I'm Living, I'm Happy, & I'm Free

The dry crunch of crumbled pavement and sand; it's the sound that bends through the reflected sunlight and it tells me I'm back in the desert. In Peru, being in the desert isn't difficult since it doesn't rain, not here, not anywhere along the coast from Mancora to Antofagasta, not for two thousand miles of burnt, brown, barren soil and salt.

And now the sky is raining down sheets of light in the late afternoon, cracking the ground, putting a last bit of heat into Huacachina's dusty roofs, the budget hostels and shuttered resorts, the aimless Europeans sunning themselves on thin white towels by the pool. Somewhere far above, the long lines of clouds have spaced themselves from east to west like pink-hued ripples from a sun about to drop into the Pacific. I shake some sand off my shoe, and the sun falls without a sound.

There is no world beyond Huacachina, just more desert crossed by strips of road in all directions.

I should mention one other event while we were in Huacachina: we took a dune buggy tour, out into the vast and terrifying wilderness. After sand boarding, we raced west to catch the sunset over dune and dale to the edge of a ridge. There, slightly burnt, Jeff fell on his knees, then on his back, moaning and acting rabid. The German tourists muttered to themselves, wondering if we were on drugs. Alex and I kept focusing on the colors of the sunset, while Jeff lay prostrate on the sand.

And then, as the Nikons clicked away in the growing twilight, a ringing. There, in the middle of hundred foot high dunes, there as far away from anything as anyone can be, sitting quietly staring at the dimming corona, Jeff got a phone call. In that bit of nature, it was somehow fitting. Absurd, but fitting.