By Eric McCarthy

I recently flew from southern California to Henderson, NV for an aerial photo assignment. It wasn’t my first time up that way, but I had forgotten just how desolate the desert between here and there is. You see, as someone who grew up in the Boston area, the desert southwest is whole new experience – we don’t have anything like this in the northeast! The remote, unending barren wastelands are both mind-boggling and -numbing. In the wilderness of the northern New England and upstate New York, practically all undeveloped land is covered in trees; if you spot an opening in the trees, it’s probably a pond or lake, or possibly a meadow where a pond used to be. Not so in the desert southwest – there are very few signs of any life on the barren surface below. I’m sure there’s actually quite a lot of very specialized life– insects, rodents, snakes, etc. each adapted to survive the harsh conditions of the desert – but not a lot of humans down there. From our perch 8,500’ up we could see 40 or 50 miles in any direction, and there’s just more barren landscape! No settlements, no towns, few roads even – and, really, who would want to live out there anyway?