So much craziness, and on one of the most beautiful nights I've ever seen. The kind of desert night that feels like a gift. Delicate. The air filled with the smell of juniper and sage, desert holly and cliff rose, sandstone and alkali dust. And out beyond camp hundreds of sego lilies, one to a stem, their ivory blooms glowing in the wash of the moon. Lying awake through these wee hours I'm thinking maybe all this wouldn't be so hard to get my head around - wouldn't seem so filled with contradiction, were it not for my culture having spent the last hundred years thinking of the wilderness mostly as some kind of tonic - sedative, blood pressure medicine, speed. The wilds as the place we go to smell the pine and the rain, dangle by ropes from the chins of mountains. It's been such a long time since deserts and woodlands were places of confrontation, stages to wrestle with shadows and cry for visions, holy lands hiding strengths that go unsuspected in the more common hours."