The saguaro does not grow in Minneapolis. Neither does the ocotillo, the prickly pear, or the creosote. What grows here are oaks and maples, what flows here are ten thousand lakes fed by winter snow and summer storms. The city proclaims its abundance: “Land of 10,000 Lakes.” Water everywhere. Green in summer, white in winter. Not a desert in sight.

And yet.

The desert is here. It has always been here. Not as landscape but as condition. Not as place but as truth.

I write from Minneapolis, the city of lakes, and I write about the desert because the desert is not confined to the Sonoran or the Sahara or the Gobi. The desert is wherever scarcity teaches what abundance conceals. It’s in the body that cannot be optimized past metabolic limits. It’s in the aquifer beneath the lakes, finite despite appearances. It’s in the February cold that strips away every illusion of self-sufficiency. It’s in the moment when the system breaks and you remember: you are not independent, you are not infinite, you cannot transcend the basic fact of being a metabolic creature.

The desert is epistemological before it is geographical. It’s a condition of knowing, a stripping away, a revelation of what was always true but easy to forget when resources seemed endless.

This is a project in remembering what we are.

What We Forgot

We forgot that we are water. Not that we contain water or need water, but that we are water—temporarily organized, flowing through a form that will dissolve back into the aquifer, the monsoon, the coffee your child will drink tomorrow morning. The water in my body right now will be in a dozen other bodies within the week. We are not discrete individuals but metabolic processes embedded in flows that refuse the fiction of private property.

We forgot this because forgetting was profitable.

The history of how we forgot is not a simple story of progress or decline. It’s a genealogy—a tracing of how certain ways of seeing became common sense, how particular relationships to our own bodies and the earth became so naturalized that we can barely imagine alternatives. Plato’s cave, where reality was always elsewhere. Christianity’s soul-flesh split, where bodies became prisons and earth something to transcend. The Enlightenment’s mechanical universe, where nature became dead matter to be mastered. Industrial capitalism’s optimization imperative, where every metabolic limit became a problem to solve through extraction. And now Silicon Valley’s upload fantasy—the promise that technology will finally free us from the inconvenient fact of being biological at all.

Each forgetting enabled the next. Each made it harder to remember that we are earthly creatures, that our fates are terrestrial, that the aquifer doesn’t care about quarterly earnings.

What the Desert Remembers

The desert has not forgotten what we are. It cannot afford to.

Scarcity strips away the illusions that abundance permits. This is true in the Sonoran where water is obviously scarce, but it’s equally true in Minneapolis where winter makes scarcity unmistakable. When the temperature drops to twenty below, you cannot pretend you are not a body with metabolic needs. When the lakes freeze solid, you cannot pretend that water’s fluidity is a constant. When the ground is locked beneath snow for months, you cannot pretend that growth happens according to your schedule.

The Minnesota winter is a desert—not of sand but of cold, not of heat but of absence. It teaches the same lessons. You cannot optimize past metabolic limits. You cannot transcend embodiment through cleverness. You are earthly, finite, embedded in systems larger than yourself.

I write from the city of lakes, but the desert here is both literal (in winter’s scarcity) and epistemic (as a method of seeing). It’s a way of understanding that scarcity reveals truths that abundance conceals. That limits are not problems to solve but conditions within which meaning becomes possible. That the aquifer beneath even ten thousand lakes is finite. That every body—human, watershed, city—has metabolic requirements that cannot be wished away.

The desert taught me that my body already knows what the algorithm doesn’t. That burnout is not personal failure but the body’s refusal to be optimized past metabolic limits. That anti-optimization is not laziness but recognition of what we actually are—beings who need rest, who need limits, who need to be embedded in systems larger than ourselves.

What This Project Is

Sand & Dust is a project in desert philosophy—using the desert as both literal place and epistemological method to explore what I’m calling Desert Existentialism. This is a philosophical synthesis that combines Marxist materialism, Nietzschean affirmation, Stoic acceptance, and existential responsibility, all grounded in the recognition that we are metabolic beings embedded in ecological flows.

The essays here use the desert as teacher—whether that’s the literal scarcity of winter cold, the finite aquifer beneath apparent abundance, or the conceptual desert that reveals what metabolic existence actually means. What scarcity reveals, what limits teach, what water demonstrates, what winter enacts.

What You’ll Find Here

Starting in January 2026, I’ll be publishing essays monthly—meditations on what the desert (geographical and conceptual) teaches. What winter knows about limits. Why water communism is ontological fact not political prescription. How amor fati and amor terra name the same metabolic truth. What the frozen lake demonstrates about apparent abundance. How burnout is the body’s metabolic refusal. What scarcity reveals that ten thousand lakes conceal.

These essays won’t be neutral or detached. They’ll have a perspective, a voice, probably some anger at systems that demand we forget what we are. But the critique is structural, not moral. People aren’t failing when they believe in optimization or transcendence—we’ve been systematically taught to forget our metabolic embeddedness. Remembering is the political act.

Why Now

We are on fire because we have forgotten. The climate crisis, the metabolic rift, the extraction economy, the optimization culture that’s burning people out—these aren’t separate problems. They’re all symptoms of the same forgetting: that we are earthly creatures with earthly limits, that our fates are terrestrial whether we like it or not, that no amount of technology will let us transcend the basic fact of being metabolic beings embedded in watersheds.

The desert has always known this. It’s been waiting for us to remember.

I’m not here to offer solutions or salvation. I’m here to report what the saguaro teaches, what the aquifer demonstrates, what my body already knows when I stop trying to optimize it into submission. I’m here to trace the genealogy of how we forgot so completely that the alternative—being what we actually are—now seems radical.

The desert doesn’t rush. Neither should this work. But it’s time to begin.

A Note on Voice and Method

You’ll notice this project draws heavily on German philosophy—Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger’s concepts of Being filtered through feminist materialists like Haraway and Morton’s hyperobjects. But it refuses academic obscurantism. Philosophy should be accessible to people trying to figure out how to live, not locked behind paywalls and jargon. I write for climate-anxious young people, tech workers having existential crises, organizers needing theoretical frameworks, anyone seeking wisdom not just analysis.

The voice will be warm but urgent, prophetic without preaching, grounded in actual observation. When I write about the desert, I’m writing about the specific desert outside my window. When I write about optimization culture, I’m writing about the specific dashboards I built in Silicon Valley. This isn’t abstract theory—it’s metabolic materialism as lived experience.

What’s Coming

January 2026: “What Winter Knows About Time”

March 2026: “Aquifer Democracy” and the manifesto “Amor Fati, Amor Terra”

Throughout the year: The genealogy of forgetting, metabolic sabotage, desert epistemology in the city of lakes, and the systematic case for water communism.

The oak grows slowly too. Teaching patience to someone who spent years chasing velocity.

Welcome to the desert. It’s already here. Let’s remember together.

Sand & Dust is a project in Desert Existentialism. Subscribe via RSS to follow the essays as they appear, or follow along as the books take shape. This is a multi-year project because the desert doesn’t rush—and neither should philosophy for living through collapse.