The Pumice Desert, Crater Lake National Park, OR

Something about The Pumice Desert causes one to stop and appreciate the beauty of something so empty and desolate within an otherwise thick carpet of trees.

Lying in the middle of Highway 138, inside Oregon's Crater Lake National Park, the Pumice Desert was created by some 200 feet of volcanic ash after an eruption of Mount Mazama nearly 7,700 years ago.

The lack of nutrients in the soil prevented anything from growing back.

Today, the Pumice Desert remains as a scar that may never heal on an otherwise spectacular geography.

Just walking out into the middle of the field and then standing still, I felt a sense of personification, as if Crater Lake National Park was an old man nursing a wound from his childhood that never went away.

I know some people who are like that. Overwhelmed by a load of burden placed upon them by others, and then criticized when that load topples over, they languish in their shame and guilt, forgetting to see how beautiful they are everywhere else.

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