6/2

Imagine walking in the desert for eighteen miles. You are 6,000 feet closer to the sun than your cronies at home. The loose and lifeless sand moves under your feet like a conveyor belt, such that you are never fully moving forwards. No plants grow higher than your knees and are all waving sharp dry fingers. Joshua trees might offer a silhouette of shade as the sun's rays penetrate their thorny crowns, and as the sun shifts the shadow will divorce the ground. The world is white and grey and gleaming all around, like thousands of quartz mirrors smashed on the bottom of this cosmic oven. Everything is bright, caught in invisible fire. The air is hot, hot and dry, and long ago your hands became leather. In the beginning it was only a cosmetic tan and now it is following you, trying to eat your skin. Your shirt is a suit of salt, and everything is still hot and dry and bright and still. Every step sinks into the sand and little ridges form, quickly tickled by wind. Ants scramble up and over the ridges,watching their horizon grow and shrink with awe, as you walk through these lingering mountains.