the west desert, october

(from a work-in-progress)

I walk the desert, thinking of ocean.

anyone who’s spent time at the seashore has witnessed the drawback of water—the exposure of sand and detritus from the last wave, the deep breath of the ocean—before the next wave crashes against the beach’s sandy edge. an empty moment, purposeful, portentous. I imagine this as a metaphor in my life, that I am in the drawback, the removal of what had been in order to cleanse and prepare for what is next. that pause—an interminable dreamlike state that once ended, slips and disappears into folds of memory—which is filled with vision and clarity, the sharp pang of loneliness, self-scrutiny, despair, joy, a sense of dread that perhaps it will never end, and moments of delight painful in their intensity. a pause, an absence. a void that is not in any way a void.

what inspires this thought is a dry wash, a site of former storm run-off that is now a parched channel, cut into a shallow of the hillside. water, gushing, frothing and spilling over the edges; an image familiar yet likely not witnessed here during the past five months. water, precious is this part of the world, a gift from the storm gods. our mountains aren’t formed in a way that allows them to stretch high and poke heavy, moisture-laden clouds, causing them to unleash daily showers, like those in a part of Colorado I once knew. showers in Estes Park, where my grandparents’ cabin sat, were as dependable, each afternoon shortly after lunch, as the warm hug I’d receive from my grandma each morning. those showers enforced downtime, craft time, book time. how would this desert I’m in respond to a daily sprinkle of moisture? cacti may rot, flora might actually flower. dust would give up its rush to fill the air, would instead settle more deeply into companionship with neighbors and colleagues. wild horses would root out more to eat, with less energy expended in doing so. we pray for many things here in Utah, one of the most common being rain. we pray and wait, we sit in that absence.

if I rest in the drawback, take a deep breath, allow it to be, I feel sensation that speaks of both comfort and deep disquiet. fear, this must be fear, the unknown, the unlimited potential for harm. a lack of faith, rooted in what lies behind me, tries to overtake me. I breathe through it, remain in the present, press the toe of my shoe into the crumbling earth of the dry wash. moving my shoe back and forth, I soften the edge, smooth it. I can’t know what lies ahead; the only way to prepare for the unknown is to move deeper into oneself, to center, to ground. breath. footstep followed by footstep. om, mani padme hum.

the incoming wave could devour me; it could be meek and insufficient, leaving me unfulfilled, inducing yet another wandering path.