Over the weekend, Julz and rented this movie, FourFeathers.  A little older period-piece movie, where a large part is set in the desert.  I found what the director said about his findings in the Desert very insightful.  Timely, because I recently returned from here, Joshua Tree, for a 3 day excursion/hiking/on the ground research, as I prepare to help with a 7-day experience in the Nat'l Park, as park of Wilderness LT, in the new year.  Here is what the director of Four Feathers had to say:

"  We had taken up the challenge to go out to shot in the desert, to out and sho how films used to be made, which is to go out and take on the challenge of the environment, and not sit in a room and re-creat the environment...You have no idea what the desert does to you.  When I first went there, I wanted to know what it was to be lost, to be truly alone in the desert, truly lost.  And I saw nothering , I heard nothing after awhile all I could hear was the sound of my breathing, and if I walked, the crunch of the ground or the sand underneath my feet.  And I looked around and there was nothing - and suddenly I realized what the desert does.  If you can overcome the fear of being lost, suddenly your minde explodes, because there is absolutely no external sensory perception.  And when all that is taken away from you, and only then, the internal becomes alive - and as soon as then, you have no choice but to listen inside... being in the desert forces you to think about yourself.  It forces you to do that - and that's what it did to each one of us."  - Shekhar Kapur, dir.

... As we covered over 30 miles in the park last week, this resonates with me, and I'm looking forward to the excursion in January.  Something else, I discoved a bone-white shell of one of these! Pretty wild, I'm used to by the rivers that i used to play in when I was a boy in Indiana... definitely not a desert.