The Desert Will Scour Your Soul
Story and photographs by Ruth Ann Grissom
I
n December, as my husband and I
packed for a trip to Big Bend
National Park, I ran across a quote
attributed to Edward Abbey. “The
desert will scour your soul.” His words
evoke the grit of the desert, but they also
embody the promise of emerging pol-
ished and pure. The past year had left
some wounds on my soul, scars that had
calloused into bitterness. If any place
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was capable of abrading them, it was Big
Bend.
I’ve visited other desert parks – Death
Valley, Joshua Tree, Organ Pipe and
Abbey’s beloved Arches – but Big Bend
is the one that pierced my heart, the one
I return to again and again, all the way
from North Carolina or Georgia or New
York, wherever I’m living at the time.
It’s a place of solitude and solace, where
Cenizo
First Quarter 2019
a self-contained mountain range is con-
tent to reside in the desert, where the
Rio Grande holds the land as if it were a
treasure cradled in a palm. Here,
Mexico lies to the south, but also to the
east and west. It messes with your per-
spective.
The desert is luminous in winter.
The solstice sun hugs the horizon.
Grasses are parched and hollow. Backlit
from such a low angle, they glow. So do
the golden thorns of Christmas cholla.
Yuccas and sotols positively shimmer.
Even the humble pads of prickly pear
cactus revel in their reflection of the
thin, clear light.
There is so much beauty here among
the thorns and rocks.
A gentle trail leads us toward the
Chimneys, a line of eroded dikes that