High Desert Witching
Romancing the land of Arroyos and Redrock
A number of years ago I found and left a small piece of myself among the arroyos and Redrock canyons of Boulder Utah. It was a year of reshuffling after a big life change. The land must have noticed this and decided to slip a small seed of itself inside me, to take root. I returned recently, again with an ache in my heart while adjusting to life without my beloved little fox dog. Finding solace in the land once again, and in really amazing tacos.
The desert is not for the faint of heart, it is a landscape that demands you face truth. There is a minimalism to the land, monochrome walls of red earth. This minimalism lets my mind reset, it doesn’t ask me to add anything, but it does demand facing that mirror within.
It is no coincidence that I fled the overwhelming abundance of June on the farm to rest in the minimal simplicity of this land. In the desert death feels closer, I feel smaller, the sky bigger, I can taste my vulnerability. Troubling feelings if you fight them, but once you surrender, to your smallness, to your inevitable death, to the inevitable death of all things it instantly becomes soothing. There is nothing to fight you just get to be. Life looks very different when you look at it this way.
These are the things I thought about as I sat looking at the canyon across from a riparian oasis tended by beavers. Striped bands of color, deep black and rusty pollen, painting the canyons walls. I learned that these bands, called varnish, are made by living organisms who oxidize iron and manganese in the clay, indicating periods of low or high rainfall over thousands of years. Lower down on the canyon wall three figures, painted in red pigment, ancient petroglyphs looked back at me. Nearby, perched high in the canyon wall sat a granary where ancient people who lived in this place stored precious food and seeds. These canyons are formed over millions of years by the movement of water, the slow erosion forever diving deeper towards the earths center.
During my visit a storm rolled across the land, large bruise colored clouds bringing lightning and thunder. And within a few hours flash floods that transformed the small creek near where I was staying into a roiling band of muddy water. The storm also brought that beloved scent of rain on dry earth.
They say humans can smell rain in the air as easily as a shark smells blood in the water. After gnawing on this fact that at first tasted untrue, I remember that water is life. That the waters within our own bodies would undoubtedly call out to the element that sustains us. Our senses attuning to the waters falling from the cosmos. And that our ancestors deeply depended on rain for survival, especially those living in a desert landscape. Petrichor, from the Greek petra meaning stone and ichor meaning the blood like fluid of the gods. Is defined as the smell of rain on dry soil, yet the smell is actually the scent of plant oils that are released during dry periods by the plant and absorbed into rocks and soil. When it rains the impact of the water droplets on the earth once again releases these plant oils from the stones and soil where they have been waiting. Geosmin, the scent of bacteria in the soil and Ozone, the metallic scent released by lightning joins this alchemical perfume. And the human nose can detect the scent of Petrichor at .4 parts per billion. Which is like sensing less than half a drop of water in a 10,000 gallon pool.
Petrichor, this blood of the stones which is actually the scent of plant spirits that have hidden in rocks and been lured out by the kiss of raindrops is so deeply engrained within us. Smelling it is like time traveling, a smell my ancestors, your ancestors have all experienced. It is a smell that promises life.
A small offering with the plants and scents of this place will be available via newsletter Sunday July 26th. I hope to see you there.
Fox dog 💜💜💜
🖤🐝