27.) Getting Intimate With Strangers ......Holy Beer.....Panic....

     Halfway through my hike back I encounter a figure leaning it’s backend on a lone boulder in the middle of the trail. Head hidden deep inside a hoodie, brown trekking pants and boots; back to me.  I step hard for a few strides so I don’t scare anybody, nod, say hello, and continue on my way.
“Did you go all the way up?” from behind me.
“I did, yeah. You on your way?” I’m asking and turning at the same time. 
Unkempt tufts of hair, a deep almond brown, pop out each side of the hood past her face. On the very end of a nose already showing the first rosy signs of wind burn cling a pair of oversized tortoise shell glasses. 
“I think I’m gonna try” she says, standing up from the boulder and looking towards Chimney Rock. 
“Well, don’t dawdle. Don’t wanna get stuck up there in a storm” I say as I gesture toward the darkening sky.She squinches her face at the clouds, “Yeah….Think it’s gonna rain?”
“Well,” I say looking back to the sky and laughing a little. A this point a relatively obvious dark grey cloud is marching it’s way towards us.  “I’m no meteorologist….but it doesn’t look promising.”
“Hmmmmm. You’re headed back? Maybe I’ll walk down with you if you don’t mind. I made it to the top last year, so it’s not the end of the world.”
“Right on, let’s keep moving though, try to stay ahead of this storm.”  And that’s how I meet Michelle.  
     Snugly bundled up in her hoodie, with her heavy duty trekking pants and clunky boots she's all padded corners and smooth edges.  Sweet and harmless. I like her immediately.  She lives in Boston but is originally from Chicago.  We share the requisite high fives over being from the Midwest and chat as we hike. 
We exchange stories and it turns out she's traveling solo too. Attending a writing retreat back at Ghost Ranch.  She's been here before and just fell in love with the place. I can’t blame her. Even under an ominous sky the landscape really is something to take in.  The conversation flows easily and we bond over our agreement that travel is simpler when you go it alone. Less drama, more freedoms and the like.
When we get back to the cars neither of has anywhere to be. “Wanna get a beer?” and I’m taken aback when I realize it was her asking me instead of the other way around.  
“I do.” I nod.
“I know this place down the road thats got this monk beer.”
“Monk beer!?”
“Yeah, it’s brewed by monks….in a monastery.”  That sounds made up to me. But then I think well if its true, that’s pretty cool. And if it’s not true and she just made it up to screw with me, well thats pretty cool too. Either way I like her even more now.  
 
With the beer obtained we set out to find a place to drink it. We pull off the highway at a small grey structure.  Perfectly square with a pointy, mushroom like dome on top. The words mosque or Taj Mahal come to mind.  Two men are talking outside and one waves and climbs into a waiting pickup truck as we pull in.  We chat with the remaining man for a bit and ask about the strange little building.  Turns out he built it himself. It’s an art studio for his wife, she likes to paint he says.  There’s not much to it, just a single room, wooden floor, and windows on opposite walls. Just big enough for a chair and an easel, like a tiny little clubhouse.  
It seems like a meaningful place to the man so Michelle and I decide against using this spot to swill beer, even if it was brewed by monks.  The man suggests Plaza Blanca……The White Palace.  Seems like as good a place as any so with the man’s directions fresh in our minds we set off to find it.  Down a dirt road, left at the telephone pole, through the archway.  The strange directions are surprisingly accurate and we pull into a dusty gravel clearing that acts as a parking area.  In the distance we can see big sandstone walls and columns more grey than white but we get the idea. We hike down a hill, through some scraggily brush, and into the White Palace.  We spend the better part of the afternoon together climbing the rocks and ledges of sandstone searching for the best view of the wide open desert.  
     
The flow of conversation is easy and comfortable.  Coming organically with none of the hitches and stutter steps that strangers are likely to contend with.  It’s amazing how intimate a conversation you can have when you’ll never see a person again. (And you’re nearing the bottom of a growler of beer that may have been brewed by monks).  No hang ups or judgment.  Just two people whose currents have diverted from the river to circle one another in an eddy. To whirlpool together for a time before being spun back out to rejoin the main flow. 

     We talk of the masks we all wear.  Different masks for different situations and different people.  The masks we wear in front of our parents. Our significant others. Our family and friends.  We discuss how sometimes the masks slip on so flawlessly we ourselves don't even realize we’re wearing them. Like a long ago chipped tooth, so familiar now your tongue no longer notices it.  
     She tells me about her brother having some sort of illness and how frustrating it is, for both of them, that he is unable to just be himself.  I tell her about my brothers death, a thing I rarely do with anyone.  Upon hearing it, Michelle stops abruptly in her tracks, turns, and locks eyes with me for a moment. Head tilted slightly… really pondering. Then without a word, she hugs me.  One of those deep, full on, all encompassing bear hugs that you just sort of fall into and lose yourself in.  Where with a deep sigh you could go completely limp and still this person would hold you up. It’s the sweetest gesture I’ve been privy to in a long while and I struggle to keep the moisture in my eyes from welling to the breaking point, where it finally rolls over the eyelid and becomes actual tears.  She pulls back, hands still on my shoulders and looks me straight in the face. “I’m sorry,” she says. 

