To touch the nothingness

From the journal entry, 7/12/11, word for word:

Sitting down to a breakfast of eggs, bacon, hash browns, English muffin and OJ. Slept well last night in a decent spot downtown by a title company.

But there was a reason for that beyond the driving and the heat. I was on the road, driving west on 380 from Carrizozo and I told myself that I would climb a mountain. I felt like my mesa experience could be extended, could be heightened, made more challenging and intense – all for the spiritual aspect of it and also for the accomplished feeling I thought I imagined I might have. I drove into a wide valley about 15 miles west of Carrizozo, kinda between there and Socorro. While I was taking pictures of an old abandoned shack, I noticed a strange mountain formation to the north. Of all the volcanic mountains and towers and hills that are in this basin, these were the most odd and unique. They looked like they belonged on the moon, so I called them the Moon Rocks. They looked like three tops of freshly whipped meringue, each one higher than the next, as they lifted north. I decided that I would climb them as far as I could. So I left the shack. There was a county road that lead closer to the Moon Rocks, heading north down a dusty dirt road that had the feel of a mile long rib cage under the Box (the car). Bouncing, jerking, I thought the fucking wheels would fall off. They’ve threatened to before. Cows ahead. Several, including a young bull who was blocking my way, and every time I’d move, he’d get back in my way. I wonder if he was trying to tell me something. I eventually got around the cows, and ended up at the end of the road. Dead End. There was a gate with a heavy gauge wire attached to it that would be slung across it, presumably at night and presumably by the rancher who lived a few miles down the road.

I got out of the Box. To camoflauge myself, I took off my white t-shirt and replaced it with a brown one. I put my camera in my messenger bag. A Nalgene bottle was filled to the top with water, perhaps 34 ounces. I locked the doors and began walking towards the Moon Rocks. The sun was high, about 12:50 p.m. and the walking was fast and swift. I had my knife with me just in case a bull wanted to charge me. All of them in the area I Was in were looking at me, checking me out. Yeah, a four-inch blade and a 1200 pound bull. That would be fair. Over hot dust and crunching grass, flutes of cactus and the pancake cactus with its 2 inch spikes. The air was silent, there was no sound. Then all of a sudden I heard a dull roar behind me. It grew louder and louder until it totally consumed the valley. I thought it might be some kind of wind phenomena against the mountains, as the breeze was picking up. Then I saw two black dots against the large mountain behind me. Fighter jets from White Sands doing evasive maneuvers. Ducking and diving and circling each other in a mock dogfight. Then, just as soon as they’d appeared, they were gone. Exploded to some other place.

I walked on. A jack rabbit – huge ears and powerful hind legs – and lizards that darted in front of me before skating across the sand toward a bush. I practiced opening and closing the knife, should I come across some animal intent on hurting me. Rattlesnake, other snakes, rushing animal – all came to mind. The Moon Rocks seemed to not have gotten a bit closer, and appeared the same as when I left the Box, like no distance had been made. I stopped to snap some pictures. The rocks looked like they had just exploded from the flat desert floor. Intimidating. The sun was getting hotter, my legs were bleeding from the cactus I was walking through. Came to a barbed wire fence. Threw the bag over and hopped up on the third wire, then over. Then another fence. And then another. And, yes, another. Same routine, over and over. I was walking with purpose, my steps were strong and pronounced. I heard the way I scraped the sand and gnarled vegetation below the soles of my feet. I felt like I could have run across the desert.

All of sudden, my eyes caught something out of place, well past the forest of cactus I was waling through. It appeared to be the head of a bull. It was big, I thought, and all alone. But what was it doing out here? It didn’t move. Not one inch. At this point the Box was out of sight, obscured by the slivery heat that bubbled off in the far distance. The ranch house stood far away as well, perhaps four or five miles. Everything is further in the desert than you think. I was far – far – from anything. No people, just the rocks and wind and heat. Primitive elements of the landscape all around me. I took the knife out and walked toward it, my eyes locked on the black thing the whole time, it, about 300 yds away, obscured my cactus and scrub and grass. Then I saw the thing. It was an old, rusted oil or gas tank. Nearby was a cistern of some sort and a 10 ft long section of telephone pole. I sat down and took a slug of water. So thirsty. Took pics of the tank. The Moon rocks were still in the distance, but looked so close. But they never seemed to be getting closer. About 3:00 now. I never thought once of going back. To do so would have amounted to complete failure. The thought never crossed my mind. I was down to maybe 20 oz of water. Foolish. Stupid. Stupid desert virgin in the middle of the 100 degree desert. 20 oz of water. Think about going to a bodega to get a 20 oz bottle of coke. That much water.

