A Season of Waiting

I went on a hike Tuesday morning, arriving at the trailhead at 7 am. This week has been unseasonably cool — and by that, I mean the highs are still a smidge below triple digits. But the mornings have remained pleasant, and so I continue to lace up my dust-covered boots and head outside.

Because of my regular forays away from concrete suburbia and into the nearby desert preserve, I’ve learned quite a bit about this Sonoran land these past seven months.

Did you know that every plant here blooms in the spring? And I’m not talking tiny, inconspicuous blooms. Springtime in the Sonoran is soaked with color, with trees lugging armfuls of yellow buds, cactuses donning headdresses of starburst red flowers, bushes rivaling the sunshine with golden blooms. I might as well have been hiking through a flower shop.

I didn’t know this about the desert: how absolutely over the top it is in its springtime awakening. Would you have imagined that in a place that averages only 8 inches of rain per year?

And yet: life — abundant! — even here, even in the desert.

Did you know that between April and June, rain takes a hiatus from the forecast almost entirely? I haven’t seen — or smelled — rain in the desert since March: exactly two months ago. You’d think the land would be hostile, barren, lifeless. 

On the surface, it could appear that way.

On my hikes now, the leaves of the brittlebush are dry, shriveled, and, um, brittle. It spent the spring alive with color, its blooms coating the valley with a carpet of yellow. Now, though, the plant appears to be a goner, its future surely to be spent only as a tumbleweed.

But it would be a mistake to label these plants as dead.

In fact, this Sonoran native has a trick or two up its sleeve to survive the dry seasons. While in its blooming season, its leaves are a fleshy mint green. But after the flowering fiesta of spring has passed, it produces a different kind of leaf. These small, brittle leaves are meant to reflect up to 70 percent of sunlight, while also reducing the loss of water.

Though it may look so, the brittlebush is not dead. It is only waiting.

I am in a season of waiting, too. As I let go of the abundance of spring and the glory of answered prayers, I must let go of my hopes for what could have been. I must wait for new things, better things. 

And that’s a big fat bummer, because I am not too fond of waiting; I’d rather everything happen now, please and thanks. 

Maybe you, too, are in a season of waiting.

I wonder what the desert could teach us about our waiting?

“The desert environment may seem hostile, but this is purely an outsider's viewpoint,” reads an article from the Desert Museum.

What might happen, what hope might rise within us, if we shifted our viewpoint? If we could look differently at the dry, brittle season of our lives — not as hostile, not as barren, not as lifeless? 

Because, friends, we are not dead. We are only waiting: waiting for the golden glory of spring to arrive. 

And it always arrives. Even here, even in the desert.

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