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By chris Date: 2008 Dec 04 Comment on this Work [[2008.12.04.22.32.2939]] |
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You wonder how people get lost up here. I tell you it' s easy - disorientation, elevation, dehydration, forgetting to bring a compass, being suddenly out of love or suddenly in love. I tell the story of my one of several brushes with death in these mountains - the time I climbed too far with too little and overextended myself like an orbiting astronaut who has disappeared from Mission Control somewhere on the dark side of the moon... I tell you I ate prickly pear fruit for the water, and the thousand tiny quills it took me a week to get out of my hand. This year the cactus fruit is dried and stunted, but the flowers appear here and there just off the trail like daytime luminaria lighting a path to somewhere. Of the thousand things I will be left with, I will return most to your face as I held it while we made love - a beauty that looms always just in front of me like a highway mirage promising cool water, promising that it’s not over yet, but disappearing the closer I get. |