I Hold These Truths to be (Pretty) Self-Evident

Salt Creek, Death Valley, California
December, 2009
Photo: Cox

'Fa-la-la-la-la, another end-of-year wrap-up.'

I'm not going to hide it. I've been avoiding this post. We're two, me and this bedeviled blog, and the occasion seems to merit a generic birthday candle photo, top-ten list or resolution of epic proportions ("Fifty Pounds in Fifty Days!"). At the very least I should post a group of folkloric-themed lessons born of the year's experiences. Yes, I've been anticipating this moment for weeks: the convergence of MCY's second anniversary with our decade's close and the end of my monumentally shadowy year.

I had hoped to rustle up some mustard seeds to bury alongside 2009, but the truth is that I dug really deep this year, all the way down to what I thought was the bottom of the well, and well, I found no truth. In fact, I found no bottom. So, in 2010 I'm going to have to keep mining.

It's three days past this blog's birthday, a day into the New Year, and I'm halfway through a Wendy's Chicken Club and a champagne flute full of Sauvignon Blanc. I'm writing by the light of my weeping, dehydrated Christmas tree's tiny colored bulbs. Everything new could be old again. I could be Alice and the Rabbit having tea with yesterday's OneKate. The point is, time is irrelevant. The New Year is whenever I say it is. I've heaved this beloved blog over the 2009 finish line so that it can land smack dab in 2010, diapered and dapper as a fledgling bunch of font instead of the haggard old man it would have been if I'd left it lingering in last year's time zone. Today is going to be its birthday.

I walked along the trail pictured above in Death Valley three weeks ago. It's the trail one finds at the end of the trail near the park's only body of water, a thin stream called Salt Creek. The trail has no end. I followed it until I became too conscious of being alone and when I stopped I christened it "My Road". If only I could have known this path existed in all the years I wanted to walk one just like it. I found it on a naked, solitary desert salt flat. At least now I can conjure a line when I need one. After I got back to camp, I wrote the thoughts below. I think I came closer to finding a grain of truth in that chilly evening's musings than I was able to touch in my whole, heavy year of reaching for one. Now, onward.

12/I Don't Know/09
Death Valley
Furnace Creek Campground, Site 83

I don't like to find things from home tucked into this notebook -- horoscopes, letterhead with my notes on it: "to do", "to get", and the like. I'm tucking them into a back page somewhere to be discovered later. I'm writing by headlamp (pause). Excuse me, I had to tend the fire. I'm the fire-keeper here. I'm by myself. There's no one else to tend the fire. I'm horrible at it, actually. Earlier I burned my finger, thinking (well, not thinking) that a stone wouldn't be hot. I moved it to accommodate a log. Still, my fire's been burning for a least an hour and I consider that progress.

What did I see today? Did I think? Yes, I thought about what I saw. I thought about thinking. I thought about the long shadows on the cool dunes. I thought about my husband. I had periods of intensely missing him. Then I felt empty. Not in the way I always do at home--empty of direction in a panic-stricken way. I felt empty of care. Empty of judgment and opinion. Empty of need to decide. Anything. Pleased to be. Pleased to watch bodies tiny as pinpricks climb smooth, sculpted dunes while I did whiskey shooters in the sun. Pleased to drive long, empty stretches of road that looked as good in my rearview as they did out my windshield, thinking of nothing but how strange it is that salt flats look wet in the low sun. Pleased at how easy it was to let go.

Pleased to be west. Pleased to see red walls and washes, cairns and drainage. Pleased to move. To be cold in a tent at 3:00 a.m. To be alone and not feel scared. To be alone, feel scared and get past it. To run along a trail for fear of rattlesnakes. To realize the sound that I fear is rattlesnakes is really my Prana Yoga pants rubbing between my thighs. To hear the small voices of everyone I know come poking through and to ignore them. To truly understand that silence is a sound. To believe for a moment that rocks make noise.

To understand that I've learned a lot and to be okay not saying what any of it is. To feel centered, apart, calm, at peace, apathetic, relaxed, awestruck, alone, indignant, joyous, bemused, and grateful to the benevolent provider...and to not even care that I just wrote that sentence or what it means.