The Desert is a Box of Rain
Believe it if you need it. An ode to Phil Lesh.
The desert is far too simple a word to describe what it implies. Deserted. Abandoned. Blank. In detail, that is so very incomplete and erroneous. In human comprehension, perhaps it is best to leave it there. How is one word supposed to encompass so many vastly different landscapes? The desert contains so much that words are inadequate to describe or explain it.
This past weekend, I took my backpack out for a long walk with some friends. I cannot neatly summarize that in a mere 22 miles, we covered Piñyon/Juniper/sagebrush uplands, severe expanses of pure Navajo sandstone, a damn near wooded riparian creek with golden box elder leaves, and beyond a still wild river, schlepped a few gallons of water up a wide dry canyon. Is it fair to say that this all belongs to the same place? This is all the desert?
Perhaps, instead of writing about hiking into the desert, it is clearer to say, that for several days I walked into pleasant disorientation. A dream within a dream. Given the state of the world, that is far more honest too. The more I am dazzled by nature’s ability to disrupt my assumptions about––everything––the more hope I carry in my steps and sleeps.
Phil Lesh also taught me about this. First in song. “Box of Rain” was the first Grateful Dead tune I fell in love with. I repeatedly listened to American Beauty on a cassette my parents owned. No song ever got under my skin the same way before…and not often since. It was a balm for bad days. I kept a Walkman in my backpack so I could listen to it at school when I needed a soul escape.
Look out of any window
Any morning, any evening, any day
Maybe the sun is shining
Birds are winging or rain is falling from a heavy skyWhat do you want me to do
To do for you to see you through?
For this is all a dream we dreamed
One afternoon long ago
My folks were not deadheads, far from it. But I was instantly. At least as much as a 6th grader can be. I checked out books from the library about the Dead. I laid out a Mexican blanket in the yard, turned up a boom box, and pleaded with my siblings to come buy jewelry on Shakedown Street. I dreamed of selling burritos out of a colorful VW Van. I think about that often when I contemplate my dharma to this point.1
10 years ago, I was on a plane from the Eastern Sierra to San Francisco for a business meeting. This was my past life and it is not as stuffy as it sounds. I worked as the Vice President of a sports and fitness-focused PR and Marketing firm while simultaneously living as a running bum in a mountain town. In the mornings, I ran track workouts with Olympians and then, for the rest of the day, created strategic marketing campaigns from a rickety tiny cabin. It was a good life, albeit one I was beginning to understand might not be my true fit. (Remember Shakedown Street.)
On the short flight, I dozed off, and had a dream I was hanging out with the Grateful Dead. I awoke just before the plane landed and turned on my phone to enter “meeting mode.” It was my job to make dinner plans to meet up with my boss. With clear inspiration from my dream, I chose Terrapin Station which happened to be near our hotel.
After a brief chat about the objectives for upcoming meetings, a familiar baseline jolted through the building. Live. New Speedway Boogie. When I turned my head, I dropped my burger onto my plate. It was Phil Lesh.
Disclaimer: I did know that Phil Lesh owned the restaurant, but I did not assume that he would be there. Were it not for this photo, I would still think I was dreaming. Instead, my boss, who stood 4 foot 11, forcibly pushed me on stage with Phil, who was playing backup while an ornately dressed drag queen sang. After the song, Phil leaned in to take this photo. I recall he said something like, “I dig your pants.” Or maybe it was my energy? I was too overwhelmed to remember anything besides the magic.
I do not believe in mystical clairvoyance in any way I feel comfortable writing about. I do believe in listening to cues we might easily overlook or ignore.
Walk out of any doorway
Feel your way, feel your way like the day before
Maybe you'll find direction
Around some corner where it's been waiting to meet youWhat do you want me to do
To watch for you while you're sleeping?
Then please don't be surprised
When you find me dreaming tooLook into any eyes you find by you
You can see clear through to another day
Maybe it's been seen before through other eyes
On other days while going home
I asked my gut what the hell it was thinking as I slept in my Jeep during single-digit temperature nights in eastern Utah. My first visits to Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments were about a year after that magical Phil Lesh encounter. It was during the week of the 2016 Presidential Election. I admittedly knew nothing about either area––something I have written about in several of my books. Yet, something told me I needed to stay. Without cell service, that gut instinct was amplified a few days later when I found out who won the election and the reductions predicted for both monuments.
I will gloss over the details and process of ejecting myself from my previous mountain life. I have listened to Box of Rain enough times in my lifetime to let it repeatedly remind me that new doorways can open. That unknown landscapes can embrace you. That dreams can guide us all home. What matters most to me now is that I am still here in the desert, two election cycles later. I have kept the door open to listen to the voice inside me, the one we often desert for more clout, financial gain, conventionality, and so-called responsibility.
Currently, my dreams and instincts only have one message for me––vote early and retreat to the desert. Occasionally, I catch myself feeling absurd for giving into these urges at “my age.” As if I have not lived in my own skin long enough to know what I need. To trust it will never make sense on paper, the way it feels with sand, stone, and water underfoot.
A few months ago I wrote about anarchoresis2, or retreat into the desert, to build strength and resolve for the future:
By definition, the word anachoresis means, “The habit of living in holes or crevices as a means of avoiding predators.” Historically, it was used to describe the habit of people hiding in the desert to avoid debts. While philosophical types used the word to describe a retreat to the desert in solitude, or in a conscious community, to reflect and write. By removing themselves from society they hoped to contribute something positive to it.
The desert as a concept is nearly large enough to consume personal worry for a time, but it is still impossible to retreat from the grasp of human impacts. Everywhere you turn, there is evidence of disparate human beliefs in how a desert should be used or protected. Out here, I may not know Phil Lesh has passed. What the polls keep projecting. Or that billionaire-owned newspaper companies will not endorse a candidate. I do see, in every direction, how politics manipulate the desert, even in crevices that most people may never see––be it an old mining road, a cattle-thrashed spring, or freshly removed invasive trees.
Nature’s might can still overpower this. A late summer monsoon completely reshaped my favorite desert watershed. Willows are pressed downstream, their tips kissing the sand. Huge cottonwood logs are jammed across river bends, backfilled with branches plastered in by mud. New beaches are filled with fresh banks of fine sand. Deserts are named by their absence, but they are shaped by the presence of primarily one element––water. The desert is a box of rain.
What do you want me to do
To do for you to see you through?
It's all a dream we dreamed
One afternoon long agoWalk into splintered sunlight
Inch your way through dead dreams to another land
Maybe you're tired and broken
Your tongue is twisted with words half spoken
And thoughts unclearWhat do you want me to do
To do for you to see you through?
A box of rain will ease the pain
And love will see you throughJust a box of rain, wind and water
Believe it if you need it
If you don't, just pass it on
Sun and shower, wind and rain
In and out the window
Like a moth before a flame
I am a nervous human living in brittle times. The weight of what is at stake feels like the constant threat of a flash flood, with no sense of where it will unleash. In these conditions it is best to seek high ground––that is, to vote and hang on. When my heart yearns for a purpose beyond checking a box, I ask the desert what it wants me to do. The answers, like the desert itself, are better understood in details than words. And I wonder, is this how the desert dreams?
Such a long, long time to be gone
And a short time to be there
Here I use dharma under the definitions of “universal law of nature” and “truth.” Ice is ice. Fire burns. The Earth spins. I yam what I yam. In this way, dharma also means path when one lives according to their nature, which is truth, and can only be found through personal experience.
For more related to this, consider reading The Wisdom of the Desert by Thomas Merton.