May 18
Crossing the surreal heat of San Gorgornio Pass under the hypnotic drone of wind farms. Todays heat, destructive and fierce. Last night, peering out at Interstate 10, the smear of red and white lights, the subsonic sound of all that collective traffic in the distance, the moonlight wavering against the foreground of burnt desert: a strange feeling that I belong to such an alien world, that the hive of pavement and automobiles is all too familiar to me. Under the umbrella today, my own private microclimate. The heat exploding against my pores, I feel that I am participating in the rituals of the desert the struggle against the sun and the endless search for water sharing in the experience of heat and scarcity. Now, camped alongside a river valley of bleach white marble boulders a snow fed stream crashing out there in the dark.
Crystal. You should be out here in this place that we discovered, this garden of sun and stone. You should be with me. All the names return to me in your voice: ocotilla, senna, cholla. In this way, the plants taunt me with your presence. But I am a stupid hermit in a stupid tradition of self denial, alone among peaks. I know exactly how your cheek feels against the back of my fingertips. What drives me to deprive myself of a woman that I love and who loves me? What is it about raw country that tempts me away? Does the experience of it really enhance me? I can hear her calling the dogs in and I awake to see her hair like a river on the pillow.
Crossing the surreal heat of San Gorgornio Pass under the hypnotic drone of wind farms. Todays heat, destructive and fierce. Last night, peering out at Interstate 10, the smear of red and white lights, the subsonic sound of all that collective traffic in the distance, the moonlight wavering against the foreground of burnt desert: a strange feeling that I belong to such an alien world, that the hive of pavement and automobiles is all too familiar to me. Under the umbrella today, my own private microclimate. The heat exploding against my pores, I feel that I am participating in the rituals of the desert the struggle against the sun and the endless search for water sharing in the experience of heat and scarcity. Now, camped alongside a river valley of bleach white marble boulders a snow fed stream crashing out there in the dark.
Crystal. You should be out here in this place that we discovered, this garden of sun and stone. You should be with me. All the names return to me in your voice: ocotilla, senna, cholla. In this way, the plants taunt me with your presence. But I am a stupid hermit in a stupid tradition of self denial, alone among peaks. I know exactly how your cheek feels against the back of my fingertips. What drives me to deprive myself of a woman that I love and who loves me? What is it about raw country that tempts me away? Does the experience of it really enhance me? I can hear her calling the dogs in and I awake to see her hair like a river on the pillow.
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