Death Valley, A Gap
Mesquite Sand Dunes— Death Valley 3/31
The sand appears fibrous, almost crystalline under my feet. It is padded and soft but gives way under my more hurried steps. A feeling of near betrayal ripples through the tiny muscles in my legs each time the salt and pepper carpet gives way although I know it was I, not the sand who gave in. I was walking too fast. I gave in to the rush that will sweep me up into a heart pounding run if I am not careful. Byung-Chul Han writes that the remedy to boredom when walking is not running—but dancing. Merely speeding up the movement only makes it worse. I am constantly guilty of turning to this solution—speed up so I don’t have to think, or feel or fear. Wake me up when it all makes sense again. (It wasn’t until I turned 23 when I started to understand what all the good songs are about.) I wanted to run away from Death Valley as soon as I got here. Alone on the road trying to work somethings out can feel an awful lot like running if you let it. The hot air and empty landscape made my head swim. I missed her. I missed my parents so I called them both on the long road into the Park. I listened to Maggie Rogers and cried. My first instinct was to keep going—drive all night until it felt familiar—avoiding the stillness this valley demands. Now—out in these sand dunes the stillness engulfs me. I feel tears rimming my eyes but the breeze somehow keeps them back.
I was walking too fast.
Now that I have stopped—now that the rush has left me, this sand dune feels like a gap. The type of gap they talk about in the bardos. A gap between confusion and clarity. This whole valley is a gap— my cynical mind from before now sees why people come here. Suddenly I feel tired—deeply tired. My rushing has allowed me to ignore so much. Letting it in I fear would flood this valley, but I guess that’s nothing this ancient sea-bed hasn’t seen before
.
This happens every time I’m on the road alone. The first few days I can’t settle. The world travels with me until about day three when it all falls away and I see my fear and anxiety toting along beside me. Driving out of Death Valley this morning I felt whatever did not fall away yesterday in the dunes fall away too. In the early morning light, my mind kept returning to that dune where I sat still realizing the rush and the walls and the confusion I was constructing. This morning I awoke before the sun, around 5:30. I drove through the sweeping, ancient valley unaccompanied and content. No one else was up yet. I stopped many times—to take pictures, explore an old mine, smoke a bowl, cook breakfast, watch sunrise, pick flowers. Death Valley is an appropriate name. The undulating expanse is crumbling—the rocks exfoliating and oxidizing. Yet it does not stop there— sitting on that dune in the afternoon sun, chasing the flowering tracks of lizards along the sand, dancing back to my car on the side of the road—spinning as I wiggled and jumped— part of me died.
And I mean that in the way a snake sheds its skin.
I am still nervous for the future—in the way most dirtbags are. I don’t know if I want to be a NOLS instructor. I don’t know if or where I want to settle down. I want to but don’t know if I can support myself on my art and still be happy. I miss my family and still ache over my breakup with my now even more distant ex. Was it the right call? Could I have done the long distance just a little longer? I don’t know. But the peeling away, the shedding that happens on the road tells me the answer to those questions are only in the future. A place I will never go. There is only sunlight to worry about now—how it hits my campsite. Is my tent door facing east? Is my skin getting burnt? These questions put me in my place and permit me to sink into the gaps life allows— some as big as Death Valley, others as simple and small as the sandy pull off where I stopped to walk out to a Joshua tree then danced back—a big geeky grin flowering across my face for no reason at all except that it was morning— my favorite time of day.
Lizard tracks.
Mesquite Sand Dunes.
