A Morning and Night in the Desert

These moments in time seem to have a higher density than usual.

I feel good. I feel alive.

From my perch in a friend’s Tommy Bahama beach chair, overlooking our campsite, a gust of sandy wind blows over an empty beer can from last night. The amber sun has already climbed its way into the cloudless sky to light up the expanse of the desert before me. The landscape, unusually green thanks to the heavy snowpack and recent rains, is eerily quiet.

My coffee is lukewarm. My back and left knee both ache. Bundled up in two jackets and sweatpants, I watch the frosty condensation from the night before evaporate off my tent. The rocky cove where we’ve camped the past three days faces east, thankfully; I’m cold and the sun is thawing me out. I take a sip and pick up my book.

Only a dozen pages to go in Anna Karenina. I got the group, even Holden, to talk about ethics for an hour last night. I feel good.

Luke and Kate are the only other people awake. They’ve climbed atop a boulder and are watching Luke’s new pup, Moose, scramble amongst the rocks and shrubs. I wish I could take a photo of the three of them, but my phone is in Holden’s car, which he locked for some reason, so I guess I’ll just write it down instead. It’s better that way anyway.

I wipe a thin layer of red dirt off the lenses of my sunglasses. When you leave Moab, as we’re doing today, a bit of it always comes back with you. The signature red soil seems to find its way into every bag, orifice, nook, and cranny possible. I know I’ll find a pants pocket of sand in a few months or notice a film of red dirt on a neglected piece of cookware.

Likewise, you bring back sandy memories with you. The time spent with friends in this place creates profundity; somehow, these desert moments seem to have a higher density than usual.

I take off one of my jackets as the sun begins to beat down in earnest. It’s warm when there’s no wind.

Two nights ago, it was a bit cloudy, and you couldn’t quite see the Milky Way. The glow of the town of Moab softly lit up the horizon to the south. At the end of the night, I had a conversation with someone that made me sad. I saw three shooting stars but didn’t wish on any of them.

Photo by Dorothy Wang from our Spring 2021 Moab trip.

Last night, though, couldn’t have been more clear; the sky was like an observatory. I don’t know anything about astronomy, but I still like looking at the stars. I climbed to the top of a bluff in the dark, alone, stumbling a bit, and lay flat on a rocky outcrop. I did my best to focus on a single star—I’ve found that if you stare long enough, your eyes adjust, and more stars seem to twinkle into existence before your eyes—and watched for some time with the sounds of my friends’ laughter echoing off the rocks around me.

I didn’t see any shooting stars. But that’s okay. I felt good.