Beginnings

The sun is settling over the low hills, creosote and saguaros. The last of the purple light is escaping from the canyons of the mountains, transforming slowly to black while the weathered shoulders of the west-facing slopes pick up the last warm light before themselves dissolving in that strange alchemy of evening. 

The world slowly turns; the light breeze fades too. First, Jupiter and its bright necklace appear, then other bold stars pierce the deepening dark of the sky. The small campfire burns and brings warmth lost with the passing sun from a past sun. 

As the sky blackens and the lattice of low Earth satellites etches across the sky, a bright streak of a meteor and two more descend to the western horizon and disappear over the low hills to the west. There is little time to ponder this, as the sky lights up like daytime, casting long shadows across the desert floor, then the light follows a Planckian descent in brightness and color until the western sky resembles sunset again with a long lingering red glow. 

"Well, it happened," I whisper. Alone in the desert, I am free to talk to myself out loud. 

The mind spins through its Rolodex of possibilities, drawing blank card after blank card. The calm, disconnected feeling of understanding and surprisingly serene sense of coming to terms. Later, a distant rumble approaches and marches across the dry desert floor, sounding like passing freight trains. Leaving silence again and the timeless calm of the world still spinning as it has for billions of years.

I think of what to do next, me and the dog. If I leave my little bubble of isolation, I will encounter mayhem leavened with fear, no doubt. People will be looking to secure food, water, and shelter. In this part of the world, many will have guns. 

A campervan guns down the dirt road in front of our camp; the headlights illuminate the hills and leave us in its billows of dust. They know or heard, I suppose. Best to get off the road, I think, out of sight. I hitch up the small trailer, load up the truck, and drive off down the dry wash to where the sides deepen and finally stop in a place where the banks are higher than the truck or trailer. 

I walk back to the camp and cut some creosote and begin brushing away any trace of my former camp and the tracks leading from the road here.  I then backtrack and brush out the tire tracks to my new camp. Working quietly in the dark and with a dim headlamp. I will check again in the morning. 

I set up my chair and table again before heading into the trailer for the night. The unexpected effort has kept my mind clear and leaves me fatigued enough to drift off into sleep. My small companion curls up tight in the crook formed by my folded knees; she sighs as we drift off to sleep. 

Light flashes and the dead rise up. All is red and dusty. Halos of dark, dusty light surround the dead as they stand there. I leap or am drawn into the air and effortlessly glide over the land. Looking down I see a dull red glow on the horizon and the pylons of the risen dead standing like charred snags of a burnt forest.

There is a feeling of release mixed with dread and sorrow that burrows deep into the mind and the heart. Then the red light extinguishes and all is dark and a sound that weirdly betrays the risen dead or perhaps it is just a sense like when you know that someone, or something, is watching. Still and airless, it is stifling and breath comes in long, difficult draws. Then rain first, the tentative drops one here then another there, and then a more confident pattern and finally a regular drumming and then a bright flash and a sudden crack!

I bolt awake in the dark. The dog stumbles up beside me. A thunderstorm, and I am in a deep wash in the desert. I think of the hard-panned rocky hills, like a rough parking lot ready for water to slide off it like a greased pan. 

I pull on some shoes and open the door and head out into the approaching deluge. I gather up the things to put away. Lightning flashes beyond the hills, and it sounds by counting to be a mile away. It plays in the mountains to the north, illuminating the sharp ridges, spires, and edges. 

Weirdly, there is a kind of ash floating in the moonlight and my torch. 

I load up the dog and start the truck and begin to back the trailer up the wash from where we came. I had not anticipated needing to leave. The long tongue of the trailer that makes it so easy to turn and maneuver is now a detriment, being too sensitive to small steering efforts. I work with the mirrors and slowly back up the narrow wash. Oversteering first left the right in what must seem a mad s-shaped track. 

Finally, the banks of the wash relent, and I am able to force the trailer up one side, turn around, and drive up on the bank some distance from the edge. 

