Leaving the Desert

There’s a heavy cloud shadow sitting on the mountain. A single opening allows the angled sunlight to find a way through, to find a way to make the hard stone glow. The monsterman won’t look out the window of the truck. I point, tap the glass, but nothing. The mountains that will soon be a faint memory to him can’t draw his eye. As always, he does what he wants and rawrs at me.

He’s known nothing but desert, mountains, and arroyos. Third birthday so very soon, he knows nothing of rivers, nothing of the way a forest wraps you in hushed greenery.

It’s funny how I only remember that a blog can be personal, should include the personal, when on the precipice of change. Oh, what a precipice on which I stand.

There is a different sort of wind that blows in the desert. Years ago, when facing the prospect of moving away from the only land I’d ever known, that my children were the 5th generation of my family to live upon, I wondered if the same wind would be there, if the same moon would shine on that land. A far away friend assured me they would be the same but the desert proved her words to be little more than hope.

Everything is different in the desert.

Everything will be different when my family leaves the desert.

Years blur when the seasons progress strangely to one’s mind. At any moment, when asked, I would likely give a different number for how long we’ve been here. My mind insists it’s only been a few months yet the calendar insists it’s been years. Both are wrong when you measure time by the lives of your children. The monsterman’s hair, never been cut, now reaches past his waist. The family we ran from would be aghast. The family we’ll be reclaiming will be amazed.

So many patterns, cycles, spirals… My dearest familiar tells me this is a reset. His words convey the hope they intend, yet the weight is not missed by either of us. How many loose ends can one trip attend to? How many beginnings can a homecoming birth? How much of which pasts will I retain and carry with me? Do I even know who I am anymore? I am who I have always been. Nothing has changed. Everything is different.

What a precipice my feet cling to…

I don’t know what to think about the coming future. As usual, I’ve not been permitted to see. It would alter my actions, my expectations, make the work less effective. I acquiesce. What choice do I have? I knew what I signed up for.

A reset.

A breakthrough.

The wind picks up and the cloud ruffles itself, closing the gap, shutting out the light, allowing the texture of the mountain to shine through.

There is such damn beautiful dirt in the desert.

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