Mountainscape

Some flat rocks made some disparate noise as they tumbled down the lee of the cliffside and snuffed out some of the rustling of the rodents in the grass and the swooping of the wattlebirds. My tongue was sticking heavily to the butt of the mouth, and I tried reaching for the canteen at my waist only to angle an empty bottle across my face with no water to come out—I chucked the carryon to the side and pulled out my map to determine where exactly I wandered off to. Some beads of sweat rolled into drops and plopped onto my paper, and I was reminded of the sweltering heat: I am thirsty, and I have no water.

The Sun is beating heavily, and I am in the valley of two pronounced bluffs with nowhere to go but backwards and forwards—I have no idea where I had begun and no idea where to end. I feel the weight of the back-nodes of my skull pressed into my spine and I am thoroughly inundated: lethargy and confusion. I took on a puffy jacket to brace the cold of night only to have torn up the insides now for bandaging my neck, knees, and wrists from sunburn and wear-and-tear; my cargo pants are loaded with food wrappings and my backpack some campfire gear, science magazines, and an MP3 player—I lost my phone and protein bars a while back. It is midday, so I decided to keep moving into this valley only to realize that I have been trekking for hours with no progress from the same escape—I am stuck and am on the brink of panic.

In a reel of my good senses, I am dedicated to setting camp here for the night and scrounging up whatever materials lie about; although I certainly expect nothing, it is the only other thing I can do in distraction of my loop—living in the delusion of safety and recoil. I set down my knapsack and pulled out fire-rending sticks and polished rocks and left the MP3 in the bag so it would not overheat and set out to find some dry sticks. Some creosotes and ocotillo were budding at the base of the cliff wall so I threw off a couple of branches and arms and stuck them into the recess of my folded elbow; I came back, and time must have passed quickly for the wind picked up and the sun was already falling. I kneeled and bedded the twigs along the straights of the firepit and garnished the circle with wrinkled paper of gas crises I was away from and political affairs I never cared for—my hands were in position to strike stones before me recognizing it and my body sparked fire in still air for me.

Licking the residue grain and powder from my fourth and final trail mix bag, I then reached for some sun-bleached rocks and packed them into my carryon for the semblance of a pillow—no matter the bumps and edges. The fire cracked and licked the air while I undid my manacles and fetters and clapped them into a tape of cloth to run against the back of my neck. I had enough distance to lay fully stretched, but the ravine narrowed at both ends into thin labyrinths that left little space for my chest to pump up and down.

I laid supine and watched the world turn to night as the sky’s blue-violet cracked into darker and darker shades and storm clouds pile on top of each other pushing the moonlight into a cloud-windowed spyglass—a shaft of pale moon diffused the ravine and covered everything in a fine marble hue with a blue accent and felt my worries seep into the fleeting light. I reached my ghostly arm underneath for a snow backpack and rifled for my MP3 and set it near the flame next to me and turned on an old country song in tune with my now black-and-white world.

The singer mewed and hummed as dots of embers glowed out and black smoke furled new shapes onto a baseless washed canvas and dancers of waved sparks curled and crimped to guitar strums and wood beats. I only began to notice the cold when my ankle slipped from its stiff posture and the heat that had been insulating all this time aired into the dreamscape and I was now cold—but I could become warm again, I always become warm again.