The flakes of ash are replaced by dark raindrops, that are soon thundering on the hood of the truck. The sound is deafening, and there is nothing else to hear except the cracks of thunder that announce themselves almost immediately with each slash of lightning. 

I then begin to feel a warm tingle first on my neck, then scalp, and cheeks. Like a windburn after a day outside. I tilt the mirror to look at my face, and I see it looks red and windburned. All I can think of is the stories of ranchers in the 1950s in southwest Utah feeling wind and sunburned after a day out riding in a snowstorm and a government unwilling to say anything.

In the headlights, a line of broken sticks, shrubs, bits of cactus, and brown foam riding down the wash. The larger ironwood and paloverde in the wash bottom shudder as this wave crashes into them. Here the wash narrows, and the water rushes up to the steepening walls and rises frothy and angry, a brown, dense torrent somewhere between mud and water. The walls of the wash peel away and crash into the rising water. Soon it is just a roiling, rippled stream of mud and uprooted plants. At times, the wash gets clogged, and the water rises over the banks before the clot of debris is flushed further down. 

The sky brightens, and dawn must not be far away. It is possible to see out over the vast, swirling brown river, eddies and clumps of brush, trees, and cactus drift by on the angry flood. 

Upstream, something light-colored catches the eye, a rare piece of trash perhaps until it reveals as a person, a face turning up to the sky before twisting under the brown water, then turning back up, mouth flexing like a landed fish. 

I tell the dog to stay inside and feel behind the front seat for some nylon rope. I race to the water's edge and wait for the person to come in range. Tossing the rope out, it falls in the swirling water in front of what now seems to be a woman. The rope curls and rides and sinks in the brown water, just out of reach. 

I yell at her to grab the rope, but she is struggling and cannot see. I retrieve the rope and now loping alongside the wash, I coil it for another throw. This one catches in the creosote bush on the shore, and I pull it free, coil again, and continue running, dodging trees, cactus, and bushes while trying to keep my eye focused on her. Again, I yell and throw; she is trying to stay afloat and looks towards me. The rope lands behind her, and she turns towards it, but the current races her ahead of the rope as I coil it again. In the distance, I am aware of the dog barking in the truck, pissed she is missing out on an adventure. 

I look again but cannot see her, and my heart sinks with her, as I run in pace with the current and scan the roiled surface, and she appears again coughing and gasping. I throw, and this time the line unfolds across her face, and she grabs it. The river has widened now and slowed into a big eddy on this side. I feel her weight take up the slack, and I gently pull, wary of pulling the rope from her grip. I play the rope like a fish on a barbless hook and patiently pull her to the shore. She is weak, clothing torn, shivering, skin scratched and cut on her arms and legs and face. 

I drag her away from the bank and wait in the pouring rain for her to recover. She makes a quiet, exhausted noise sounding of gratitude. I say we must get her inside and warmed up. Can you walk now? 

She nods, yes. 

I help her to her feet, and with an arm around her, we limp back to my truck and trailer. I put her in one side of the trailer, hand her a towel, show her my clean clothes, and tell her to get out of the wet clothes and warm up and rest. 

I turn on the heat, wait for the musical tinkle of the fan starting, the whoomp! of the gas lighting, and the roar as it starts to work. I tell her to sleep as long as she needs to, close the door, and I head back to the cab of the truck. The dog is excited and wags her tail furiously and welcomes me back. I sit soaked and doze off a little from the excitement. 

I awaken, I do not know how long later. The rain has stopped, and I recall again the woman in the camper. She was so silent and tired, her skin was as pale as if it had never seen the sun, as to be almost dead. The dog and I leave the truck and survey the area. The water has receded, and the wash is a thin, clear trickle mocking me into thinking the violence of hours before was some hallucination or dream. 

The sun warms, and the desert begins to return it to its former dry state. A few last drops can be heard from the trees. Birds call out, and the land for a moment has lost its arid taughtness and relaxed into a surplus. Everywhere, organisms are harvesting the bounty, swelling, starting leaves, sprouting, gathering. 

