life in the desert

The Taklamakan Desert may be the most hostile place on the planet to live.

By day the sun hangs overhead like a hot coal that burns the eyes and the skin, and scorches the earth below the traveler's feet. There is no water to be found, and sand dunes stretch in every direction. At the end of the desert lies another desert. The Taklamakan's name may come from the Turkish phrase “The place of ruins.” When he set a story there in 1992, Neil Gaiman offered a more picturesque name: If-You-Go-In-You-Won't-Come-Out-Again.

The worst part of the Taklamakan is its winds. During the summer temperatures pass 100 degrees, and during the winter, they can drop below zero. During the spring, as the ground begins to warm, the air begins to move and gale winds arise with the force of a hurricane. Sand and dust blow and fill the air, creating a fog of dirt that reaches heights of 13,000 feet.

In these conditions, the sky can get so dark that visibility is imaginary. Your only hope of survival is to stay together, and your only hope of staying together is to affix bells to the camels and to one another so that you can hear how close you are to one another. The sand dunes constantly rearrange themselves, so your only hope of staying on your path is to set up a sign each night before you go to sleep so you can be sure to continue in the same direction when you waken in the morning.

Try to imagine living in those conditions. Try to imagine crossing a desert like that. The Taklamakan is a no man's land. It is a nowhere that lies between two places, an empty space that no one claims for their own. If you go in, you won't come out again.

Deserts come in all degrees and varieties. Far to the north are deserts where rain never falls and plants struggle to grow, but the ground is cold and frozen year-round. There are deserts where rains come often enough for cacti to grow and to bloom, and even for trees and animals to grow that have adapted to the climate.

Other deserts used to be green and fair, until men came and felled the trees and overgrazed their flocks until there was nothing left but wasteland. These deserts may be among the worst. Their desolation bears silent witness to the violence we have done to the land and to ourselves because we refuse to see what we are doing.

And then there are the deserts we make of our own societies, spiritual wastelands where we strip away justice and allow those with power to wield it with only a pretense of accountability. Executives loot the pensions of their workers and never face jail time or admit their wrongdoing. Government officials cut support for the needy and refuse to require a living wage. Power exists to serve the powerful and not the powerless.

In this desert, the victims of police violence are legion. Philando Castile. Alton Sterling. Walter Scott. Tamir Rice. John Crawford. Eric Garner. Michael Brown. The list of names is too long. It goes back too far to remember, and it joins the names of others martyred to white fears of a black country. James Byrd. Emmett Till. Greenwood, Okla.

Justice denied fuels anger, and as violence begets violence the body count begins to rise, and the voice of God rises in reprimand. “What have you done?” he asks, as he has since the first story was told. “The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.”

In the desert we rally to support a man who ridicules the disabled while he belittles and savages women. We rush to elect a man who lies outrageously, encourages violence, and incites hatred of Muslims and Jews, Mexicans and blacks.

In this desert, our nation's most avowedly religious Christians support this man, while we make a tremendous point of displaying our piety around the flagpole and at the National Mall, and everywhere we go. We shout our faith to the heavens, but heaven is a place that demands justice first and foremost.

From the book of Amos:

“I hate, I despise your feasts,
    and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and cereal offerings,
    I will not accept them,
and the peace offerings of your fatted beasts
    I will not look upon.
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
    to the melody of your harps I will not listen.
But let justice roll down like waters,
    and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Justice. That word sounds threatening, but it doesn't need to. What is it that makes the Taklamakan so dangerous? It's not the wind, or the sand, or the soft geography. It's not even the sun. It's the lack of water.

The Taklamakan lives in the shadow of the Himalayas, mountains so tall that they block rain clouds from ever reaching the Taklamakan or the rest of the Gobi Desert region. About an inch-and-a-half of precipitation gathers in the West, and less than half an inch in the East. Even cacti find the Taklamakan too extreme. Most of the area is barren.

Most, but not all. Even that inhospitable desert comes to life where the water rolls down. Around the edges of the desert region are river valleys and deltas, and places where the groundwater comes close enough to the surface to ease the oppression of the desert sun. Herds of gazelles run free through these open spaces, and wild boars live among the river valleys, where even wolves and foxes hunt.

Justice is not a force of destruction. It is an agent of renewal. Where the river flows through the desert, trees put down roots. They grow fruit when it's the season, and even in the summer heat their leaves do not wither. The trees that line the river provide shade for the weary, the grass along the river is easy on the feet, and there is food to eat.

In the desert, an oasis like this is a place to rest, to recover, to heal and to stay a while, perhaps even to put down roots of our own. The justice of God is a shelter in our society, a place where black lives matter as much as white lives, where everyone is welcome to be themselves, and where no one is viewed with suspicion because of race or color.

