To the Desert

It started when I rewatched ‘Wild’ with my dad. For months I’ve been feeling  a little off. A little too dependent on others and not enough on myself, like a tiny piece of something was missing from my center. As if I was lunging from place to place unsure how to breathe or occupy the space between. I was constantly craving something, I just didn’t know what. I wanted to be alone.

‘Maybe I should drive out to the desert on my own,’ I thought. 

Jokingly I had mentioned to my boyfriend that we should drive out to the desert just to go back to Pappy and Harriet’s in Pioneertown. He had one foot in the door of the idea, but decided against it because of the heat. Then my best friend took off with her film partners to Joshua Tree looking to capture the Milky Way on camera. We were discussing her trip while serving customers at the pizza shop we work at the next day. After a rough shift arguing with customers unwilling to comply with our new Coronavirus policies, I was completely drained. 

I decided I had to go, even if it’s alone. I needed to figure out why I felt so unwhole inside and everything in me screamed doing this for myself would solve the missing piece.

I told my parents my plan, surprised by the lack of push back. In fact, they were in full support. 

At 19, I know how to function as an adult, but there’s a grave difference between functionality and living. I have yet to figure out how to live. Knowing only the grueling work of high school and now being addicted to constant need for some kind of stress in order to be comfortable, it’s been difficult to reshape my mindset. I’ve never had so much time with myself, and I’ve never been more uncomfortable. It’s taken time to realize and then put into action that the life I was dreaming about while crying over mountains of homework can be achieved now, I just have to reach for it. It’s there and available for the taking. It’s alive and I’m alive and I can possess it and make it take shape with my own trembling hands. 

The day I was to leave, my eyes shot open at 2:00 in the morning. My body was covered in a thin layer of humid sweat. I could hear my sister down the hall playing games with her friends online. The palm trees hardly rustled as the night remained still. 

I couldn’t sleep. My mind was racing with too many thoughts, playing out scenarios of all the things that could go wrong. When it wasn’t entertaining those nightmares, my mind thought of my boyfriend, wandering if he too was up gaming like my sister. Thinking about us and how we were almost at six months. Thinking about him on the whole and the fact that he’s leaving for a month for work soon. Thinking about next year and wondering where we’ll be then. 

At the first sound of my alarm I was flicking on my light and going through the motions of preparation I had gone over in my head a thousand times. Deftly, I changed into the clothes I picked and gathered my things, racing back and forth from the car to my kitchen trying to organize everything. By 5:30, the sky was getting light and I was pulling out of my garage, nervous as all hell. 

I would remain nervous as I got on the freeway, feeling absolute unease as my mind returned to thinking about all the things that could go wrong. It wouldn’t be until I passed the exit where my boyfriend used to live that I felt like I could breathe. I rounded the corner of the mountain and the sun broke through the clouds, blinding me, but I felt no fear then. I switched to sunglasses, and felt some ease slip back into me. 

Maybe the problem is that I am afraid to take up space in my own life. I can sit alone and plan out years of my life in advance, but the jump to actually putting those plans into action is far more frightening. I fear losing sight of my plans or failing in my career or picking the wrong path in this formative time in my life. 

What if I never make a career out of my writing? What if I end up in some office job for a big corporation that I hate? What if Cal State Fullerton rejects my transfer from Saddleback College? What if I never move out of California like I promised myself I would? 

When I moved off the main highway and into the mountains towards Yucca Valley, I was on a small two lane and a little lost. But I had my windows down and I was listening to this song called ‘Happy Alone.’ I took a deep breath again. The hot sun mixing with the dry wind dusted over my arm as I stuck it out the window, tracing the bumps in the mountains. 

I can do this. 

After an hour of driving through Joshua Tree I would find the hike I was looking for was actually just outside the park in 29 Palms. But I wasn’t upset, I had the road nearly to myself, and it was beautiful out. When I finally found the trailhead I was looking for, it was already 100 degrees out, but that wasn’t going to stop me. I packed two waters, changed into boots and a hat, and started on the sandwich I made that morning. 

The hike was 3 miles in total and I had assumed my years of cross country training would back me on both the heat and the length. I wasn’t entirely right. I had chosen the 49 Palms trail, and hiking into the oasis turned out fine. I was tired, with the beginnings of heat stroke showing on my skin, but I didn’t think much of it, only of my goal of the palm trees. 

Every large lizard terrified me as I mistook it for a snake. I took note of the rock outcroppings that could be used for shade if I needed, constantly checking the miles on my watch until I neared 1.5. Goosebumps were showing up on my red skin as I found solace at the oasis. 

I sat down in the shade and let the quiet dusturbed only by the buzzing of flies sink in. I did it, my first solo hike. 

On my way back my hands became red and swollen. I could hear my heartbeat pounding in my head. The issue for me as a previous runner was that the step down from running is walking, but at least you were still moving. The step down from hiking is sitting, and I was slowly becoming more and more afraid. I remembered seeing a car pull up next to mine after I started the trail, maybe someone else was hiking too. 

I eventually passed three hikers, the second a couple who asked if I was alright. At that point I was halfway out from the end so I told them I was fine and pushed on, finding any small patches of shade in the rocks that I could to sit down and rest. I figured at least if something happened to me, one of them would find me. 

When I finally made it to my car, I tried to remember everything my cross country coach had told me about cooling down your body after a hot run. I peeled off my shoes and socks, punched my keys into my car’s ignition to start the A/C and drank as much water as I could while slowly trying to put a shirt on. 

I hurt everywhere, and it was terrifying, but I had done it. Even though I had made some mistakes, I did it, and that’s all that really mattered. 

I felt whole again, I didn’t understand entirely why, but that missing piece seemed to have returned to me. I raced back down the desert highway, excited to tell my family about my adventures and how even though they were scary, I had done it. The adventure was entirely mine, my experiences solely belonging to me.

The following week, I would find myself waking up at 3:00 AM to return to the desert, but this time not alone. This time, I would be accompanied by some friends from high school ready to chase down the sunrise and new adventure with me. We would make it to to the park by 6:00 AM, and from the top of a set of boulders, we would take in the sun while eating trail mix, gummy worms and jolly ranchers; laughing at our early morning pictures and loving the sense of accomplishment we felt. 

Ironically enough, the scariest part of that adventure wouldn’t take place in the desert, but in Anaheim Hills on our way home when the three of us desperately had to pee after drinking canned tea. As we were back in the city where my boyfriend previously lived, I was desperately trying to remember the places we used to go, thinking which  would have open bathrooms till we finally pulled into a gas station, screaming. 

We made it home by 11:00, and I would return to work later that day, right back where my idea took hold.

I owned the space I took up.