I return and open the kitchen and begin preparing food. First, the dog, and then for us humans, some sausage, eggs, potatoes, and hot coffee. I knock, and after some fumbling, the door opens. She moans as I pass a plate and cup to her, and she shuts the door. I prop up a chair out back and dig into the food. I am ravenous as it is sometime in the afternoon, judging by the sun. I have a watch, but everything now seems wild and raw and disconnected from the old world. 

The sun starts to go down, and the dry winter night begins to settle in. I gather what sticks and wood I can find that seems dry enough and build a small fire. The smaller sticks burn readily, and I pile larger and larger ones over the meagre flames, hoping to drive off the rain from earlier in the day. Soon, there is a decent warm glow as the last of the evening claret light decants from the horizon. I pull up another chair.

Soon, I hear the latch on the camper, and she emerges in my much-too-big clothes. My trousers are tied at the waist by what looks like a shoelace, and the legs are rolled up practically to the knees. She wears an oversized hoodie. She walks to the empty chair and sits down, pressing her hands towards the flames, welcoming their warmth and comfort. 

I ask if she needs any medical attention. She nods, no. She hasn’t said a word since I encountered her. Her face is open and calm and radiates a kindness in the glow of the fire. I ask if she can speak and she shakes her head, no. She does press her hand to her mouth repeatedly now, and I finally understand she is hungry again. I suggest soup, and she hugs herself and smiles. 

I pour soup from a carton into a pan and start the fire on the hob. I then pick up our dishes and begin to wash them carefully to save water. I run down to the wash bottom and scoop pans of water into empty jugs from the shrinking pools there.  

Soon the soup is on the boil, and I pour two steaming bowls and hand one to her along with a spoon. We eat hunched over our bowls, only the sound of slurping soup and the crackle of the fire. An owl hoots in the distance, and then the coyotes erupt in a short chorus, seemingly yards from the circle of orange light. We sit in this silence. I am curious where she is from and how she got here. I imagine she was camped up the wash, perhaps with a partner, perhaps alone.

The sky darkens as does the unfolding questions I have in my own mind. Before she appeared, I was content that this was where the road would end for me. Old enough and life had been pretty good to me, I didn’t see it worth venturing into some existential struggle out there. Ending in strife or violence. 

Now, however, I had some kind of responsibility for this woman less than half my age. My decision had been so simple. With her, it seemed insurmountable. One day at a time, I suppose. She needs to get her strength back. 

The fire dies, and I go to the truck and pull out a pad and sleeping bag and set up my bedding on the ground. I tell her to take the camper again. She goes inside with a kind of grateful bow, and I crawl inside the bag and drift off to sleep. 

The question remains: what will we do? Should I take her to find her people? And how will I find out who her people are? Perhaps there are some clues where she was camped; at least I assumed she was camped. I go to sleep with these ideas in mind and these questions, and finally I drift off into a deep sleep. 

I’m awakened by the late morning sun of winter, I stir from my bag and unzip it, crawl out, and walk over to the bottom of the wash and relieve myself. The wash is now practically dry. The pools that were there yesterday are gone now, and the pink tinge of the sun is just reaching the mountains to the north. There are no clouds; it’s going to be a clear, beautiful day, so I march back up to the trailer and open up the back in the kitchen and prepare some breakfast.

I figured I probably had about two weeks of food for myself and probably enough water if I was careful; I wasn’t going to need to bathe, as there would be no one around. As for washing up the dishes, well, I could use paper towels, so that wasn’t really a problem, and water was probably the biggest problem for me, and I would imagine that I could scrimp and save and perhaps get a little more water out of the desert; who knew? But now everything has changed.

The woman comes out again, dressed in my too big clothes, and she stands there with her bruised and scratched face and arms. I offer a plate of food, and she eats it again rapidly. She has an odd glow about her and a kindness to her face and peace. It seems out of place with what she has just been through. I ask if she’s all right, and she nods yes. I ask if she needs anything like some medical attention or anything, and she shakes her head no. 

