to the desert i return

quotes

"There are wildflowers in my desert
which take up to twenty years to bloom.
The seeds sleep like geodes beneath hot feldspar sand
until a flash flood bolts the arroyo, lifting them
in its copper current, opens them with memory—
they remember what their god whispered
into their ribs: Wake up and ache for your life."
—Natalie Diaz, Postcolonial Love Poem from Postcolonial Love Poem

writing

You Need This Crust: A guide to properly adoring microbiotic soils, Riley Black

art

Various paintings, Mark Maggiori

Gila, Sophie

Cowboy in dawn, Hawta Mahmood

Moon Cowboy, Dudnikova Eugeniya

Strong cowboy, Noa

Desert Owls, Colin

Canyon, Garett Lee

media

note that some of these works may only touch on these themes while others have been more influential in fleshing out these feelings. my favourites are marked with an asterisk (*). those that i've been told i should check out but haven't for whatever reason are at the bottom marked with a caret (^).

*Long Lost, Lord Huron
*Red Dead Redemption 2 OSTs
*Various Marty Robbins songs

^Fall Out: New Vegas
^Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860
^The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800–1890
^Gunfighter Nation: Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America