The heat was starting to get to me. I was sweating a great deal. Sun sizzled on everything. No shade. Just heat piled on heat. The sweat would evaporate almost as soon as it appeared. Still, I thought I’d be in the mountain in a half hour. 20 oz seemed to be enuf. I got up and I trudged fwd. My breathing was getting heavy and my heart was racing. Elevation, 6000 ft or so feet. Still, I moved fwd. Four antelope crossed past me and then stopped a few hundred feet away. Looking back, they seemed to say: “Go back, son. We live here. You don’t.” They pranced away on 8 foot strides and I moved fwd. After more than two hours, I’d reached the foothills of the rocks. Toward the rocks. Toward them. Panting now. My legs had turned to near mush. But close now. I climbed to the top of a hill to get a better look at them. There appeared to be a clear path to the top peak. All three peaks were connected by a thin ridge that looked very much wide enough to negotiate. The whole formation was the result of volcanic activity here millions of years ago. The top could be reached. IT could, one boulder at a time. But leg thrust was going to be a huge issue. My mouth was full of thick gluey mess. I’d stop every 100 feet or so. And then I’d rest. Heading up the Moon Rocks. Legs getting wobbly, heart exploding in the chest, mind starting to slow.

I was heading up the rock that lead to the first peak, through small rocks that felt like thick quicksand when I walked thru them. Higher now. To one side, a rock fall perhaps 150 feet to the bottom. To the other, a sheer drop to a small valley between the Moon Rocks and another mountain. It was full of large boulders, the size of full size trucks and vans. I climbed, rested, climbed and rested. Dug my fingers into the sharp volcanic boulders, getting a grip. One foot after another. Up and up. My bag felt like 100 pounds. My legs were about to give out, so I stopped on a boulder to sit and rest. I looked out at the expanse that I’d hiked. It seemed to go on forever, ending at the base of mountains 25, 30 miles away. I sat there, thinking about exhaustion, thirst and what I’d just done.

Then I felt a spiritual force begin to descend on me. It swirled in the wind, it danced on the rocks and glistened off the hot desert floor. I took out a picture of my mom that was on my left pocket. I said to her – because she was there, as real as the last time when I saw her face in the casket in the back of St. Vincent’s church in Pontiac or the day before she died, silent, sunbathing in the back of the county health facility, lying in her hospital bed, smiling, accepting that the end had come and she would walk thru the door that had been open for years, toward peace and harmony and a rest from the pain and the frustration. I stood there, overwhelmed by the thickness of the spirit around me and the shroud of absolute solitude that I was caught in. I lost it, the tears came like a downpour. I wanted to go higher, wanted to reach for the top, touch a rock at the pinnacle.

“I can’t go any further, mom. I just can’t,” I said to the wind, to the spirit.

I was disgusted with myself, beyond words, beyond description. I threw all caution to the wind, any peril I would have undertaken to make it to the third peak, where I had intended to place the picture at the top, be one with myself and the rocks and the spirit that was holding me. To just keep climbing, but I could not. This was the end of the climb, the conclusion of this idea. Then a voice came into my ears, as clear as the wind that was buffeting my ears.

“You’ve come far enough,” it said.

The tears came hard and thick, like the raindrops that washed across the Box in the south, like my soul was bleeding. I placed the picture by a boulder and covered it with small rocks to keep it in place. Mom’s HS grad shot. Black and white. Thick hair parted dn the middle. Bright, glistening eyes above high cheek bones and a kind smile that was a window to her spirit and soul. A gift from Kathy, her best friend in HS in Greenville. I knew she gave it to me for a reason. And then I told her.

“Now you can see the million stars at night. You can feel the warm breeze and lie in the hot sun. You can feel the sometime snow of winter and the see the beauty of this valley.”

I felt like I was on another plane, outside myself, my human body, a spiritual place that few get to. I cried a bit more and then I screamed, I SCREAMED into the valley below, which ate the noise and spun it to some other place on the wings of the howling wind. Then the voice told me: “Leave this place now. Please go.”

And so I did. I crawled back down the mountain, looking up at it as I moved, to the top peak that seemed an eternity away. I found a dry creek bed at the bottom of the mountain. But then I climbed out, the way too soft with sand. After 10 min, I looked back at the Moon Rocks. They stood there, defiant. But I knew that I did what I came to do. I never wanted to beat them, only to climb them. And there’s a difference. It wasn’t an exercise to become triumphant, it was an exercise to find out – about many things. I knew that I’d left in a way that I was comfortable with. I left a bit of myself there, and took away a bit more. And even more, I found my mom there, as real as I’d found her in over 20 years. In the loneliest place I’ve ever been, I found her, on the hot, raging winds and the jagged rocks and the expanse of emptiness. I found her.

