Islanders in Desert Country

A patch of vast, vast Arizona

I've been wont to repeating the same phrases whenever a situation calls for it, and perhaps for something as large as a desert (to which any thing made by man--even words--fall flat, or dim, against its endless, excruciating horizons) such a weakness could be forgiven.
        "I could not," I wrote on several postcards to friends, "even begin to comprehend the vastness of the desert." My sisters and I drove for miles, and the desert spread beyond the reach of sight, beyond all my islander's comprehension. Miles upon miles of bare land, essentially; uninhabited land.

Oh but how they burst with color, and life. At times, a stretch of desert with sand so bright and yellow it hurt to look at; purple and blue and rust--oranges and reds--spread out in patches of open space, under cloudless skies, indifferent and blue. Small, hard plants growing in clumps, waving to us in the harsh wind. Tiny bright red flowes. Curls and waves of color and movement etched into enormous walls of rock where rivers must once have flowed.
        "America is so...big," one of us said. And then I wonder if America's need to turn to other shores came from this--this same unfathomable emptiness.