I have a Mojave Desert wardrobe, but I’m a Sonoran Desert dweller now.

I need to be more columnar cactus, less Joshua tree. More legume tree, less pinyon-juniper.

More post-monsoon bloom of annual flowers, less monotony of Mormon tea.

More thornscrub, more upland, more plains. Less ecotone, less basin, less mountain.

More swelling tropical air, less strained, stolen aquifer water.

More desert, less golf course, less water park, less carwash.

More diversity, equity, and inclusion, less banning of diversity, equity, and inclusion.*

I don’t want to walk around like that old desert, its desiccated husk wrapped around my body, though the desert’s not to blame. No desert is ever to blame. As Samuel Green writes in his poem “Convenant: Saying Hello to the Land We Will Love”:

              We have only
              the compass of how we walk here
              how our feet move
              over the soil that will feed us.

Let us feed our lands, not feed on them. Here in the Sonoran Desert. There in the Mojave Desert.

Let the lands guide us. Let us honor them. Let us save them and in turn be saved by them. Let us not always destroy everything and everywhere and everyone.

Give me that wardrobe. I’ll suit up.

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* Utah recently banned diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts on campuses and in government.