<em>The Desert </em>by John Charles Van Dyke, published in 1901, is a lush, poetic description of the natural beauty of the American Southwest. <em>"What land can equal the desert with its wide plains, its grim mountains, and its expanding canopy of sky!" </em>Van Dyke, a cultivated art historian, saw "sublimity" in the desert's "lonely desolation," which previous generations had perceived only as a wasteland, and his book has a conservationist flavor which seems distinctly modern. <em>"The deserts should never be reclaimed," </em>he writes.<em> "They are the breathing spaces of the west and should be preserved for ever."</em> The changing colors of the sky, hills, and sand impress Van Dyke, as do the mirages. He celebrates the "long overlooked commonplace things of nature"-- cactus and grease wood, desert animals, and "winged life," the birds and insects. His writing has a philosophical undertone.<em> "Not in vain these wastes of sand ... simply because they are beautiful in themselve
