I look up at the peak above me, squinting at the sight of it. Grasses come into focus, the jojoba bushes holding fast to blackened masses of rock and cliff. Climbing higher, my gaze finds ocotillo framing the ridgeline, cast against the blue of infinity. The sounds of birds hopping from bush to cactus on the slope in front of me across the canyon fill my ears....they delight with whimsy....I, with strife.
To climb up here means pain......doubt....denial of comfort. I double over in the hike-a-bike, passing my saddle over into the worn cave of my right palm, gloved in leather, soaked in effort, and salted from the miles. My calves strain as I tip-toe up the pitch, much steeper here than in most hike-a-bikes...I push this mass of technology higher.
My memory of all of this is much brighter in my imagination, much brighter than it will ever be.....I do not like this. I want to take in the magic of the wind. I want to hear the flute like sound a ridge makes in a pulsating wind.....low and earthy, she still speaks to me....yet I was in a hurry.
I dream of the desert, yet can't have it on my terms.....I must have it on the open expanse of eternity...eternity....a word that does not truly exist for us short timers. We live but for a fraction of a moment, and suffer for it's randomness. I must accept it within the terms of wind and storm, heat and still, dry and death....not deadline and commitment or plans and expectations. I can't expect to find myself happy with a clock running, when eternity created the beauty in our souls....waiting to be unlocked, at the paring of a perfect moment, out there.
