It’s hard to come up with something new to write twice a week without repeating myself. So this blog will become a place to share things with you, beyond just my thoughts and dreams. (Poetry, a la “When a Woman Loves a Man,” short fiction I like, original fiction…) Tonight, I’m going to share a piece of short fiction I wrote a few years ago. I promise there will be a ‘real’ post come Monday. There will be a lot that I will have been through to work with…
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Hitchhiking is nice. But on a night like tonight, walking is nicer. I don’t know where I am, but it doesn’t really matter. I’m here; I’m on earth; I’m alive; I’m human and have the cognitive abilities to enjoy every minute that I’m here. It’s one of those nights that, even at 2:47 in the morning with nobody around, I don’t feel alone. I feel like the entire world is with me, working in harmony.
A car passes by every long while – maybe every forty minutes. I guess New Mexico Route 109 isn’t as busy as I was told – or at least it hasn’t been tonight. Maybe everyone else it out enjoying the night, too. The air is warm and dry with a light breeze coming at my face. It’s warm enough for short sleeves, yet cold enough for pants. Khakis and a t-shirt sound perfect to me. With every gust of wind, the smell of cactus rose is in the air. I used to confuse it for lilac, my girlfriend’s favorite flower, but I’ve since found out that I was wrong. The smell is more evident every time the wind blows.
The breeze hushes quietly – not even close to loud enough to cover the steady crickets’ chirp. If I’d remembered the formula to find out the temperature, I’d try. I think I have it wrong, though, because by my count, it’s 108 degrees. It feels more like 68. The chirps don’t stop, regardless of temperature, and they seem almost in perfect harmony with each other and with the wind. I do my best to walk rhythmically, complimenting the natural music with the quiet brush of my flip-flops against the sand.
It’s too soothing to open my eyes, but too beautiful not to. The air is clear and the sky is bright. The moon is a small sliver; it was a new moon over the weekend. The stars illuminate the sky and remind me of freckles in the summertime: they’re everywhere. The light creates silhouettes of the mountains miles away. They must be hundreds of miles away. The land here seems flat. I can see the highway go on for miles. It takes nearly fifteen minutes before the red taillights of passing cars become indistinguishable from the landscape.
It’s the kind of night that makes me happy to be a hiker with no place to go. I hope I like the destination half as much as I love the journey.
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