The Desert is Most Desert in the Summer, So it is Not a Time to Escape
Heading to Willow House (Terlingua, TX) and Sunlit Ranch (Tucumcari, NM) for (somewhat unexpected) Summer Residencies
The Desert is Most Desert in The Summer
Last year, I wrote and performed the line: “The desert is most desert in the summer, so it is not time to escape.” Joshua Tree, smack in the middle of Southern California’s Mojave Desert, is sweltering in the summer. I remember writing that line outside, under the shade of my Mulberry tree, on a very typical 108 degree day.
At the time, it was my second desert summer (and my first with a working AC). The desert is quiet in the summer; the tourists that flock to its open spaces in the spring and fall are nowhere to be found, collecting instead around lakes in the mountains or down cobblestoned streets an ocean away. Our local restaurants close for most or half the week, “summer break” signs posted on their doors and on their Instagrams. The pavement absorbs sun so quickly that dogs stay inside, relegated to a 6a or 9p walk, before or after the heat of the (very long) day. Paws instead on carpet, paws instead on cool terracotta floors. Even the locals leave, escaping to the beach or even the city, anywhere to get away from the sun.
But the desert is most desert in the summer. Everything gets quiet, just how it likes it. The land feels more expansive in this aridity; the wind both louder and subtler when it comes, the rocks more majestic, their faces rising taller in the sky’s bath of endless light. The animals are out in full force: desert iguanas and speckled rattlesnakes, slinky bobcats and playful ground squirrels, swooping hawks and chattering quails. Everyone is awake, alive, basking in the heat or strolling through the 80 degree nights. The sunrises are more spectacular: rising from their first rays with the full heat of the day. The sunsets are more colorful: creeping across in slow motion, taking their time to sink softly behind a set of hills that will soon lose their white caps completely. The moon brighter, the stars twinkling still.
As a local, I find it to be the best time of year. You can walk in anywhere and get a table, have a cocktail outside until 10p. Up before sunrise for an empty trail and next to a cowboy pool by sunset. Only a crazy person would vacation to the desert in the summer, so you know everyone around is local, too — or a crazy person, just like you. Yes, the desert is most desert in the summer, I think, so it is not a time to escape. Strip down, she says — because when you think about it, summer is just winter, with fewer clothes.
Not a Time to Escape, Indeed!
“The desert is most desert in the summer, so it is not time to escape.”
This year, I find myself laughing as I think back to that line. Because, as life worked out, it seemed I was not going to be in the desert at all this summer. Weddings and workshops took me to New York for most of June and vacations and a residency were to take me to Greece in July. In May, I looked forward towards my travel schedule and felt preemptively unmoored — wishing for something to be cancelled, praying for the feeling of being grounded.
I should have known to be careful what I wished for.
As things turned out, grounded is exactly what I got. I started my passport renewal two months ago and what should have been a seamless process has left me — you guessed it — still without a passport, and hence: my dreams of the Aegean dashed, my Turkey and Greece trips cancelled, and my planned residency in Crete along with them. Grounded, here in the desert. I got my first passport at a few months old, so this is close to the longest I’ve been without one in my entire life.
L.O.L. I find this to be hilarious. What a cosmic joke! Grounded! Unable to fly to another country for effectively first time ever! What a privilege I’ve always had. And how delightful, at least for the moment, to be without it. I’ve been telling people I’m in my America era (I can’t leave America)… there is so much freedom in that.
I was disappointed, of course, to cancel a month in Greece, and/but/also: I choose live in a world of abundance and optimism. Silver lining, glass half full type of vibe. Why not, you know?
As life has worked out, of course, two residencies have sprung up in the failed one’s place. Two residencies — hilariously — that keep me still in the desert. The desert is most desert in the summer, so it is not a time to escape, indeed!
Later this month I will make my way to Terlingua, Texas, where I will be a resident at Willow House. I have been swooning over Willow House’s expansive views and minimalist design, set in the desert outside of Big Bend National Park for years so it is a dream to have been admitted to their annual residency. From there, I’ll head to Tucumcari, New Mexico, to spend a week or so at Sunlit Ranch, my dear friend Matty’s most recent artistic venture.
I’ll be meandering my way through the Southwest in between, probably with a copy of Desert Solitaire in hand. If you have recommendations, especially for Tucson, Terlingua, or Marfa, don’t hesitate to share them. I hope to write intermittently here and will definitely be sharing updates on my Instagram if you’d like to follow along.
In the meantime, enjoy the aforementioned poem from Summer 2022 below.
Be well and see you somewhere in a desert,
amac
“A Tale of Two Summers (Joshua Tree, CA and Eyrarbakki, Iceland)”
Author’s note: The first (desert) half of this piece was written in June 2022 and was performed at Red Light Lit in Joshua Tree in early August 2022. The second half was written at Saga Residency in Eyrarbakki, Iceland, later in August 2022 and the finished poem was performed at Saga and published in full here. The layout and spacing of the poem was updated in June 2023, influenced by my time exploring poetry as object and prose, in general, at Juniper Writing Institute.
The desert is most desert in the summer, so it is not a time to escape. Strip down, she said. I scrub one layer, soak the next off with acetone more the sun does her damage, revealing skin darker and darker, the color of my ancestors, before I white-washed myself in brick buildings and on trays in cafeterias before I knew of black ice on the green strip down I have calluses on my hands and feet, dead skin around manicured nails, totems from a former life strip down under my softness is callused, under my softness is rocks made of granite shaped by nothing but the wind strip down. I have nothing left. The wind has her way with me I cry resisting as she enters and tears me open what did you hope to find here? there is only darkness strip down the desert is most desert in the summer and I have nothing left to give. Strip down. ### on a bench by the ocean, life is played out in miniature. I search for forms I recognize, but everything is covered in layers of memories in drying seaweed, and soft moss, the drying bones of feathers, and the brittle arms of a crab. the rocks here are soft, hollow, allowed to keep their air or - maybe trapped too quickly silenced before they took their last breath. the wind here suggests ripples that spread like fans caressed open into the crinkle of the sea, out and away it's careful not to bother the rocks. # I sit alone and an old man asks: "Woman with the feather - what did you hope to find here?" Anything but darkness. If you make your nest out of seaweed, you never have to leave the ocean. If you make your nest out of seaweed, you don't have to say sorry when you're washed away. # on a bench by the sea in Eyrarbakki, life is played out in miniature. the hopes dashed by the winds in the desert are marooned here on the shores, waiting to be washed away, or buried under another generation's moss. impressions are watered down: three strangers on a journey unobstructed views behind a chain link fence ghost stories of foremothers echoes of stomps, by a bench on the sea. The desert is most desert in the summer, but I was invited to escape. to play out my life on a bench by the ocean. strip down It is the first time I have stood before myself, naked.