Time to stop for a moment.

I am lost.  I can’t find my way at the moment.  It is hot. That murderous sun is intent on frying my brains.  It beats down in rhythmic waves with a force I can feel every time my temples throb with another pulse of blood.  I am tired of salt in my eyes.  I am sick of squinting my eyes against this never-ending glare.  I am weary of my soaked shirt and my swollen, sweltering feet.  I have walked for miles today, cautiously bearing around outcrops of weathered granite and shale, creosotes, chollas, and shadscale.  Looking, always looking for rattlers.  This is a bad place for an encounter.  I am miles from anywhere, far from home, not close to any refuge at all.  More than once I have been startled by the sudden buzzing of cicadas in the brush.  Those damn insects sound too much like rattlers for any comfort at all.  Alone.  Again.  Always have been.

These are minor annoyances, and they will accompany me as long as I walk through this desert.  I can live with them.  I can afford almost any attitude necessary to get me through, anything from anger to amusement to stoicism I’ve already run the gamut of these emotions, sometimes in the course of a single hour.  There is only one attitude I cannot afford out here  – passivity.  At any cost, I must keep moving and hope to find my way.

I was on a path long ago, and I have long since lost it.  I can see it in the distance there, just barely a shimmer on the horizon – far off, far – this seductive visibility has been responsible for more deaths out here than I care to think of.  Now it tantalizes me from beyond vertically-walled ravines, doubtless too many to count.  I can see it winding up knife-edge ridgelines, and I know there must be many more inclines like those beyond.  If this image that tantalizes me is a mirage, then so be it.  Illusions too can serve a purpose.

At first, I insisted on looking at nothing but my horizon. The desert took offense and broke me down time after time.  The land would confront me with details, insistent, demanding, and unavoidable details.  My concentration was always rudely jerked into a sharp, immediate focus: by these details: the spines of a beavertail cactus, the claws of a red-tailed hawk, the dying spring choked with cattails, my empty can

teen, the staccato burring of the rattler six inches from my foot.  The landscape itself was harsh and teeming with sharp contrasts. Skyline were contorted and angular. Light collided with shadow at every turn.  Drab shades of endless chocolates and camels were punctuated at regular intervals by the vibrant olives of creosote.  Each glaring juxtaposition jarred me back into the present. Except for the distant, shimmering path, everything about this desert funneled and focused my attention on the moment at hand. In these early days, distant visions and desert realities were not harmonious companions, but it took me a long time to recognize why this was so.

I constantly thought about the horizon, what might await me beyond it. I fantasized about it, projected onto it, and lived for it. I believed wholeheartedly that the promise of the vision kept me going, and I clung to this idea tenaciously, the way a lizard hugs the rock. I didn’t notice the haze that regularly obscured the vision; if I had, I would not have considered significant.  I resented having my attention so forcefully rebuffed and reflected onto my monotonous surroundings.  Why shouldn’t I hope and anticipate? Why shouldn’t I peg the weight of my existence somewhere beyond the reach of this misery?  Why, for God’s sake, do I continually have to be reminded of my circumstances here in this furnace, this heat sink devoid of any life-sustaining substance?

I was in deep need of some powerful teaching.  I can see now that I was the worst sort of pupil, hopelessly naive, closed, and recalcitrant.  I was thick and stubborn, and I did not submit eagerly to being taught, much less enter the compact with the openness necessary to foster understanding. But the desert was a patient and thorough educator, and it had its own compelling means of ensuring that the lessons were driven home.  I found my hopes and dreams repeatedly and ruthlessly crushed under the weight of what was and the monotony of what would be eternally.  Not one of my transgressions was allowed to pass.  Every time I raised my head and fixed my eyes on the horizon, I was broken. Every time I cursed this state of affairs, my strength was siphoned away. Slowly, ever so slowly, I learned to watch what happened.  I became very proficient at catching the nuances of the whole process.  When my eyes were set on the horizon,  I felt the upwelling of a curious sensation – a simultaneous birth of restlessness and a dissipation of energy that cleaved me as cleanly as any scalpel.  At once, I became aware of a huge inadequacy, a paralyzing chasm between what I hoped for and what I felt capable of doing.  The vision would gleam and seemingly mock the inadequacy of my efforts.  Waves of dry heat would press in, parch my throat, and suffocate me.  The feeling would swell like a blister in searing intensity until it was too much, unbearable.  And I would snap again.

For a long while, I wondered how I was able to keep going with so many emotional setbacks.  It puzzled me that I had not given up. I was a strong hiker, I knew, but the demands seemed too overwhelming to deal with.  I did not see for a long time that the desert had a flip side to its apparent harsh teaching.  I discovered that I was subtly being revitalized and nourished. The ethereal beauty of this place would filter through my monotone and single-minded vision, and in those moments, I discovered that the desert could be an enchanting and uplifting place.  After one particularly discouraging collapse, when my defeat was again sealed, my eyes happened to drop on a brilliant orange Mariposa lilly at my feet. I  gazed around and woke to countless wildflowers swaying in the light breeze, displaying every vivid color of the spectrum.  Creosotes  glowed with an inner light and color I had never seen before.  The gnats buzzing around me in the late afternoon light became a magical dance of light points in space.  Shadows became marvelous specters, garnishing the contours of the land. The unbridgeable chasm disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, and  the drained reservoir was filled again, instantaneously. In a blink I was restored to wholeness.

Slowly, through countless miniature deaths, I wised up and learned my lessons.  I learned finally to let my mangled anticipations lie where they had been beaten down.  I learned that hope was not on the horizon.  And I learned that dissonance punished and harmony was its own reward.

---

© Copyright DH McCarty and viaperennis.wordpress.com, 2022. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to the author/owner with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.