Here in our desert, Sunday morning remains the most segregated hour of the week. Perhaps we don't know the burdens people of color face in our society because too often we still haven't taken the time to let them share, nor believed them when they've told us.

Hate evil, and love good; establish justice in the gate.

Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Let it begin with me.



Copyright 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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Remembering Arizona

If you are looking for a nice place to vacation this summer, may I recommend the Grand Canyon?

Located in the general area of Phoenix, Ariz., the Grand Canyon is an inspiration to behold. For thousands and thousands of years, the waters of the Colorado River steadily have carved the canyon through the living rock. The Grand Canyon is 277 miles long. In places it is as much as 18 miles across, and at points the canyon walls are 6,000 feet high.

It is a place of surpassing beauty. Its walls are a stunning array of reds, and the river is a living blend of colors. Wildlife thrives there in the desert, with fish that race upstream to spawn, or simply pass their lives navigating the twists of the river's bends. Coyotes and mountain lions hunt their prey along the river's twists and turns, and during the winter months bald eagles join other raptors and the newly reintroduced California condor in the skies overhead.

How can you describe sunset at the Grand Canyon? Words cannot express its beauty. Each night God makes the sky his canvas and with broad strokes he paints a work of timelessly fleeting beauty. And then, as the evening fades, he whispers the names of the stars and calls them forth one by one. It is impossible to see night come to the Grand Canyon and not be filled with wonder.

I would go on, but I've never been to the Grand Canyon.

Instead, when I visited the state 15 years ago, my mother-in-law took us to another location people the world over know Arizona for: Tombstone. This small city is the site of the O.K. Corral, not to be confused with that famously mediocre church hymn, "The O.K. Chorale"; nor with that unremarkable reef off the East Coast, the O.K. Coral.

The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral is the best-known and best-loved shoot-out of all history. Aside from movies like “Tombstone” and the imaginatively titled "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral," it has appeared on television in series as unlikely as "Star Trek" and "Doctor Who," and even on "Peabody's Improbable History." It's easy to see why it's such a crowd-pleaser. It's got guns. It's got action. It's got dead bodies piled up sky-high. It's got good guys and bad guys. It's even true! (But not really.)

Not surprisingly, the Wyatt Earp and his associates define Tombstone. When we visited, a clothing store there boasted that it used to be the saloon where Wyatt Earp was the dealer at a faro table. Other places identified themselves as the office Doc Holliday used for his dental practice; the home of his girlfriend, Big Nose Kate; the burial place of the Clanton brothers; and the spot where Morgan Earp was killed.

The references went on and on, and before long I found myself not only spotting references to Wyatt Earp and the others, but actively looking for them. By lunchtime, when I used the bathroom at Big Nose Kate's Saloon, it had reached the point that I half-expected to see a sign identifying the urinal where Wyatt Earp used to pee.

It's hard to blame civic and business leaders for making the gunfight so central to the town's identity. Located 70 miles southeast of Tuscon, there's not much else to support the town's economy. There are fewer than 2,000 people in Tombstone these days, but tourism revenue has given them a high school that would make any community proud.

I'd say their tourism strategy is working out all right for them, but all the same, the next time I visit Arizona, I think I'd prefer to see the Grand Canyon.

I'm told it's really nice there.


Copyright © 2010, 2015 by David Learn. Used with permission.

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On javelines and javelinas

It's curious, but there is no philological connection between javelin and javelina, despite the spellings.

A javelina of course is a wild pig from the American Southwest, with sharp teeth like javelines. With anatomy like that, one could be forgiven for thinking that the pig takes its name from the deadly weapon, on account of its own javelines. Alas, it is not to be.

Javelin comes from the Celtic javelot, or the Old Irish gabul, which means "forked stick." Javelina comes from the Spanish jabalina, or "wild pig." There's probably a word for this sort of linguistic passing of two ships in the night, but I don't know what it is.

I suppose it makes sense, though. Who's going to want to throw a wild pig for a sporting event?

Face to face with Tombstone's obsession

Vacations are a special event for a family. Done properly, they can create memories for the entire family to share with one another for years to come. Done poorly, they can create memories the family will be sharing with a therapist.

Planning a vacation therefore is an important process. Among the considerations are where to go, how to get there, and whether there is anyone you can stay with to avoid the cost of a hotel. Natasha, Evangeline and I just a week ago returned from our first major vacation as a family. Our answers to those questions, in order, were Arizona, flying and Natasha's mother.

Now many people think of Arizona as a desert state with a lot of sand and a lot of cacti. While that has some truth to it, Arizona also is home to the only pothole in the Union -- The Grand Canyon -- bigger than the one at the corner of Sandford Street and Commercial Avenue in New Brunswick, N.J.

