The Desert is a Harsh Mistress

A Morning Calm

Biotech Conference + Desert Field Test

The wind has subdued and the sun is warm.  The rains have passed along with the celebrations.

After two weeks in the Manzana Valley, the shipping container home will be moved to a new location in Mojave desert.  The shipping container home was a prototype studying the initial design imaginations for extraterrestrial living pods on other planets as part of BetaSpace, a MarsBio conference in the desert.

The fascinating biotech showcase, venture capitalists, and desert revelers have come and gone successfully. Yet, I am still happily here in this little box testing the design, functionality, and livability of this compact space out in the desert clime.

There is always an adjustment period as one settles in to the demands of a harsher environment.  Personal needs and maintenance tasks that usually go unnoticed in a ‘civilized’ realm are made poignantly clear when living closer to the land and at the mercy of the environment.

Simple tasks become strenuous, expanding the bounds of physicality and requiring a maximum increase in cognitive caloric calculating.  How to conserve and manage resources, how to prevent digesting the wrong microbes, how to cook in the violent wind over a fire, how to protect the body from the landscape, how to relax and read when the sun has left the sky?

It is challenging, and yet, hard not to feel engaged, embodied, aware, sensitized and alive. It’s like caffeine shots to the psyche.

Living closer with the land makes it possible to feel more present and aware of your place in space and time.  Aware of the necessity to think clearly and act accordingly to stay mildly comfortable and ultimately safe. Each passing fragment of time is rich with sensation.  Each moment becomes deep and infinite.

This morning is quiet and slow. Bird song travels over scrub-sand and past stands of chaparral sentries.  There is a peacefulness in the desert when one is patient and still.  The sky is clear and vast with plenty of room for any imagination to fill.

The grand experiment rolls on.