I ask her where she came from, and she kind of indicates back up the dry wash bed. I said, “Well, perhaps we can go find where you were, and perhaps there’s some food and water there.” She gives me a confused look, shakes her head no.

So after breakfast, we close up and lock the camper, though I don’t know why. I decide now that I need to hide it again, so again I park it down in the bottom of the wash where it isn’t visible. Then I put in a small backpack with a bit of water for both of us, and we begin walking back up the wash. As soon as the wind blows through some very low hills, she doesn’t walk very fast, but she seems strong and she moves easily up the wash through the soft sand, stepping over large rocks and scrambling up boulders that are in the wash. 

Eventually, we see up ahead in the wash there is what must be her vehicle. It’s a white van and it’s on its side. Some of its contents are spilled out. The doors are open. You can see that the water has been running through it, and I ask, “Is this yours?” She nods yes. She moves quickly up to the van and she begins opening boxes and cabinets looking for things that she might find useful. She finds some clothes soaking wet, but still we can dry them, and we find some food, canned foods mostly, things that are stored in plastic, and we pack as much as we can carry into my pack, and then we carry as much water as we can, as well, lugging a big 5-gallon jug, and she’s carrying a couple of gallon jugs herself, water that we’ve gotten out of her water tank and some of it in the jug, of course, and we make our way back to the camp, straining walking across the desert like this. 

She’s completely silent. There’s almost no way to converse. I mean, I can say things and I can ask questions, but I won’t get any answers, and so we walk the desert in silence. It’s just the crunch of gravel under our feet, occasional call of a bird. There are no other sounds. It’s strange, not even the sound of an aeroplane or a jet. There’s not the occasional car driving by a distant road, no plumes of dust. 

Is it just silence or is it that deep spiritual silence that you get in the desert? It smells wonderful. The desert after rain is almost a sacred experience. The smell, the creosote washes over you, sharp in a bittersweet way, given an intensity to the air and the sharpness of everything. The sharpness of the odour is the sharpness of the scenery. There’s no moisture in the air. Everything is clear and sharp and outlined the edge of the mountain ranges. It’s as if they were cut by a razor against a blue sky, and I certainly enjoy the quiet and also the odd companionship of this woman that I know nothing about. 

My primary feelings are of worry, what’s to become of her? I had already decided what would become of me, but that decision is mine and one that I cannot make for her. As we return to camp, she kind of dances and runs up ahead with a light-footed, “joyous step,” and I find my heart is lightened as well to watch.

I see that she lives very much in the moment. Perhaps this is how she’s coped with not being able to speak. Perhaps this is just her nature, and it is refreshing because I find myself drifting into that space I’ve given up to the outside world, and some of this joy accompanies me in the void. Now I’ve seen my end, if not clearly, at least find it, and then I begin to wonder: does she know what’s happened? 

And I don’t mean to floor her; she knows that she knows that better than I do, but did she see what I saw the other night? Did she understand it? The way I understood it, and I think about how can I interrogate her about this. I don’t want to upset her, and yet it seems like an important kind of understanding to have. 

We have arrived at camp, and I prepare a couple of simple sandwiches and offer her a beer, which she readily accepts, and we sit down by the burned-out fire and eat our sandwiches and drink our beer, and silence soaks up the vast beauty of the desert all around us and feels like contemplation and the sacred; almost a cathedral of experience. Eventually, I work up the courage and I ask her: did she see the strange streaks of light in the western sky over the hills and did she understand what it means? And she, nods yes, to having seen the streaks, but she looked at me puzzled about the meaning, and here I saw the cracks of my problem when I’d hoped I wouldn’t have to confront that it seems unavoidable. 

I told her I thought that this meant that this was the end of civilization. I told her that I thought that many cities must be destroyed, and they are probably poisoned. That the people that are left, are now probably desperate; they will run out of food and they will not know where to go, and they will not know how to find food. I told her that my plan was that I was an old man. I’ve seen much and done much in my life, and that either out of cowardice or lack of energy or common sense, I couldn’t see myself re-engaging in a strange and unpredictable world that would likely be violent. 

