3/17/08 Journal Entry: 1st day/night of 48 hour desert solo

Well, this is it. The Edward Abbey experience. 48 hours alone in the desert. Silence. Solitary confinement in the most unconfined landscape I have ever laid eyes on. Time does not exist. Distractions lost; swept into a distant corner of the mind that surrendered to the present. The sun just set below the horizon line and casts pastel tones of orange and yellow, turning the wispy clouds in the sky a deep purple against their Easteresque background. A jet coasts smoothly away from the canvas of the departed sun, as if it knows it is not wanted in this moment of surreal beauty. I sit on a ledge of sandstone, the snaking bed of an ancient river 300 ft below. That river was the culprit of the beautiful disaster that is laid before me. Beside me. Across from me. Above me. The landscape is a place of defect: rock crumbling to the will of the wind, water evaporating to the will of the sky, society submitting to the will of the desert that allows no such intrusion. Sheer cliffs surround me in all directions, browns and reds jutting downward, the first line of defense from the burdens of modern man. A coyote howls in the distance, I look across the vast openness that separates us and allow the mournful sound to serenade me into my surroundings. I am in a place and state never before experienced. The moon to my back, a ghostly gibbous sitting alone in the Eastern sky. The chill air engulfs me, yet another layer is not in order. As the brightness is slowly seeped out of the canyons, the remnants of the morning snow make themselves evermore distinct. Patchy blankets of white stretch across the sloping ridges at the base of the cliffs, spotted with Bonzai-like trees and solitary shrubs--surprised at the unexpected encounter. The Western sky is now a sea of orange and red stretching across the blackening horizon line. The moon grows brighter and Sirius has made its appearance directly in front of me, foreshadowing what is to come. The coyote halts his cries, and a peacefulness settles over the day. The night. What a magical transition at the tip of the mesa. Ten feet in any direction would surely lead to my death, yet I feel no fear. I wish to be nowhere but here.