Without Road

Green River, Utah

From a little over five gallons my supply of water dropped to two quarts by the time four and a half days passed, uncounted miles wandering in the desert--walking over trails even the cattle abandoned many rains ago, and then I find their dead half engaged in the sand, and I keep walking certain of sun course, compass, and once in a while I swear I can hear the interstate miles to the south until the return of wind removes all sound except for its own chewing in my ears. No matter how certain I am of my navigational skills, when I leave the road to make my way to the town of Green River( because walking the interstate is illegal and there is Nothing else), all the little uncertainties of the world find a voice in me as water becomes sweat, and food becomes the memory of hard apples and cold cheese cut on a clean plate.

It is still funny without laughter the way this mind walks after me. Before I left the tar that runs up from Moab for sand, I found a sleave of new compact discs by the road. The first words out of my mouth were that I'd mail these to my brother Steve. My feet bite the ground. What happens in the mind that forgets the death of a brother twenty four years past? I reset my thoughts as a finger would turn forward the slow hand of a clock. And tomorrow, will I have to set my mind again? Miles have compiled the dead and the living so that the field is the same. Everything is memory from a land that no longer is in check. The world that I left, friends known, couples I knew as childless, and even my own marriage before its death, everything has floated away into an inaccurate soup.

The tires on the cart are worn through to the hollow the labeling said were solid. Soon they will fold open into uselessness. My shoes are worn to smooth rubber that prints every stone on my feet as I walk while the worn heels tilt my legs out to walk like a cowboy fresh out of the saddle. The largest water tank of three gallons drips like a faucet with a spoiled washer from a hole on the bottom I can not find. I am told the town of Price will have the fix I need for all my little ills. Sixty plus miles straddle above me before I'll touch down in Price. Another promise, another re-supply before I take my pen to map with total conviction that these distances are just variations on an old theme. It is not the same. Miles often no longer have flavor and little rewards are days apart, subtle as feathers falling in a sleepers room. These are mental miles; miles when the mind does not have enough to hold it down so that it is dayly wanders over years, relationships, brushes against the smell of sage warming in the morning sun then reels it back in a sigh, and now I am watching antelope moving too fast and far too close to my side realize, and somehow I never see them leave. Softly, very softly, all the world is humming as yesterday becomes today. I did sleep didn't I?