I obviously didn’t want to have violence perpetrated upon me for someone to take from me what I had, whatever little that was: food or gasoline, water, but I’d also grown into the point that I couldn’t perpetrate violence upon another person, and maybe not even in the case of self-defence. I mean, certainly I probably would, but why would I put myself into that position? I don’t know. I can barely stand to see the death of even a small animal, and so it seemed all too much tormenting in a life that was going to come to an end anyway at some point, not too distant future, maybe 10 years, maybe 20, but still this wasn’t a future for me.

However, she was young. Perhaps she could see a world that she wanted to be part of; perhaps I could help her make contact with people who might take her in and take care of her and not take advantage of her. It seemed an awful risk. Women don’t often fare well in these circumstances. Men are more powerful and prone to violence, but life is life; it’s not for me to judge. What would she like to do? Would she like to try to go out and make contact with people? Would you like me to go out and make contact with people? Leave her here? Hope that I could return and find some sanctuary for her. 

She sat there for a long time silence and I thought I understood there’s a lot to take in there. She was probably considering my position as I was hers. After a while, I said to her perhaps we should just sleep on it. There’s a lot to think about.

I then set about moving the rest of our camp down into the wash next to the camper. I brought the chairs down. I collected what firewood I could. It really wasn’t clear whether it was smart to make a fire at night, but at least the light wouldn’t travel in the confines of the wash; smoke wouldn’t be visible at nigh.

She crawled into the back of the camper perhaps to rest again. I told her that a few books were in there, and she should feel free to read anything she thought was of interest. I told her I was going to go down the wash and scout for more water. My hope was that perhaps somewhere there was another pool, perhaps some rocks or some impermeable ground that I could find and scavenge a little more water. The animals would consume whatever was ever lying around, so I needed to move quickly.

I am restless all night, with just the deep slash of stars above me. The whole night passes as if it might be a dream. At some point, the woman comes out, and she lays beside me on the open sleeping bag. I am not sure what to think. What does she want? Is this sexual? She places her face next to mine and wraps an arm and a leg over me, presses against me, and begins lightly touching my face and murmuring into my ear. A kind of soothing song or chant. Something ancient and unidentifiable. 

I begin to relax into whatever this is. It is comforting, not threatening nor demanding. It is intimate but not arousing. It begins to feel like a longing I never realized I felt. 

Somewhere deep inside of me, something was moving, rising, welling up like some hot, fresh spring. When it surfaced, it was an immeasurable kind of grief. It started as the total grief of everyone I had loved and lost. It sat like a rock-hard cinder in my chest and choked my throat, and tears welled up from my eyes as if to extinguish this cinder of grief. 

The pain was deep, and my body sobbed and convulsed with each upcurrent of grief. The crying and sobbing would ebb, and then a new current would well up, and a new flush of grief spread up through my chest and into my throat and would choke me. The rictus of grief on my face made it hurt. My ribs ached from the convulsive breathing. With each, I thought it would subside or attenuate, but a new current of grief would thrust up into me, and I began to think the source was infinite. Not some deep pool of grief but a world’s ocean full of sadness. That it was up to me to give expression to it. Then it moved to some greater, wider sense of loss. What had happened to life, to the world, to now? I sat and sobbed and convulsed for my world and the whole world for what may have been hours. 

Then the woman stood, completely naked, and she pulled me up by the hand. In the darkness, her skin radiated with a transparent luminosity. 

My body just trembling now, the wetness draining from my eyes. My body and soul empty; clean, and clear like a running stream. She led me across the desert, and soon we were on a precipice, and she beckoned me to look down into the dark abyss, stark and deep, and there bright stars like staring into a still pool of water reflecting the night’s sky. 

Then she took my hand, gently nudged me, and I understood I was to fall, and so I did. We floated down with no fear until we shattered into a million tiny sparks of light and we settled upon the water. There we joined the other lights, and I could feel the consciousness of billions in a kind of communion. Somehow, I was at home. The cold, dark universe was alive; and I finally understood that I was part of it.