Santa Catalina Mountains Panorama: Western View from Wasson Peak– Image by kenne
“The day warmed and on the margins of a steep ravine splitting the side of the mesa I found dry rocks to scramble up. I liked that about the desert.
Morning snow and afternoon warmth, the winter equivalent of a spring freshet, but for which I had no word. In some ways, words were superfluous.
They didn’t help—no words came to mind—as I pulled on a loose boulder and leaped awkwardly out of the way of its crashing descent,
its delicate angle of repose inadvertently re-reposed. All the rocks in this ravine were similarly precarious, and I continued with greater care
as the ravine steepened near the top of the mesa. I had lost sight of the ravens, and they of me. I had not spotted a
bighorn sheep the entire day. I was pleased the boulder did not take me with it.”
— from 1/21/21 by David Jenkins
(Anthropologist David Jenkins is the author of Nature and Bureaucracy: The Wildness of Managed Landscapes (Routledge 2022). He has taught at MIT and Bates College and worked in the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology at the University of Arizona. For the last dozen years, he has worked in public lands management, where he tries to do some good for the planet.
Becoming is Superior to Being 
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