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Optimism
An image that has not been further back in my mind, these past few days, than three or four layers of distraction: I am alone in the Mojave. I cross the low north flank of Teutonia Peak, where a small canyon running toward the Valley View Ranch turns into a canyon large enough to hide in, and then to one large enough to get lost in. I enter it where it is perhaps eight feet deep and forty across. It is January and the desert is wet. The floor of the little canyon holds a small stripe of sand, a wash in miniature, the shaded parts of it not yet dried by the Mojave sun. I walk downcanyon a few hundred feet.
I come to a pool perhaps two feet across and two inches deep. I stand on the rock and am about to hop the pool when I look down.
There at my feet, in the wet sand of the little wash, are the tracks of a bighorn sheep. Each bears a thin sheen of water at its deepest points. Within five seconds the tracks are one quarter full of water. Then half. And full, and hair stands full erect on nape.
Posted by: Chris Clarke
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