It takes a long, long time to see the desert...- By Nayana Gadkari

Decades after I first learned of them during a geography lesson at school, I had a chance to see the mighty saguaros in person in Arizona. There they stood, tall and undefeated, giving the literal “fuck you” to the world in that barren Sonoran Desert where nature had decreed not much would grow, let alone thrive and rule. The feeling of awe beggared description.

This was my second visit to Arizona in as many years; this time, I went specifically to see my saguaros. I didn’t have my fill the first time; the desert was calling, and I needed to go. When a visitor goes to the Sonoran Desert in spring, one isn’t quite prepared to see the frenzy of life bursting out defiantly out of every crevice, every rock. It is almost as if everything capable of producing life wants to bloom wherever it is, utterly oblivious that it is splashing around this vibrancy of bright colors in an otherwise less-than-hospitable stark desert.

They say in life, you always arrive where you need to be, not particularly where you intended to go. This was especially true this day on the hike I took to see the saguaros, my spirit cacti. One wrong turn trying to capture on camera a row of bright magenta-colored strawberry hedgehog cacti, and I was lost. I went up the mountain following the sight of a structure on the trail. It looked like a church. Churches fascinate me, and I was already lost, so why not?

It wasn’t a church; it was a sanctuary in the desert. A tiny shelter for quiet reflection. A sign at its entrance reads “A still place in a turning world”. A tranquil, inviting vibe cocooned me as I entered the empty structure. It was almost as if it knew I needed respite from the storms we all harbor and stoke in our hearts and minds. I sat gingerly on one of the pews and thought of the hundreds that sat here in the same place before me. Did they find peace? I didn’t have to wonder too long before my eyes fell upon a large journal on an altar-like structure. As I flipped through pages upon its pages, I went through the recesses of the minds of people I had never met. Under the shroud of anonymity, they had poured out their innermost hopes, despairs, and tales of healing they had found on the mountain. I penned a prayer of my own, it is a wild, outlandish, impossible entreaty to the universe, but I hope to return to Sanctuary Cove someday to finish penning the rest of my story.

I continued wandering up the trail accompanied by the songbird symphonies of the Desert Wren, Lucy’s Warbler, and Goldfinch. It appeared as though the whole desert mountainside was swathed in golden yellow marigolds, poppies, brittlebush, and slender lupines with their delicate purple flowers, just the most fitting cloak for them majestic saguaros. And then I came upon a plaque with these beautiful words by the American writer and conservationist Terry Tempest Williams. She wrote, “It takes a long, long time to see the desert, it asks us to redefine what is beautiful,” Enough said.