in spite of the harsh conditions.  In high school I discovered Barbra Kingsolver; High Tide in Tuscon and The Bean Trees began to reform my thinking.  If such an amazing author could see beauty in a venue where I see vast nothingness, maybe I wasn’t looking hard enough.  Fast forward and I began to visit the desert in small quantities and make friends with people who are passionate and love such landscapes.  I even moved to Colorado and enjoyed climbing trips to various dry environs. 

But my love for trees continues, and I find very little about the desert to be superior to a water-logged old-growth forest.  On day two of our three-day Salar de Uyuni tour (Bolivian, salt-flats and desert), I began to feel that I had seen enough of the desert.  My day consisted of a view of snow-capped mountains surrounding vast plains of sand and rock after rock after gravel pile after brightly colored, alien looking pool: green and then red and then blue, then flamingos and dust with a layer of dust on top.  I can’t really complain, it is beautiful and some parts are like nothing I have every seen before, but alongside the sand in the eyeballs, biting cold, sunburn, windburn, dehydration and hours upon hours spent in a small jeep, I’m ready for some trees and rain and an long trail. 

Then, after dinner, I discover the true beauty of the desert.  The one thing, in my humble opinion that the desert does better than any forest: nighttime.  Nothing stands in the way.  It is pitch black.  The smell of santo incense burning in the fireplace of our hostel waft alongside the tranquil breeze.

I look up in awe at the stars of the southern hemisphere.  Brilliant and overpowering compared to the ground on which I’m standing.  There is nothing between me and the heavens.  Even the mountains seem to be deferential to the all encompassing strength of the Milky Way.  I know that in comparison to the millions of light years that separate me and the stars, the 16,500 feet closer that I stand to the heaves tonight is respectively insignificant.  It must just be the placebo effect, but tonight my interaction with the stars is much more intimate. 

They truly sparkle; glimmer then fade and then shimmer again.  They are singing to me their song, their story, in the only language they know, light.  Luis and Francesca join me out in the cold and give me a lesson in southern hemisphere constellations.  I walk out farther into the desert, away from everyone and past the reach of the lights that stream from our hostel.  I relish the combined sensations of isolation, vulnerability and the silent commune with something bigger than myself.  Truly, these seemingly little, twinkling stars are just like diamonds in the sky. 

The next morning our crew wakes at 4:45.  The sun is still hidden and I notice instantly the change in the earth’s location in relation to my newfound ethereal comrades.  Our whole crew gazes up, with bleary eyes as we pack the jeep in preparation for the day.  We watch the sun come up over the steam from thermal geysers and then warm ourselves before breakfast in the hot springs. It is our last day of our Salar de Uyuni tour and I guess I’m ready for a little more desert. 

Photos of our Salar de Uyuni tour can be found on my on my facebook page.