And therefore if to love can be desert,
I am not all unworthy.



Behind the dust, meanwhile,
under the vulture-haunted sky,
the desert waits - mesa, butte, canyon,
reef, sink escarpment,
pinnacle, maze, dry lake,
sand dune and barren mountain
untouched by the human mind.
Edward Abbey.


The desert is a land of surprise,
some of them terrible surprises.
Terrible as derived from terror.
Edward Abbey.


What draws us into the desert is the search
for something intimate in the remote.
Edward Abbey.


No man can live this life and emerge unchanged.
He will carry, however faint, the imprint of the desert,
the brand which marks the nomad;
and he will have within him the yearning to return,
weak or insistent according to his nature.
For this cruel land can cast a spell
which no temperate clime can match.
Wilfred Thesiger