DESERT PLACES

I went out to the Salton Sea today because I've had the notion in my mind for a long time that I want to find a photograph there that no one else has ever seen or even imagined. What I found was a a great stench. Millions of little fish have died and are washing up onto dying beaches. What a sad place. I haven't given up the idea of finding photographs there, but I'll have to go back another day to do it.

What I rediscovered today was the fascinating Anza Borrego Desert between the green Laguna Mountains and the dead Salton Sea. As I wandered around the desert and along the empty shore of the sea, I kept thinking about Robert Frost's poem, "Desert Places." I only vaguely remembered some of the words of the poem, but the last line of the last stanza kept running through my mind. I came back home and went immediately to my copy of "The Complete Poems of Robert Frost." After finding that I had remembered it correctly, I settled into being glad that I am acquainted both with desert places and with poetry.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars--on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.
--Robert Frost