We are tracing the left outline of the San Felipe Mountains. We are wandering along a ridgeline three quarters of the way up the little mounds. We have been living in a windstorm for the past four days.
The wind is a sadist. He is chasing us and letting us go. Over and over. We weave into the inner chunk of the mountain and he eases up. But then, as we round the outer edge he pounces, pushing us with all his might.
When we find a quiet spot to rest, shivering and eating a little, he lets us think we are safe until he gathers his friends and runs us out of his land.
I have spent the entire day looking at the ground. I study Avry’s feet, the dirt broken up by rocks and footprints, and the brittle, wheat-colored plants that have been ground into straw by the trekking poles of those that go before me.
“The wind is our teacher!” Avry yells, close to a quote from Carrot Quinn’s book that we are reading (about this exact stretch of land).
“It is teaching us about suffering.”
“And stubbornness, and stupidity — and other “s” words!” Av calls back.
I am writing this blog in my head and repeating it over and over, a weird mantra in a silly hell.
I am repeating it because I know the tricks my brain plays.
It will catalogue this event much higher on the misery scale than it is at this moment. It will twist it into pure joy tomorrow.
We are racing, at two miles an hour, toward cheeseburgers and showers and laundry — and this self-inflicted horror will make that all the sweeter.
For now, we have the wind to best.
“Blaaarg!!” we yell as it begins to rain.
