August 25, 2014
Topography is such an anti-evocative word for a marvelous phenomenon – the shifting strata of our planet’s surface. I love the desert because the topography does not mess around. It wears no disguise. It’s naked. There’s no mud or forest or water to cover over the astonishing. And it really is astonishing.
Hoodoos are perhaps my most beloved topographical element. They’re known by a lot of different names, but they’re all magnificent. The Chiricahua Mountains are unequalled, and home to the Apache or Cochise Stronghold. Spending time in the Chiracahuas is the kind of experience that changes a person forever. To me, badlands act upon us in ways that can alter our sense of self…they are austere sites with their own scale of time and place that is radically different than that of humans. Or most humans, anyway.
At the moment, I’m in some very remote badlands in New Mexico. What’s peculiar is that these hoodoos are utterly new to me, although I’m working on my autobiographical desert-and-gender project Out Here Death Is No Big Deal in various parts of the US-Mexico border region that I’ve inhabited over the years. That means a few decades ago I lived within walking distance of this hoodoo canyon and Never Even Knew It Existed.
That’s another reason the desert topography will always up-end the psyche…something so very close can be invisible, unreachable, unseeable, unknowable – until it decides to reveal itself to you (or to summon you to it for a closer investigation).