     The honesty and purity of the statement drill down to the marrow of my bones.  I look around and there’s no one. Just me and just her.  Then back to Michelle.  She’s looking deep into me, deciding if I believe her.  This isn’t an act…..or a show for someone else’s benefit. This is just a decent person being compassionate towards another.  This concept weighs heavy on me and and I’m moved by it.  I can FEEL it when she say’s it…”I’m sorry.”  Something in the ether makes me KNOW she means it…..no question.  
“Thank you” I say, because what else can you do when compassion like that, so raw and real, comes your way.  I do what I think is a good job of drying my eyes before Michelle can see they're wet.  The reality is that she's just too sweet of a girl to admit she noticed.  By now it’s getting late in the day and we turn and start our hike back to the cars.  The conversation picking right back up like it never lost any momentum.  
We speak of normalcy, and how it’s really just an idea as opposed to anything concrete.  “Normal” is where you grew up.  Your school kid days insulated in your safe little bubble where nothing could go wrong.  But thinking back now you realize that particular “normal” was unique to you and you alone. Which in reality makes it not very normal at all. And it’s only normal for the kid you once were because that kid didn’t know anything else at the time.  The bubble is your whole world. 
This spirals into a discussion of outward travel as a conduit for inward travel.  Take your old, boring, everyday self and put him in a new place and watch the show.  Be open to anything. Be conscious of your reactions and your feelings and of what triggered them. You’re bound to surprise yourself.  Michelle and I dub the idea The Weight of Desert Solitude.  It’s just a strange occurrence that naturally takes place when you spend time in the desert; and it’s multiplied ten fold when you’re out here alone.  It’s the expanse of the place, I think, that causes one to reflect.  The vast, endlessness of the desert makes you realize how small and insignificant you are and helps you to realize that the only thing we have any control over is ourselves.  

We’re still hiking along and jabbering on about how difficult it is to live in the now.  To be present in the things that you do and the moment you’re in instead of always planning the next one. Constantly searching for the greener grass, the clearer skies you tend to miss whats right in front of you.  It’s here that I finally break out from the conversation and come up for air.  
“I think we should make an attempt to live in the now…right now,” I say looking around; “because I’m not completely sure where we are at the moment.”  When Michelle looks around I can see a moment of panic on her face and I realize she was as deeply consumed by our conversation as I was and neither of us have been paying any attention to the distance or direction we’ve been hiking.  We’ve been walking out, a lot longer than it took to walk in….or so it seems and I think we have missed the cars and parking lot completely.  There is nothing around us.  Just dust, rocks, and the White Palace receding into the distance.  
     “Don’t panic,” I think to myself. Ummmmm….. “High ground!” I yell out as the idea forms somewhere in my animal brain and I take off up the nearest hill.  On my climb I’m really not too worried.  We couldn’t have ventured too far off course.  I’m convinced we parked just on the other side of this hill and simply wandered around the wrong side of it while talking. And if not there then at the very least I’ll be able to see the cars from the top. But when I reach the summit all I see is more desert.  What the Fuck!? How could we walk right passed it?  The first threads of panic begin to take hold and the hairs on my neck stiffen.  

Michelle is trudging up the slope behind me.  “Hmmmm….Still don’t see em!” I yell back to her and take off down the opposite slope and up the next one. I can feel the dread looming in my chest, threatening to pounce, if the cars aren't on the other side of this hill. Stories flash through my head of sun scorched bodies being found in the desert just a half mile or so from camp, or water, or….their Jeep.  You can really fuck yourself if you pick the wrong direction to hike in the desert.  You can fuck yourself even harder if you panic after you realize you’ve gone the wrong direction and do something stupid…..like running up and down the nearest hills with on plan or forethought.  
     I reach the top panting heavily. I pass through a line of scraggly desert trees and finally, off in the distance I can see our cars.  I let out a sigh of relief as I hear Michelle yelling my name over the wind behind me.  “I see em!” I yell as she stumbles through the trees out of breath, hunched over with hands on her knees.  Between puffs of air she manages, “I thought you were a desert illusion!”  I have to laugh because maybe that's all it ever is…..The Weight of Desert Solitude.