Walking for My Life
It
was the middle of July. I had spent two days exploring a
bat cave in the Jornada del Muerto desert in southern New
Mexico.
The cave was part of an ancient flow of lava, now hardened into solid rock. The lava had gurgled out of the ground like liquid metal 250 thousand years ago. The cave was tucked away in what had once been an air bubble in the flow. The top side of the bubble had fallen in, creating an opening in the roof of a long, narrow cave that led back into the lava two hundred feet, a perfect home for bats.
I had left the cave and was driving my pickup truck on a rough track across the hard, jagged surface of the lava flow. Suddenly the steering wheel jerked and my hands slipped. The truck ground to a halt, caught on a black lava boulder.
A
quick inspection of the underside proved the worst: the
truck’s axle was bent, nearly broken in two.
I could not expect rescue in such remote country. I put my remaining food and canteens of water into my day pack and set off on foot, going north, the direction of the main highway.
I was low on water. Too little food did not matter, but hiking across the desert in July without water could be fatal.
As I set out, I hatched unreasonable fears in my mind. I was afraid of everything around me. Grasshoppers hopped, beetles crawled, rodents scurried. Each creature made my heart jump. In my mind, every movement was a scary animal about to strike and kill me.
I walked for hours in this state of mind. I cried and groaned until I realized that nobody was around to hear me. Complaining was useless.
A change came over me, a gradual transformation. I began to feel less afraid. Fear was replaced by curiosity.
I went on, and slowly but surely began to see the desert world differently, through interested eyes, not frightened ones.
A rattlesnake slithered past, scales glistening in the sun. The wild beauty of the snake steadied me. I might have run but didn’t, realizing the animal meant me no harm. It never even saw me.
The snake slid over the ground and vanished. In the silence and hazy heat of that moment, I noticed how peaceful the arid land was. Desert dwellers large and small went on with their lives, paying no attention to me.
That night I lay on the warm sand, using my day pack as a pillow. The sky went dark.
The stars began to shine, zillions of tiny fires spinning reassuringly in the hugeness of the heavens.
With a burned-lip smile I thought how little there was to fear, after all.
By noon the following day I was out of water. I continued north, forging a delicate balance in my mind between fear of death and the certainty I would live. I began to think how lucky I was to see the wild desert world. A wrecked truck and a forced hike across the desert gave me a chance to see what few others ever saw.
Late in the day, miles from the road, I came to a ranch house. It stood at the edge of the lava flow, low against the desert scrub, half-invisible through the waves of heat rising from the ground.
I walked into the yard and was greeted by a skinny hound dog. The rancher was close behind. He tipped the brim of his cowboy hat. “Care for some lemonade?” he said.
I drank all the lemonade that he and his wife had in their refrigerator. When it ran out, I drank tap water until my belly was swollen and sore.
“I liked it out there,” I told them when we got to talking. “I just wish I had been less frightened. I would have noticed more that way. Being scared made me miss things I would have seen otherwise.”
“I know what you mean,” the man said thoughtfully, scratching his chin whiskers with the fingers of one hand. “It’s a rare sight, that desert wilderness, a rare sight.”
The next morning the three of us rode out on horseback to check on my truck.
“It’s a goner,” the rancher said.
“Totaled,” I agreed.
“Too bad,” his wife said. “Such a pretty color, too.”
We spent the night by the cave, watching the bats fly out. Hawks and owls were diving and trying to catch a late-in-the-day meal. The three of us sat thinking, saying little.
I knew that I might have perished on the bone-dry desert. Unlike the bats, hawks, and owls, I was not equipped for life with little water. All I could think about was how I wanted to take the same walk a second time.
When the day ended, the rancher said, “Too bad more folks can’t see this. Might make them think twice about what’s beautiful in the wild.”
“Yes sir,” his wife said, “that’s the truth of it.”
