Desert Quest

In the summer of 1985, I drove out to my brother's land in Baldy Mesa, California to seek God alone in the silence of the desert. My model in this quest were the 4th century Desert Fathers, who fled the cities to live with God in the wilderness of northern Egypt and Sinai. And like them, I had no plans to return to my former life. I would stay in the desert until God called me out. (However, unlike the Desert Fathers, I did bring a camera. The picture above is of my desert camp and my faithful '76 Toyota Corolla.)

In the end, my sojourn in the desert only lasted about three days. Scared at night, alternately bored and scared during the day, I gave up and fled to a friend's house in nearby Phelan.

A couple of years later I wrote a paper on my experience, concluding with the sense of failure I carried about the adventure. My history of religion professor, UCSC's venerable Noel Q. King (and here), gave me a great grade and noted that in such exercises, it wasn't chronos time which mattered, but karios time.

Even more years later, Tim Butler (and here) wrote a song about my desert experience and included it on his album, Good. I hope he doesn't mind me reprinting the lyrics:

Mojave Desert

Going to the light to set himself alight
mojave desert
driving in his bug with three dozen cans of spam
mojave desert
may go for a week -- may go for a life
mojave desert

sitting in one place like that old joshua tree there
joining in the space
far light - star light

days pass on his mount - i don't know the count
scorpions scurry
time becomes a stranger as stranger time becomes
scorpions scurry
oscillations made between madness and a gift
"what am I doing?" (thinks) "what am I doing?"

yet there's a constant company
in his singular abide
moving in space
far light - star light

out of all his water - ate up all the spam
voices talking (small) voices talking
over the horizon clouds are rising up
horses running (sees) horses running

drive back in the car
defeat - a failure - a demise
but wasn't he in star light - far light
a smile cracks across his wind-cracked face as he recalls
the way he lost himself / won himself
beheld the light.