By I never thought I’d sleep in the desert on purpose, unless I’d be lost or dying.
Yet, here I am. I prepared as much as I could. The solar battery runs my fridge for a couple days with no sun, but here the sun it at its strongest. No clouds all day until close to sunset. My tank holds about 30 gallons of water. Not enough for luxurious showers, but enough for dishes and a quick bitch-bath every night.
Just outside, lit up by the rising moon a foggy cloud stretches away from the hot springs.
“I still can’t believe I lost my drone up in the dune, dude! “. I’m just talking to myself. I narrate my life out loud, Melanie says. Actually, don’t we all talk to ourselves, all the time? Before something comes out our mouth, don’t we check first with ourselves, to make sure it’s a good idea? If not, why? My problem is that I speak out loud, to myself, about what I’m about to do. Or recalling some old conversation I still haven’t stored away in a passive corner of my memory.
Tonight I wanna sit by a fire. There’s no trees around, but I have saved some clean ends of 2x4s from the tool store last week. That’ll make a pretty good fire.
It got dark a couple hours ago. We had a nice steak for dinner. Got a few more nights like this before we need to go back to the civilization to resupply.
What was… Oh, wow! Bright shooting star! Melanie’s asleep, I think. I don’t hear anything from her phone. She’d normally watch a crime show on the tube, or learn about parkour or something. Unlikely to practice it. But wait til someone ask her about her favorite parkour “artist”.
We had a long hike.
The dune won, today. Almost all the way up, over an hour into the hike I decided to fly my drone to catch the sunset from the air. Got a few great shots of the triangular dune, when… nothing! Lost connection. No “find my drone”, no audible alarm sound, nothing. I thought these features come with it. “Why isn’t the damn thing doing what it’s supposed to?”
I radioed Melanie about my dilemma: do I go search and get caught on the dune at night, or do I come back now, and go back to search tomorrow? I have the feeling that I could find it in 10, 15 minutes!
“Ok, 10 minutes then I turn around. Promise! I’ll be back right before dark. Stake, again tonight! I love direct-from-the-farm meats!”
Last week we stocked the 1 cubic foot freezer with fresh meats. We gotta use them up, so it’s steak night all week. The farm our friend grew up on was on the way. His parents still own it. We left with a nice bounty of fresh food.
I hope the smell doesn’t bring coyotes to our camp. We keep Bailey inside while we cook. Unless we decide to cook outside in the wild. We prefeer the open kitchen concept, surrounded by the wilderness. So many cool sunsets at dinner time! There’s usually some water around. A river or pond, at least. Right now, just a tiny 4-foot water hole in the desert floor. The hot water perspires against the cool desert air at night. I used to think the desert is out to kill you. When I heard desert, I thought: no shade for miles, no water, and if the day didn’t kill you yet, at night you freeze to death for sure.
Not saying that can’t be the case. I mean, I’m exactly in THE Death Valley. How do you think it’s got that name? But in September, it’s survivable. Our thirty years old craigslist clunker, became our hero. It got us safely across the states, through beautiful scenery to the edge of the real Death Valley. We’re about half way on our journey, not the best time to lose my drone!
If I leave early tomorrow, I can get to the tip of the dune in two hours tops. The drone is gotta be right around the top. Maybe 50 feet to the East. That’s what it looked like, from where the video feed cut out. I wonder what hit it. A bird? Here in the desert? Haven’t seen birds in a few days. Maybe sand came up the dune and I was flying right at one of the crests. Even if I don’t recover the drone, the shot was worth it! The whole dune looked like a splosh of whipped cream on a red cake. The burnt-brick desert contrasting with the white sand. How did even white sand form in these areas? How does that work? I do remember the sign saying there used to be an ancient lake here.
Ah, tomorrow back on the dune, I wanna try to make the dune “sing” again. I barely did it a tiny bit today downhill, when I was rushing back. I had heard of singing dunes before. Now I understand how it feels. Yeah, you feel it through your body, like a shiver. The vibration absorbs in your skin while the sand flows downhill, humming. One of the weirdest sensations ever.
I love this fire, it’s warming me up a bit. I hear coyotes. A bright light reveals the empty desert bowl edged by a few sharp hills.
“Melanie wake up, are you seeing this?!”
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D. D.