Today I visited a desert. While the experience wasn’t what you might think (especially because January and February are the cold and rainy) seeing the rock formations was wonderful. I had always thought that the rock formations within the iconographic tradition was especially stylized, but after seeing these rocks firsthand I realized that this was not the case. Some of these little mountains look as if they came directly from an icon!
The other surprising thing about visiting a desert was the quiet. I have spend a good deal of time in the forest and there is a lot of background noise in such a place: Birds, rivers, wind and trees. Here there was only a little wind and that seemed only to become audible when I turned my head. It was a very empty place.