Strange. I don’t remember there being rocks under me. In the trance-like state between dreaming and waking, not a whole lot makes sense. Yet, as the dust from my recent slumber settled, it was starting to making quite a lot of sense. I just didn’t like what it added up to.
Desert Fire
Your eyes are not your friend. Well, part of them anyway. The eyes that soak in every shade of the flames of sunrise emanating from the eastern horizon and illuminating Roosevelt Lake far below? That part is telling you the truth. The other part that tells you that lake—the destination of our next resupply tomorrow—doesn’t look so far away? That’s the lying part.
Land of Mystery
The southwest is a land of mystery. Of wide open space and eerie desolation. The kind that you can easily fill with all of your fears—the setting of the drama becoming a character all its own.
In Search of Sameness
The stars hang motionless, quiet, flecks of salt on an endless piece of black construction paper stretched above our heads. The crickets, less quietly, perform their discordant symphony from a score known only to them. The distant hum of a plane’s jet engine racing across the sky begins as a dull thud, builds to a roar, and disappears behind the mountain.
Resistance
Aside from our plunge into the depths of the Grand Canyon and our subsequent reemergence, the trail since Utah has been largely devoid of any significant climbing—until today. In the first minutes after leaving our camp at the base of a climb, any pretense that our legs might have been under about the leisure with which we’d stroll our way to Mexico had vanished.
Improvisation
One highway dividing two starkly different trails. That was the realization that was coming clear to us as we surveyed field upon field of rock leading off toward distant waves of low lying clouds.
Bumps and Bruises
Diverse. That’s the word that kept rattling through the recesses of my brain while following the now red ribbon of trail beneath my feet. Gently rising and falling far more frequently than at any preceding mile of the trail thus far, we traversed around drainages and ascended over small shoulders of ridges before descending to a neighboring wash.