In August 1591, roughly four months before his death, St. John of the Cross writes to a benefactor about his experience in the Desert of La Peñuela, where he had just arrived about nine days earlier from Segovia. The Desert of La Peñuela was a Discalced Carmelite monastery for the friars that was more secluded and eremitic than any of their other convents. Thus, St. John of the Cross could give himself totally to prayer. "God grant that I may stay here," he writes.