Creek Running North

It is not as though I lack for comforts. The rock is comfortable where it clasps my back. A twilight wind to strip my sweat, to soothe my skin in rippling shivers. Food I have, and water, a cup of roasted rice green tea, a handful of crackers wrapped in seaweed.

The phone cut out though I perched myself atop the rock, a line of sight established with the world, and I said hello. Hello? “Chris, if you can still hear me, I just want to tell you” and silence again.

Solitude assaults me and compels me both. If I loved no one, I think sometimes, I could love the world the more for less distraction. A monolith to my east, backlit by setting sun, the color of dried blood but paler. A pale blue sky, and pallid smoky green of juniper and Joshua. Before I found this place, before I left the East’s primary hues I dreamed these colors, saw them playing around the lead in beveled winter windows.

It is not as though I lack for company. A crowd of smirking yuccas all around, and ravens circling my camp, and bright scared sparks enrobed in fur leap crazy paths through brush as I approach. Six of them up the path bound in all directions, but one returns, regards me warily. A hundred feet from her I sit, and she sits down as well, poised to leap again, blinks at me, then folds her long ears back and settles in and watches the sun set, awash in orange rabbit light. If I loved no one, I think sometimes, I could love the world the more, and then remind myself that if I loved no one I would find someone to miss. A week ago, a year, or ten, there is always someone of whom to feel the lack. I know me better than to indulge in such asceticism. Instead, I drink my tea, make up a bed on stony ground.

The mountain turns a deeper red.

An ebbing, then, the core of me recedes as sea recedes before the monstrous wave. I empty. Two hours previous the desert had drawn me in again, a short waterless stroll turned four-mile run straight out, and only that domestic longing turned me back around. And then what? Here in familiar rocks, trees I have watched for a decade, and an emptying of longing for home or for the ridge beyond. And then what?

And then just these: A fitful night reclined upon the earth. Cold stars wheeling, Dubha, Alioth, and Alkaid a great hour hand to sweep the sky. An eighth-inch of morning rime to coat me. The iambic shrieks of orioles and cactus wrens’ morning alarum.