I’m walking by myself in the desert. Walk walk walk. The trail in front of me climbs gently, but relentlessly and I wait to rest until I reach the top of the climb. Around another corner, that must be the top I think, but it not. It’s not the top this time, nor the next time, nor the next. After a while I forget that I’m climbing. Maybe I’ll climb this hill forever I think. Maybe this is what hell is like, I think. Climbing an endless, unrelenting hill in the desert sun.
But it’s not so bad.
The sand is soft beneath my feet, and it’s not too hot yet. Maybe not hell, I think, maybe more like purgatory. It’s not so bad, out here all alone. Alone, but not lonely.
I look at the footsteps of those who have come before me. This trail is rarely traveled and so I can distinctly make out the two people who were here before me. Their footprints overlap, but it’s obvious to me that these people were as much strangers to each other as they are to me. You learn to pick up on these things when you spend lots of time hiking alone in the desert, or the mountains, or anywhere really.
A man in hiking boots, a woman in running shoes, Hoka’s I think. The woman was wearing Hoka’s. I fixate on her footprints as I climb and climb and climb up the hill. I wonder who this woman is, this trail runner, long distance hiker, invisible woman. She feels like a sister to me, this woman I’ll never meet. And now I don’t feel so alone out here, in this endless desert, under the biggest sky I’ve ever seen. Alone, but not lonely.
Unwanted, thoughts of my real life creep into my head and my mind spirals to everything that was left unfinished on my desk. All the people who want some little piece of my time, my energy, some little piece of me. I push the thoughts away, deep down where they can’t bother me anymore and I focus on the footprints of my desert sister.
Suddenly, I’m at a road crossing and a man in a white SUV driving too fast on the dirt road shoots past me. He has on big black Oakley sunglasses and looks angry in his big white car. I scurry away into the desert, further away from the road and the trailhead and the people. I didn’t come out here to be near other people.
For the next two days I’ll only see one other person on this trail. A man, covered in dust, with too big of a backpack going in the opposite direction of me. We smile, but neither of us slow down, we don’t stop to talk, that’s not why we’re out here.
I follow my desert sister’s footprints out onto a big plane that stretches out in every direction and falls away into the enormous blue sky. Out here I can only hear the wind, and the dry brush. The sun overhead is brilliant white and so powerful. But it’s not too hot today. And in between the breaths of wind it’s so so quiet. I’m all alone out here, just me and the desert wind, and my sister’s footprints. Alone, but not lonely, for the quiet is my home.