A Desert Dream

Lost in Arizona, on the holiday of my dreams. A five-figure holiday that I saved up for, for years. Down the toilet it went, whenever my girlfriend kicked me out of the car. We had a stupid fight. She was driving, I was swearing. She blamed the heat, I blamed her personality. She kicked me out of the car, in the back end of nowhere. I’d always wanted to visit the desert. It was on my bucket list, long before I met Angel. She and I had become one of those units that goes everywhere as a twosome, whether it's advisable or not. She was more of a Northern Europe type of holiday maker, but she'd agreed to accompany me, to help me achieve my life’s dream.

I’d had a crappy job for decades and I’d endured it, in the hopes that it would fund my biggest dream. I was living it, but it wasn’t what it had promised. The vast plains were indeed breath-taking, but my breath was taken away with every dreaded step I took, that progressed towards nothing. I didn’t know where on Earth I was – literally.

I’d seen all the typical "lost in the desert" stories – dried out mouth, dried up saliva, blurred vision, delusions of recognisable points that are truly only mirages. I’d never thought any of those things would occur on a real-life trip to the desert, but here I was, lost and as dehydrated as a crispy cactus. The cacti I’d waited my entire life to see were becoming like unwanted friends – following me at every turn. Their arms made them look like animated beings to my tired eyes. For moments, I thought they were like cheery men wearing sombreros, welcoming me into native lands, but they were never alive. They were never friends of mine.

There were so many rocky formations, and I’d started to climb one, but I didn’t have the right gear, and I didn’t know what I was doing. I wanted to see the panoramic view – the kind where you look at the expansive desert below you – just quiet, yellow sand peppered with little green cacti figures, but I hadn’t got to see it from above – or from a place of peacefulness. I kept hoping I would reach that place again, but panic was well and truly setting in.

Angel had abandoned me, at the side of a dusty road, and then she’d torn off at a speed I'd never seen her reach before. I’d expected her to come back, after her temper subsided, but she never had. I’d waited for a long time – an eternity in the broiling sun, but I didn’t hear an engine, or the rumble of an oncoming car making fresh tracks in the sand. I wished I did – I wished every argument we’d ever had away, even though in my heart, I knew we were completely incompatible. I wanted romance for that moment – for it to whisk me out of the place I worried I would expire in. My carcass would be found, stripped by vultures, months or years later – at this unmarked part of the globe where tombstones and body identification were unheard of.

My mind flicked backwards, to a small number of months before, like it was skipping chapters of a book – like sections had gone missing with my present-moment thoughts. I couldn’t think clearly, and my memories were becoming like crystallised moments of beauty - the last sparkles of dying sunlight. The pictures I’d seen online had looked exactly like what stood before me, but looking at them from a different perspective changed them into an entirely different scene. It had been beautiful then – desirable, an enviable location, when I’d been cooped up in my grey office block, inputting data in black and white. I’d longed for the space provided by the Arizonian desert. I’d heard so many fables about it, but I’d never met someone that had seen it first-hand. My office in Dublin felt so far from it I might as well have been located at a space station beyond the skies. But my desert dream was clear, and the desire for it had haunted me throughout my life. Maybe it was fitting that the same scenery would haunt me until my moment of death.

I’d been walking for so long that I had lost all concept of time. My phone was in my pocket, but it had no signal and then the battery had gone flat. I didn’t even have a bottle of water. When I’d got out of the car, I hadn’t even had time to grab my wallet – not that it would have done me any good there. There wasn’t a building in sight, for tens or maybe even hundreds of miles. The air around me seemed to move, in ripples, like my vision was failing in the most beautiful way. It was like whenever you see a beautiful sunset finishing up and everything just fades away to dusk.

For a while, I’d been calling Angel, as if it could have made any difference. Logic was a long lost friend. I’d been told that if you walked for long enough in the desert, you’d eventually reach an oasis. But I hadn’t come across one of those – just the imaginary kind. Why is it that whenever you’re looking for something ultra specific, it’s the only thing you fail to find? I’d come across all sorts of creatures on my journey – things I would have photographed, had I had a working camera. My mind took photographs of them instead, but mostly my fear captured them in stills. They were predators watching me – a lone, vulnerable, walking piece of flesh. Rattlesnakes, gila monsters, Mexican wolves – the sights I wanted to see from a tour bus, right before my eyes. I tried to avoid eye contact with them and just moved as silently as I could, trying to pretend they were as innocuous as puppies and kittens.

Closing my eyes made no difference. Fear was the only thing lurking in that dark cavity located behind physical vision. I stopped and sat on a rock. There was so much danger around me, but my primary thought was that I couldn’t move my mouth anymore. It tasted like dry sand – my lips refused to part. I couldn’t taste any moisture for the first time in my life. Maybe, I thought, this was what dying of thirst tasted like.

And then, as I made peace with my demise, I heard the sound of an engine, the screech and halt of tyres. A car door opened – it was as loud as a plane crashing in a fireball, and as unexpected. Standing in front of me was Angel, calling my name.

“Can we put this silly fight behind us, Rob?” she asked, lightly, like we were dealing with something frivolous that we could laugh off tomorrow.

She stood before me, like an open doorway, welcoming me back into the world. Water, warm words and life were right in front of me.

Or was it just a mirage?