Sunshine can be addictive. That is what I am thinking as I peer up at the fiercely blue sky over the Arizona desert and see a perfect example of the gradient in color caused by light bending through the atmosphere at varying angles, adjusting the wavelengths the eye perceives. From light blue to indigo blue in 90 degrees.

The monsoon winds whip through the air and the delicate desert trees with their wispy leaves shimmer in the sunlight. Spring has arrived in the desert and the smell of orange blossoms from the the orange trees and even more exotic deret flower scents intermix and make a bewildering array for the olfactory senses. One is nonplussed by how virulently alive the desert is. Literal dense clouds of daddy-long-legs appear, like locusts, and one understands in the harsh desert, insect life has adapted by creating huge reproduction rates. Most are doomed to starve just after they are born - and this is normal and expected. One day type flies also bloom in the billions all over the desert, cloud around light fixtures at night and during the day they cling to screens and crawl over everything in a nonsensical manner, they too are doomed to die soon, even after just being born and experiencing life. They have a penchant for the white automobiles that are favored in the desert and which fill the desert cities.

Cicadas, when its their year, all emerge on the exact same day from their many varied and dispersed nesting places, like an invisible signal has been broadcast which wakes them from their slumber all at once. Their hum, like the hum of a powerline can be heard everywhere, even when the cicadas themselves remain unseen.

Here at Shamballa, on the outskirts of the cultivated desert, one can still here the wolves howl in the night as the moon rises. Like many of the desert sounds, their howl is a mating call. Some desert coyotes also can be heard howling in the night and in spring time, when they seek mates, these animals howls are heard much more often.

I think of all these things as I peer up at the sky, realizing the sun, our star, is the bringer of life and energy to a system that would not exist without it. I think of the variance in life that it forms depending upon the intensity and frequency of the radiation received by any region and how life adapts to this energy and thrives on it - even in the unforgiving desert.

It becomes clear that on countless other worlds, around countless other stars, life is most assuredly thriving just as virulently as it does here in the radiation scorched desert. And when one understands that for all these life forms, no matter how short their life cycle may seem to us, may seem like an eternity to them, if they can perceive the passing of time at all.