A Night in the Desert

        Walking up and down hills and twisting ankles on stone washes, gave me time to reflect on life’s petty annoyances – the sweat dripping into my eyes, the sweat creeping down the back of my legs, and, most annoyingly, the sweat itching my palms.  I had been experiencing this torment for the past several hours as I walked through the vast expanse of the Chihuahua Desert.

        It wasn’t anything I was particularly interested in partaking.  I was not hiking across the North American continent for self-betterment.  Nor was I am member of some reality TV show pinning uneducated white people against other uneducated white people.  No, I did this for an even dumber reason: sheer drunken stupidity.
If you’ve ever been to the Big Bend country of west Texas, then you may have heard of a tiny town called Boquilias del Carmen, called simply Boquilias by us gringos.  If you wish to visit this town, simply drive an hour from the Basin area to Boquilias canyon, park, pay the ferryman five dollars to cross the Rio Grande, which is little more than three feet at its maximum depth, and then walk, or rent a burro, the two miles to the tiny village.  There you can by cheap, Mexican trinkets, such as sombreros or machetes, and eat some of the best tacos and burritos imaginable, and drink beers until dusk. 

        This is what I experienced, and it was good.  I stumbled in from the blasting heat of the noon sun into the tiny town and ate and drank for six hours, purchasing an obligatory sombrero and poncho in the process.  I waved my American dollars around like I could buy the place with a little less than fifty dollars.  My greenbacks were t-bone steaks that I brandished before the faces of hungry dogs.  I felt powerful and larger than life.  I was a god to these people. 

        As I was about to order my eighth or twelfth beer, the owner’s cold glace warned me that my presence might not be welcome for much longer.  I paid my bill at his insistence, stumbled out of the restaurant beer in hand into the cool desert dusk, hurling curses at the locals and the kicking large pieces of haphazardly placed metal laying in the road in abandon.

        I stumbled down the hill leading from the village in the direction of the river and America.  I chugged my beer and threw the bottle, nearly hitting an elderly woman missing key teeth.  She yelled at me in their hideous language and I yelled back, though I was not sure why.  A strong breeze blew through, kicking dust and poncho into my face.  I yelled at the invisible force that was slowing down my progress, which only resulted in frightening the local children selling scorpions encased in glass to run to their huts in terror.  Even my fellow gringos gave me a wide berth, avoiding me like an outsider. 

        By the time I had reached mile one or so, the sun had set.  By mile two, I was encased in total blackness.  By mile five, I was beginning to wonder if I was lost.  By eleven o’clock, my drunken stupor wore off, and the crushing realization of being lost in a desert set in.  I sobbed and wailed for a while, but no one heard me.  I stopped crying and listened to the sounds around me, or, more appropriately, the lack of sound around me.  The wind had died and all I could hear was a drone, like the sound of a slacking bagpipe.  I soon realized I was listening to the sound of my own alcohol-laced blood coursing through my head.  I shivered with cold, amazed with the difference in temperature between night and day. 

        Off in the distance, I heard the trilling hoot of some sort of desert owl.  Had I been in a sleeping bag next to a campfire and several friends, rather than on the rocky ground alone, I would have been happy to hear such a sound.  But as I was, cold, lost and buzzed, the sound was ominous and encroaching.  I wrapped myself in my poncho and forced myself into an uneasy sleep. 

        I woke several times in the night to urinate, and was terrified every time.  The shadows of the desert plants at night seemed to point at me like extending fingers or tentacles.  They were creeping toward me ever so slowly, trying to pierce my flesh and tear out my heart.  I flattened myself on the ground and cowered in my poncho.  Just as I closed my eyes, I felt something crawling along my belly.  I jumped up and out of my skin.  I flung the poncho away and danced around like Kokopelli, praying for a rain to wash the vermin from my skin.  In the midst of my prancing, I saw a small, round rodent with a long tail disappear into the larger shadows. 

        I screamed, but the dry air simply sucked out my voice like a vacuum.  I collapsed in exhaustion and gave myself up to the desert night.

        When the sun peaked over the tops of the Sierra Madre, I opened my eyes and licked my dry lips.  I had urinated four times during the night and hadn’t had a glass of water in eighteen hours.  My body felt about as dried out as the dead lechuguilla I had unwittingly used as a pillow during the night.  I rose and rubbed the dowse out of my eyes, wondering which direction to turn.  With the alcohol purged from my system, I looked at the sun rising made as best of a guess as I could northward, knowing that I would eventually strike the river.

        The more I walked, dreaming of a hot breakfast and cold water, the hotter the ground under my feet became.  By nine, my feet were dragging in the dust.  By noon, my sombrero felt five pounds heavier.  My hands began to shake with hunger and my tongue was flapping in the arid breeze in the hopes of catching stray droplets of moisture not already claimed by the summer sun.  Had someone from the American side seen me, they probably would have called immigration, seeing a stereotypical Mexican trying to breach America’s borders.  Would someone from the Mexican side see the same sight?  No, I said to myself, shaking my head, I was far too comical.

        Sweat was drip, drip, dripping down the entire length my body, removing what water and body salt not purged by my binge.  The sweat droplets seemed to sizzle on the on the ground like in an over oiled frying pan.  Exhausted, I collapsed next to a Spanish dagger and learned back, its soft, sharp spines pricking trough the thick cloth of the poncho and into my back.  But I didn’t care.  I sat there for some time, arms on my bent knees, not moving, and wallowing in my own self-loathing.  Eventually, I looked up and saw, somewhere on the horizon, a line of green.  Not the uninviting green of dessert plants, but the comforting green of less dangerous plant life.  Cottonwoods.  And cottonwoods need water.

        I had found the river.  I sat there for several minutes, staring at the trees, and began to mentally prepare the story I would have to relate to my friends back at the Basin.  I thought of the many renditions I could make.  Maybe I was chased by banditos.  Maybe it was a misguided sexual escapade.  Or the result of eating a bad burrito. 

        But, no matter how I changed the story in the company of others, I would always know that the desert is more humbling than all other geographical features.  They are barren wastes where a man can find out how small he really is and how little he knows about the natural workings of the world.  And, like the Mexicans of Boquillas, what is truly necessary to survive. 

        I should have bought the machete.