Looking west across dry ground over Furnace Creek to the ridge I asked myself why I don't live under a sky like this all the time - compared to the grayscape wherein I live and work. There is a slippery place when I try to recall the next step of the mind: to the suicide I've always kept in mind for when I get too old to carry a pack on a hike. Maybe it went, if you're not living right, why live? To leave behind the city doesn't seem like so much, but here, under this vast empty sky, breathing the dust, feeling the heat, eyes full of shades of dun and dull green, the most skeletal world, there comes over me a mighty fear of death. The world without me, that's okay; but me without this world, that's unacceptable. I'll never have the guts. That's a revelation. I wondered but here, it seems sure. And when I picture the irreversible act, finger on the trigger, looking into the little round black eye, in that moment with the fear comes an unbearable loneliness. That isolation is always there, sleeping in the Cthullu dark, waiting to open its eye on you.
So when I rode out of there I carried an interesting insight. I'm lonely and afraid to die. It's lucky that I have a sense of humor, for if there's an antidote, that's it.
So when I rode out of there I carried an interesting insight. I'm lonely and afraid to die. It's lucky that I have a sense of humor, for if there's an antidote, that's it.
