I have to confess something: I spent five days in Death Valley National Park and didn’t write a damn word. For an aspiring writer, it felt just short of heresy.
Sunset from Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes in Death Valley National Park
On my second night in Death Valley, the cold swept through an hour after the sun set and pushed me into my tent. I sat there reading about Thomas Merton, the famous mystic and Trappist monk, and his interest in Zen Buddhism. I had camped out in Stovepipe Wells, the second largest campground in the park, replete with a gas station, gift shop, and RV hookups. All the modern trappings of asceticism. I tried to quiet my mind, but I kept listening to my chatty neighbors. One of them was surprised that her friend had made out with Johnny. What a slut. The other wanted to make out with Johnny herself. Buddhism be damned, I thought, I’m going to the bar.
I sat down at the Badwater Saloon, a more comfortable place of worship for me, and ordered a Black Butte Porter, while the person at my left elbow detailed his love of the X-Games. As the patrons filed out of the bar, I took out my notebook and pen. I scribbled a few passages, the details from my day. But then I made a mistake.
Golden Canyon and Red Cathedral at sunset
I reread what I was writing. What a rookie. You can’t read your writing while you’re writing it; your mind becomes an editor, a critic. And the inevitable happens: You hate everything you just wrote. Summed up nicely by Sean Connery’s character in Finding Forrester, “You must write your first draft with your heart. You rewrite with your head. The first key to writing is to write, not to think.” To confuse the two is to write self-consciously, which is to not write at all.
I had needed the time in the desert. After moving to Boise seven months ago, I still felt uneasy about my place in it all: I didn’t feel like I was contributing to any higher purpose, I felt passive in my relationship with my girlfriend, and my WiFi was the only thing that connected me to my friends and family. But then I was given an opportunity: I was hired to lead an organization dedicated to ending homelessness. It felt like a boatman granting safe passage to a stream worth following. After serving my two weeks at my old, dead-end job, which had been stuffed with pessimistic mornings and complacent afternoons, I set out for Death Valley. I was encouraged by my friend’s confusion, “You’re going to the desert to get away?” “I guess that’s someone’s definition of a vacation.” The desert is alien to us. There are no creature comforts to rest our laurels on. There are no easy victories. I expected to discover something in the desert that awoke something sincere in myself. Surely, I’d unturn a stone that revealed a new perspective. But then after a few days in Death Valley, as my hand troubled to find any words to describe my experience in the desert, I began to wonder:
Telescope Peak, the tallest point in the park, overlooks Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America.
If I hadn’t written anything meaningful, then had I done anything meaningful?
My expectations had come crashing into the reality much too soon, and the expectations won, as they always seem to do. Thankfully, Thomas Merton had just taught me a lesson on this, though it took a few beers and a page of gibberish to understand it. One of Zen Buddhism’s criticisms of Westerners is that we spend so much time trying to articulate our experiences that we often forget to live in the moment.
Don’t script your seeking. Just seek.
The famous moving stones of Racetrack
Not that I had a set a word count for myself or outlined any ambitions, but I had expected the desert in its harsh, but beautiful way to empty me out like a ruptured pot and then patch the hole with sand. I had expected to write a story or two. It was my expectation. But expectations are a bitch. They take root in our minds when are hands are busy and then have the gall to perch themselves on our shoulders and dictate our perception of everything we see, breathe, and touch. Unwanted company, if you ask me.
But instead of confronting the expectation head on and shrugging off its chokehold, I usually hide behind my words. Instead of living life as one deep breathe; I usually create some half-baked analysis of it. Sometimes, I worry that I’m living life as a critic instead of a devotee.
I put the notebook down and settled my tab. For the next three days, I didn’t dream of touching the notebook or the pen. As my feet, eyes, and hands explored the desert terrain, I knew that I was learning something important. Maybe, one day I’ll be able to articulate it to you.
Sincerely,
Wyatt
Letters to my Progeny 