{"id":34302,"date":"2020-02-28T03:54:57","date_gmt":"2020-02-28T11:54:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=34302"},"modified":"2020-02-26T14:42:57","modified_gmt":"2020-02-26T22:42:57","slug":"desert-not-a-wasteland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2020\/02\/28\/desert-not-a-wasteland\/","title":{"rendered":"Desert not a wasteland"},"content":{"rendered":"

Monument Valley in Utah. (photo from CBC Radio)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Having always lived in and around rainforest, CBC Vancouver\u2019s Matthew Lazin-Ryder said the desert is a place he still struggles to fully understand.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe desert has always seemed to be an imaginary place,\u201d said Lazin-Ryder, contributing producer of the radio-documentary What Happens in the Desert<\/em>. \u201cMy only contact with the desert has been in movies, storybooks, religious metaphors and things like that. The closest I have ever gotten to the real desert is having spent a little time in New Mexico, but, even then, I don\u2019t think I was in true, scientific desert. My impression of what the desert was in my imagination was different than reality.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing I wasn\u2019t prepared for in my time in New Mexico was how cold it got at night, because it can get really cold. The imaginary desert in my mind was always hot \u2013 nights are sweltering, empty spaces, desolation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
Matthew Lazin-Ryder, contributing producer of the CBC radio-documentary What Happens in the Desert. (photo from CBC Radio)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the radio documentary, which is an episode of the CBC Radio show Ideas<\/em>, Lazin-Ryder explores various perceptions of the desert, stemming from culture, such as movies, novels and poetry, which often only portray one aspect of the landscape.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn example we use in the documentary is Monument Valley in Utah, which, if you\u2019ve seen a western film, it\u2019s in so many movies,\u201d Lazin-Ryder, who is a member of the Jewish community, told the Independent<\/em>. \u201cSo, Monument Valley is that part of Utah, with red sand and rock, with these big towers of rock jutting out of the middle of the desert. John Ford, legendary western director, shot over 10 movies there at Monument Valley and lots of other classic western movies have used the backdrop of this valley as the setting.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, while it may seem that many films are shot in Monument Valley, most are actually shot in less-known locations in states like Texas, California and Arizona.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s never specifically that this movie or story is taking place in Monument Valley,\u201d said Lazin-Ryder. \u201cIt just becomes a symbol of the desert, which is a stand-in for an alien place, an exotic place, a place that you\u2019ve never been to.\u201d<\/p>\n

From a religious perspective, the experts Lazin-Ryder interviews often speak of duality, where the desert is both a place where God is absent and where God is felt the strongest.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe desert, in the Old Testament, is a place of deep spirituality and is also, for the Israelites, the place where they encounter God, where God travels with them,\u201d he explained. \u201cIn the Christian New Testament and Christian culture later on, the desert becomes a place, not of exile and separation from God, but a place you go to escape civilization and to connect with God. Simultaneously, it\u2019s a place where there are dangers … and the devil lives there and there are poisonous creatures, and it\u2019s a place of death, wasteland and absence of God. But, at the same time, the desert is the place, both for the Israelites and early Christians, a place to go to connect with God.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a sense,\u201d he said, \u201cthe desert, through its absence, represents God, because you can\u2019t fully describe God \u2013 you can\u2019t fully describe absence. The desert represents this strange relationship that we have with God, in a religious metaphor \u2013 at the same time that God is everything, God is nothing, and indescribable.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the documentary, Lazin-Ryder talks about the way the desert is portrayed in science-related and apocalyptic movies \u2013 movies that portray the future world as a desert; that climate change, if it continues apace, will leave the whole earth a desert.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe seas will dry up, the forests will die and everything will be desert waste … which is not particularly an ecologically valid prediction … but, it\u2019s a helpful metaphor for people to think about the dangers of climate change,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe other thing is that, when talking about climate change and things like switching to less carbon-intensive energy, the desert becomes a very easy thing for people to say … \u2018Hey! You know what would be great? Let\u2019s just put a whole bunch of solar panels and windmills and stuff in the desert, because that\u2019s empty land and it gets a lot of sun.\u2019 You can Google it \u2013 there are all kinds of plans that people have pushed, to put acres and acres of solar panels in the Mojave Desert, the Sonoran Desert or the Sahara Desert.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s this kind of a science-fiction idea that, hey, we have these empty spaces on the earth \u2013 let\u2019s absolutely fill them with solar panels and windmills. But, the problem with that is \u2013 it comes from this thinking about deserts as though they are empty, ownerless places, absent of life. And, the problem is that that\u2019s not true. Deserts are full of life, of plants and of animals that have adapted in interesting ways. And, we also don\u2019t quite understand the place that deserts have in the broader ecosystem, in terms of the carbon cycle.\u201d<\/p>\n

While we hear in the news about desertification, in actuality only some deserts may get bigger and others drier, he said. Very few reports talk about the fact that some deserts may get wetter and, in a sense, shrink.<\/p>\n

Desert systems are intricate and delicate and we, as humans, often only notice a change when it is already too late. Lazin-Ryder gave the example of the Joshua trees in the Mojave Desert that are dying, and the efforts to preserve them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose kinds of problems are expected to increase as climate change goes on,\u201d he said. But, talking about the desert as merely land available to fix the problems that we have created, \u201cneglects the fact that they are not absent, marginal places. They actually have a place in the world. Deserts are a natural thing that should exist on the earth,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd there will be increasing pressures to put things in the desert, to put people in the desert, to grow food in the desert \u2013 despite the fact that they are as important and as under threat as places like the rainforests and wetlands that we\u2019re trying to preserve. So, on one hand, we\u2019re afraid the future might become desert, but, on the other hand, we may want to think about how to preserve the deserts we already have, as there are many threats to the desert.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lazin-Ryder hopes listeners of the documentary will gain a better grasp of the nuances of the desert. For most people in the West, he said, \u201cinteraction with the desert is in an imaginary sense … either in religious texts, fiction or movies.\u201d The show tries to get people to consider \u201cwhat those metaphors and symbols do to our thinking \u2013 not just about the desert, but of all the natural world; in what places are worth preserving, celebrating, and what places we think of as marginal, empty, dead or inherently bad.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe get lots of stories told to us all the time, about what parts of the earth are good or bad,\u201d he said. \u201cI think, ultimately, beyond whether we\u2019re talking about deserts, dry land or wet land, my ultimate hope is that it helps people think about the stories that we tell ourselves about the natural world, versus trying to gain an understanding about how the natural world actually works.\u201d<\/p>\n

To listen to What Happens in the Desert, visit cbc.ca\/radio\/podcasts\/documentaries\/the-best-of-ideas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monument Valley in Utah. (photo from CBC Radio) Having always lived in and around rainforest, CBC Vancouver\u2019s Matthew Lazin-Ryder said the desert is a place he still struggles to fully understand. \u201cThe desert has always seemed to be an imaginary place,\u201d said Lazin-Ryder, contributing producer of the radio-documentary What Happens in the Desert. \u201cMy only […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[9706,9708,3076,2845,9707,9709,8477,2225],"class_list":["post-34302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national","tag-cbc-vancouver","tag-desert","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-matthew-lazin-ryder","tag-monument-valley","tag-radio","tag-science"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}