The wilderness is a place where we experience isolation(separation from family, friends, the worshipping community, and seemingly even God himself) and
desolation(joylessness, disconslation, sorrow, confusion, lonliness, barrenness, and lifelessness).
In the wilderness we find ourselves on a search.  A search for answers, for security, for meaning, for significance.  
But in our souls we are on a search that only God himself can satisfy by his own presence. 

"Stripped of all external comforts, in the wilderness David's priorities were reset:
God's unfailing love was all that really mattered, being more precious than life itself.
The soul finds no greater satisfaction in life than that which it tastes as it drinks deeply of the love of God."
(Psalms 63)

(Mark D. Futato, "The Book of Psalms")