“When you look at a tree or a human being in stillness, who is looking?  Something deeper than the person. Consciousness is looking at its creation.”
– Eckhart Tolle “Stillness Speaks”

The first light rains of the season had startled the desert into a sparkling wet awakening. Like rousing Sleeping Beauty from her eternal slumber, each droplet seemed to cause a chain-effect of predator and prey doing their perpetual dance. All was teeming with a buzz of insects and hummingbirds, hawks soaring high above; a vibrant panorama of flowers and strange-shaped cacti raised their hands to the heavens. The smell of sage and a deep, heady cleanness of desert breath were pervasive in my lungs. I could taste it. I had never inhaled such purity. A quick glimpse of a ghostly coyote slipping beyond the horizon. Scurrying lizards dug in the dirt or scooted up and around walls and rocky crevasses chasing after bugs of all shapes and sizes. Shiny red and black ants chose their “gangsta” territories drawing invisible (to us!) lines in the sand lugging massive meals into hundreds of holes before the next rainy onslaught.

I watched this desert drama unfold before my eyes with amazement. Was life always like this? Why had I never seen this before? It occurred to me while I was basking next to a fat, black bug that I had never really seen anything before now. I mean really contemplated, taken-it-all-in, savored, felt anything I was looking at. Prior to Joshua Tree Oasis, the most environmental friendly high desert rental destination I have ever experienced,  I simply had turned my head and did a “point and shoot” kind of seeing. But had I really taken the time to understand and appreciate this seeing-ness? I realized that while I was frantically doing my busy life I was busy shutting out all my senses. In doing everything I really was feeling nothing. My body, my spirit, my soul were numb. Now here I was in this rare state of doing nothing but watch a bug and then a lizard. Actually, it was a mighty Chuckwalla who had reached a rocky pinnacle and was splayed in a regal pose against a backdrop of sunlight and boulders.

A colossal cloud began to gather above me as a low timber of thunder echoed in the distance. The “rain show” was about to begin. I leaned back on the blue rocking chair on the front porch and threw a light blanket across my legs. And watched and listened and felt the steady stream of water transform the desert into a brilliant wash of new colors and sensations. My senses fully awakened, I was there to take it all in like never before, for the very first time.  This really was everything they said it would be.  Joshua Tree Oasis – the most heavenly desert retreat I have ever visited.

Cara Wilson-Granat

Hammock