If water is the source of all life, then the desert presents itself to me as life turned upside-down. In America’s most extreme worlds, those that resemble Mars more than Earth, only the most distinctive forms of life survive, individual and cultural — life or death separated by a prismatic horizon. The saguaro cacti, stalking vultures, and radiant-red buttes have enshrined the sun-soaked cowboy as our most enduring national icon. The Southwest’s ferocious Mojave, Sonora, and Chihuahua deserts mark the final tests for the millions of Hispanic migrants brave enough to trek them… the same people who brought life to my eyes in search for the warm embrace of Mexican food after challenging the desert across Death Valley, White Sands, and Big Bend.

The desert is where America’s most ardent seekers of refuge have finally found relief from the cultural rigidity of the East. I couldn’t shake the feeling of self-made sovereignty when I witnessed the Mormon Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square, or when I dined among the Navajo of Oljato-Monument Valley, or when debating the essence of masculinity to a young Republican retreated among the snow-covered hoodoos of Southern Utah.

While the oases like the Coachella Valley, the Vegas Strip, or Sedona’s Red Rocks may be the destination for a few, many more find the desert to be their launch point — into the valley of a million-year-old canyon, or into the psychic plane of a peyote vision, or on the back of a Virgin Galactic-funded rocket carrying on the search for far-away worlds not unlike the rocky extremes they left behind.