To those who listen, the desert speaks of things with an emphasis quite different from that of the shore, the mountains, the valleys or the plains. Whereas they invite action and suggest limitless opportunity, exhaustless resources, the implications and the mood of the desert are something different. For one thing the desert is conservative, not radical. It is more likely to provoke awe than to invite conquest. It does not, like the plains, say, 'Only turn the sod and uncountable riches will spring up.' The heroism which it encourages is the heroism of endurance, not that of conquest.


Joseph Wood Krutch as quoted in Southwest: Three Definitions by Lawrence Clark Powell. Singing Wind Bookstore. 1990. p.19,20