The Grand Canyon is a truly inspiring site, carved through solid rock so we are told over millennia by the Colorado River, which in turn has the most dangerous and exciting rapids to go rafting on.

The colors at the Grand Canyon at sunset defy description. It is as though God creates a new master painting each evening, and when he calls the stars forth one by one, you are humbled to see how amazingly small and finite you really are.

I would go on, but I've never been to the Grand Canyon. Instead, we visited another site Arizona is famous for, the OK Corral. (Not to be confused with that famous church hymn, "The OK Chorale.")

The gunfight at the OK Corral probably is history's best-known and best-loved shoot-out. It's got all the elements of a crowd-pleaser. It's got guns. It's got bullets. It's got dead bodies piled up sky-high. It's got the law fighting the bad guys, and winning. Best of all, it's (relatively) true.

So it's no surprise that the gunfight has appeared in movies like the 1993 film "Tombstone" and the imaginatively named 1957 film "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral," and in episodes of "Star Trek," "Dr. Who" and "Mr. Peabody."

If you believe Hollywood's rendition of Wyatt Earp, the late federal marshal was a hero who fought the cowboy gang and ended the reign of the lawless wealth-makes-right in the Old West.

This is a lie. That was not accomplished until 1985 in Clint Eastwood's "Pale Rider."

Wyatt Earp actually was little different from the Clantons and McLaurys, whom he, his brothers and Doc Holliday, fought at the OK Corral. The chief difference was that the Earps and Doc Holliday had badges. Otherwise, they pretty much were the same kind of thugs as the Clantons, except that Doc Holliday may have been even meaner.

Of course, it's hardly surprising that Hollywood would treat Wyatt Earp less than accurately. After all, "Tombstone" showed Val Kilmer's Doc Holliday firing a 12-gauge shotgun no fewer than three times without reloading, a task only slightly more believable than Gene Kelly getting 30 shots from a six-shooter, Roy Rogers shooting the guns from the desperadoes' hands, or a certain other cowboy actor being elected president.

Ironically, nearly every movie about the OK Corral was filmed, not at Tombstone, but more than an hour away in Old Tucson Studios. Still, Tombstone draws enough tourists that the city government has made it illegal to ask, "What would you like on your Tombstone?" when you are standing in the frozen pizza aisle.

Tombstone has other history outside the Earps, including a haunted mine and two fires that nearly destroyed the town, but everything seems to run back to Wyatt Earp in the end. The ghost story is tied to the basement of Big Nose Kate's Saloon, where "The Legend of the Swamper" is the subject of a free pamphlet. A 17-page booklet about Wyatt Earp (there he is again) and Doc Holliday costs $5.

One clothing store boasts it used to be the saloon where Wyatt Earp (there he is again) ran a gambling table for playing faro. Other places are identified as the office Doc Holliday used while he still practiced medicine, the room where Big Nose Kate lived (the prostitute who also was Doc Holliday's girlfriend), where the Clanton brothers were buried, where Morgan Earp (there's his brother) was killed, and on and on.

Over by the OK Corral is the a photo gallery of work by C.S. Fly, the photographer of the Old West who took the famous pictures we have of Geronimo, the Apache Indians, Tombstone after the fires, other parts of the Old West and Wyatt Earp. (There he is again.)

It got to the point that when I used the bathroom at Big Nose Kate's Saloon (built on the site of the Grand Hotel, where the Clantons and McLaurys stayed the night before the gunfight), I half-expected to see a sign identifying the urinal that Wyatt Earp used when he'd had too much to drink.

It gets overwhelming after a while.

Natasha, her mother, Evangeline and I were in Tombstone for less than a day, but I can't help it. I've developed an obsession with Wyatt Earp. I've told everyone I could about my trip to Tombstone and what I learned about him.

It's not enough. I have an overwhelming compulsion to run out and buy copies of "Tombstone," "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" and "My Darling Clementine" on video and watch all three of them sequentially and concurrently. I want to buy the movie posters and decorate my living room with them.

This never would have happened if we had gone to Moose Lake, Minn., like I had suggested. The only thing Moose Lake has going for it that I know of is a gratuitous reference in a VeggieTales video.

Our Arizona vacation was supposed to help me unwind from work and keep my sanity. Instead, my mind is slipping faster and faster into an Earpocentric dementia. Instead of beginning to assemble timeless memories, I've begun to assemble psychoses to unload to a licensed therapist.

Next time we go on vacation, we're going someplace without a history, even if it means I have to carry Natasha all the way to Moose Lake myself.

Copyright © 2010 by David Learn. Used with permission.