I left the party and hiked up a wide wash to the base of a small mountain. At the furthermost tip a pile of crumbling rock surveys the view. I rest here, like a hawk, the west wind screaming down my chest. I feel it pierce every fiber. The sun is hot, the wind wild, but I am not cold.
Directly in front of me is our motley camp. A collection of vehicles, tents, shade structures and fire-making devices. It is a tiny speck on the edge of the dry lake. Ominous rocky mountains surround, secure and hide the place, the huge space. Scrub grows in the wide washes, until nothing grows demarking the edge of the lake. Off-white smooth flat for miles.
I find a wide crack between the rocks. There is both sun and shade. Cool rock and hot stone. I set down my pack and lean back, face the wind and look out onto the landscape.
I love the desert. Its rough mountains raising out of rocky washes. I love the angle landscape and the tricks it plays with my mind. Twisting my perception into another reality - a new possibility. The wind has silenced me and yet caresses my body. I am a small being in a vast desert. A pair of eyes looking out from a crack in the rock.
My mind wanders as I turn my view east. The mountains open onto a vast plain that is not playa. Do not make the mistake and think it is level. The desert is full of anglepoise plains that do nothing but twist your perception upside down. I see myself as a tiny self-contained being, wedged between rocks. Similar to this neural net Mez writes about. I've just finished reading Hyperion again, so Brawne's story is fresh in my mind. And the possibilities of enhanced brains with tiny nanotechnology nets that settle in our brainspaces. Kind of like my nestle between these two rocks.
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There are no words for the ideas that pour out of the silence of the desert. Only the audacity to make them real in some future reality.
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