Now for the second phase. To get back. I wanted water so badly. Like a junkie wants a hit, I wanted water. I had so far to go. So hot, so dusty, so dry. I sucked in the hot air, I sucked in the desert and the rocks and the cactus and the sand. I all entwined me. I shuffled, took my shirt off placed the strap of the bag across my forehead and let it hang around my back. I felt like I was dragging cinder blocks, it felt like I was dragging the world. I stopped to rest and look back at the rocks. Felt like I’d walked forever, but they were in the same place as I’d left them. Kept going. The Box nowhere in sight. Hurled myself over the fences again, over rocks. Feet shuffling hard. Mind turning to soup. Water – for all that’s holy – water. All I could think of. Cold water, icy water, water to sting my teeth and wash dn my throat, coating my stomach in cold. I’d have cut off something from my body for a liter. No joke. I stopped to sip from the Nalgene. Then again. And again. An hour in and I had 4 oz left. I stopped sweating. Skin on fire. Hands swelling. Body boiling, hot to the touch. I stopped to piss. A few drops. The color of amber. No cows. No antelope. The animals were all gone. Alone, shuffling, squatting every 10 min or so. I screamed to the wind: “GET UP KILLIAN, GET THE FUCK UP!” I screamed and yelled but it just took up more energy. It felt hard to talk, to breathe. Fell dn in the sand, horizon approached like molasses in a freezer. Walking in place, walking against hope. Mind weak. Start singing ABBA song. “SOS.” I always loved that song but it came to me randomly. Love the hook in the chorus. The meaning – the SOS – was lost at me at the time.

I found a road, a road I’d wished I found earlier. I took it for awhile in the dir. I thought he Box was in. Aimless, I walked. Toward something, toward nothing. Hoped the road would spit me out close. I sipped some more. Then decided to down the rest. Water, all gone. Watched a few licks of water, a thimbul-full at the bottom, slosh from side to side – the water you cant get to. Walking, pushed by the hot sun behind me now. I felt like lying dn, closing my eyes, getting some strength back. Just a quick nap, a tiny nap. Get more energy, but from where? Screamed again: “GET THE FUCK UP. GET THE FUCK GOING FUCKER!.”

And I did. Horizon. Blank. Telephone line – looked five miles away – knew the Box was under that line. Tired. So tired. Worried I would not make it. Bury me. Then, I saw a glint. The Box! A goal! Something to work toward. Safety, water, not the desert. Set goals to achieve. A bush – 50 yds. A cactus – 75 yds. A small hill – 30 ft. Small steps. And then, in what felt like a miracle, I made it. I saw the green of the paint and the black of the tires and the glistening of the mirrors and the shit piled in back. Just a bit more. Made it to the gate. I’d have thrown a rock thru the fucking window for the gallon of water in there. I would have. Took the knife and carved a hole in the metal. Then I fell in the ground. Got up, got to the car. Downed a gallon of hot water in a minute and wanted to vomit. I laid n the back and fell asleep quickly. Got up after three minutes and felt the acid in my muscles. And then I drove. Dozed. Overcome. Confused and not appreciating all that had happened. Just a blank stare thru the windshield. I drove half comatosed, enclosed on a stretch of road, like a zombie, like I didn’t know how to drive. Took frequent swigs of more hot water. 8 miles to Socorro. Got off road. Hobble into gas station. Stinking, bloody, dusty, dead man walking. Water. Coke. Took piss in the john. Five drops. Dark yellow and painful. Went to burger king and got order of fries. Burned my mouth. Holes in the roof of my mouth. Bored by the heat and the sand. Parked in an abandoned lot and watched people go in and out of the Socorro Springs Brewpub. It started to rain, then lightening crashed all over. It spilt the sky over where I’d been, threatened to tear it in two, I thought. Violent, searing, slicing lightening over the Moon rocks. It cracked and then it poured. The rain flooded the streets of Socorro that night. The lightening knocked out the power several times. It lit up the mountains and made the desert glow for split seconds. It scoured the expanse of nothingness, like it was reacting to something that had been unleashed. It made people run.

But the Moon Rocks, I’m sure, remained.

I went to sleep that night in front of a title company. The back window half dn, I watched in the last few seconds before sleep as lightening laced the sky in bright dryness. My legs on fire, I drifted off to sleep, not knowing what to make of things. Numbness, not me.