Prose by Gregory McNamee
Photos by Stephen Strom
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We have many ways to define deserts: Köppen indexes, relative and absolute precipitation, proximity to the horse latitudes, and so on. But in the end, our definitions turn on absences. A desert lacks. It lacks water. It lacks vegetation. In any sane regime, it lacks people, certainly as compared to better-watered lands. And in that lacking lies the essential clarity of the desert as it should be: there is nothing to disguise the desert, nothing to cover it up, nothing to muffle its signal. Bisti Wilderness, New Mexico |
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Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural
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