4.21.2009

draft

On our first night in the desert we slept in the front of a convertible that the lonely Enterprise late-night countergirl had upsold us in the Palm Springs airport parking lot. We had landed late, and then gone grocery shopping, and then stopped for food n’ drinks at a candlelit patio bar. So by the time we rolled into Joshua Tree, past the darkened ranger station and the shuttered guardhouse, it seemed like the sleep of least resistance.

We pulled over by the side of the road and left the top down. The stars were out but the back was full of bags and the seats didn’t fully recline, so for at least two hours I curled up in the passenger footwell. It was perfect.

In the morning the ranger caught me leaning over the trunk in my slippers, and she should have given us a ticket but didn’t. After that we hardly saw a soul. We parked the car by a trailhead and scrambled over rocks for three days straight, sleeping out without a tent and heating soupcans on a sterno. There were a lot of lizards. The cacti and dry little wildflowers were in bloom.

We crouched in the shade in the late afternoons, waiting for the sun to sink behind mountains after a long day of heat. We drank our heavy water. We talked. The AD read to me chapter after chapter of the book we brought along. This I could do for a long, long time, I thought.

On our last day in the desert we packed it out, passing a palm grove and a tortoise in the path who watched us watch him eat a flower. Like him I feel dried out and delivered, ready and in no rush at all.

2 comments:

humble bee said...

yeah, I love the desert! I always want to take it home with me, but not in parts. the whole thing.

Mademoiselle Caroline said...

because i've never seen it, the desert is a complete mystery to me. a very, very compelling mystery.