{"id":8644,"date":"2014-04-14T16:56:20","date_gmt":"2014-04-14T23:56:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/?p=8644"},"modified":"2014-04-14T19:00:45","modified_gmt":"2014-04-15T02:00:45","slug":"day-in-the-desert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/2014\/04\/14\/day-in-the-desert\/","title":{"rendered":"Day in the Desert"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Stage-650\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Couldn’t resist using this, some sculptor’s creative efforts, encountered on a past DID on the drive out. (Any resemblance with me and Mike is strictly coincidental.)<\/h6>\n

Tomorrow I’ll be in the desert with my friend, Mike. It’s something we’ve done every spring for 20 years now and is one of the things that keeps our friendship alive.<\/p>\n

Another is to meet for coffee every week for conversation. It can be any topic, at any depth, sometimes very deep, and sometimes with so much laugher people start to stare. If there’s pain, it’s shared; if there are triumphs, each of us is the other’s greatest fan; if some exhortation is in order, some challenge, these are welcome too.<\/p>\n

Then our day in the desert is all that, extended, so there’s plenty of time.<\/p>\n

Abbreviated, it’s the DID, as in “Tomorrow we’ll do the DID” and “We’ve done the DID now nineteen times running.”<\/p>\n

Actually we walk. Sometimes for long treks, sometimes shorter. The Anza Borrego Desert is a place of wonder and quiet, amazing in so many ways, not the least because it’s just a couple hours from some five million people. We rarely see another soul.<\/p>\n

Mike’s a naturalist, a sometimes collector of seeds for his native plants nursery,* knows the names of all growing things, about the legendary stage coach stops, and has an eye for any petroglyphs or Indian grinding rocks. We always pack a lunch, bring cameras, maybe a sketchbook, a dog-eared Bible for a mid-day bite of the better food. There are periods of talk, periods of non-talk, sometimes even a brief nap on a hard rock if that’s the need.<\/p>\n

Mike has a topographic map, detailed with all the trails and peaks and washes. Every year he marks where we are; and it’s well marked now where we’ve been.<\/p>\n

In 20 years, with one long conversation, continued every week for an hour and a half, and every year for a full day, we’ve been a lot of places.<\/p>\n

And the destination, of course, is in the going.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

__________
\n*Tree Of Life Nursery, Ortega Highway, San Juan Capistrano<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s a dedicated day, could be anywhere, to water and keep a growing thing alive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8644"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8644"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8663,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8644\/revisions\/8663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}