In Defense of Deserts (And Other Boring Places)

Deserts get a bad rap. So do plains, prairies, and any other flat geographical terrains that fail to satisfy the observer’s thirst for grandeur. If I had a dollar for every complaint I have heard about such places, I would be halfway to purchasing a banjo (alright, that’s the first standard that came to mind), and I am mostly convinced by now that if these geographic doldrums abruptly vanished from Planet Earth, the majority of the human populace would be either glowingly happy or bovinically ambivalent.

It seems to me that at some point in modern history, someone decided to propagate the doctrine that only mountains, large hills, forests, beaches, and rivers could be truly considered beautiful. I shall grant that certainly these landscapes provide more variation and diversity to be enjoyed by the human eye. But when did this perception of enjoyment, this dependency on geographic variation, arise? Mountains, once upon a time, must surely have been a harrowing sight to behold, for they meant treacherous passage to the traveler and infertile lands to the settler. If they evoked any aesthetic reflection from their beholders at all it might have been with what Schopenhauer called the sublime: that which is deadly and life-threatening, yet awesome to behold.

I have a few hypotheses for this aesthetic shift. First, as America moved from an agrarian to an urban society, society placed less emphasis on the value of “flat land” (although as one could never grow cornfields in a desert to begin with, this could only really apply to plains, I suppose). Secondly, the advent of the automobile and the increase of its speed created an expectation of expedited travel, wherein one could count on leaving a monotonous landscape within a few hours (though I cannot speak for wagon travelers back in the day as to whether they found weeks of unending prairie beautiful). Thirdly, the transcendental-conservationist movement, resulting partly from urban fatigue, inspired writers and romantics to live off the land and city-dwellers to enjoy the great outdoors. As one may more easily live off the land in a forest than in a desert, the woodland scene became more beautiful in this way. Finally, there is (and I fear this is weak, but neither can I omit it) the entertainment factor. The passenger must be as constantly diverted by the variation of unique landscapes as he is by visual media, because he is not content to observe the subtle changes that exist even within the plain lands. Western Kansas, for example, looks radically different from Far Western Kansas; one may easily tell the difference. But the passenger, in his hunger for Colorado majesty, looks westward for the first peaks to crack the horizon, yawning meanwhile at the plains which seem to roll on without end. It is easier to enjoy mountain scenery. It requires more concentration to fully appreciate the homely plain.

“Oh, I hated Texas,” complained one traveler I once encountered in the mountains of Georgia. “So flat and ugly. Brown, and not a single hill. I couldn’t wait to get out of it.” (After further conversation it was found that she had simply traveled Interstate 40 across the Panhandle on her way to Albuquerque from Oklahoma City.)

Perhaps I can understand if flat terrain is boring. But let us not slap “ugly” on to anything that fails to awaken our sense of adventure. The drive from Reno up through Winnemucca to Boise is a long, 6-hour drive through virtually uninhabited territory. Much of the scenery is the same: rugged hills dotting the salty desert, hundreds of miles of desert plains, sometimes scorched by recent fires. My fellow travelers called it “apocalyptic” and denounced it as the worst drive of the entire summer. It may not have been the most exciting journey, but the terrain was strangely captivating. The afternoon sun through the clouds, the wide open expanse of the deserts, the saltine haze in the distance, the sloping of the rocky hills forming a smooth bowl to cradle Interstate 80—there was something hauntingly majestic about this stretch.

Or take Western Kansas. This region also does not seem to be anyone’s favorite, yet it possesses a simple beauty of its own. It is monotonous, and I believe that is what makes it more enjoyable. As Interstate 70 carries the traveler mile after mile westward through the lonely plains (which, even in the Midwestern drought of 2012, were shimmeringly green), one will learn just by observation how the inhabitants of this land settled and lived here. Two miles of corn fields pass by, and there is a small village about a mile off, distinguishable by the cluster of trees, a silo, and a small church. Two more miles pass, and here is another one. Two more miles, and there is a larger town, presumably a hub for the local hamlets. Two more miles and the progression repeats itself, while the simple power lines rise and fall, rise and fall between their teetering poles. The summer evening sun cast its golden aura upon the sight, and the fields stretch out unbounded for as far as the eye can see. These flat, humble lands remain fondly in my memory to this day; I could never call such a scene boring or ugly.

I love the idea Paul expresses in Romans 1 that God’s divine nature and eternal power are clearly seen in His creation. We should never worship nature, but rather let it move us to worship its Creator. Mountains and green places do not somehow have a monopoly on this inspiration. God called His creation “good” when He had finished, and that means that every place He created bears the marks of His handiwork. Are New England and the Rockies beautiful? Absolutely. And so are Nevada, Kansas, the Texas Panhandle, southern Arizona, and many other commonly despised places. To say that beauty belongs to one region or terrain alone is to exhibit narrow aesthetic tastes and deny God’s declaration of goodness over His creation. It’s all right to have preferences. But before passing judgment on less desired scenery, let us not neglect two very important questions:

Can there possibly be any beauty in this created work, and how does it point to God’s eternal power and divine nature?

In the meantime, I look forward to my next venture through the Great Plains.

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