The Dunes at Dusk
While Chelsea cleaned their pot and broke down the stove, I organized. Sunglasses went into central consoles, tucked behind packages of tissues and charging cords; guidebooks were crammed (just barely fitting) into glove compartments, where they’d sit unused for the rest of the trip; trash was collected and, as I swore at myself for forgetting to bring a trash bag, stacked unceremoniously at the foot of the passenger seat.
Truthfully, my mind wasn’t on organization. As I worked, I kept glancing up at the Cadiz Dunes, which sat just a short walk away, a straight-shot view interspersed with islands of bush and half-submerged patches of dry grass. Chelsea had made clear that another visit to the dunes wasn’t on their to-do list — a Tylenol headache made that a pretty steep request — but my whole being was shouting at me to bolt out there and pick up the scraps of the glorious summer sunset we’d spent filling up on beans, peppers, and tortillas. If I didn’t, I’d regret it — I knew that much. Recently, I’d become convinced that sunsets are meant to be taken advantage of. Even at home, where my surrounding environment is as familiar and exciting to me as a well-worn, featureless gardening glove, I’d peel my eyes away from my computer, peer out my window at the sliver of revealed color, and curse myself for missing out. That day was different and even more important: I’d invested four hours of driving, twelve hours of brutal heat, and many more hours of planning to be here, at these dunes as the sun was setting. And the show was ending! I’d almost missed it!
At a certain point, there was nothing else to organize. Darkness threatened to close in on us. I had to go. “Do you mind if I head out to the dunes?” I asked Chelsea.
“Yes, totally, go ahead.” At this point, Chelsea had finished cleaning and was leaning against the Sequoia, their hands tucked into the pockets of their Angels sweatshirt.
“You sure?”
“Yep. I’ll be fine.”
“Okay. I’ll be back in… uh… yeah.” I tossed them the headlamp and keys, scanned the car one last time, and took off running.
As I hustled along, building to an even, raspy pant, I took in the day on its deathbed. Stunning bands of yellow, orange, and pink still grew amidst the rocky, violet peaks decorating the horizon to the east, and the dunes all around me — quiet, sullen, otherworldly — glowed with an inner golden light in response. From the edge of the dunes, a humble desert environment of rocks, dirt, and low brush seemed to go on forever. The prevailing feeling was of darkness — of submarine blues and navy-rich purples — but I could see everything; the full moon illuminated every feature. After a few minutes, I came to feel drunk on the ridiculousness of the world. I laughed, and the sound buried itself into the cotton of the desert, never to be heard by anyone.
When I arrived at a flat section between two inclines, with a cavernous bowl of sand to my left and a bush-coated vista to my right, I made a spur-of-the-moment decision and paused to take off my shoes, then my socks. The reward was instant: cool sand spilled over my toes, and I buried my feet a few inches underneath as I stacked the shoes next to each other. Suddenly, a surprising idea popped into my head. Then I surprised myself even more by considering it.
I’ve never been a dedicated fan of my body. Since I was a kid, I’ve thought it was too big — bulky, swollen and disproportionate, too soft in parts where I feel like it shouldn’t be. Even though I work out constantly nowadays, my fear of bigness maintains its stubborn chokehold on my self-image. When I wear hats, I have to make sure they’re big enough to compensate for the size of my body. When I paste my arms to my torso, I watch the fat clinging to my bones with horror. When I’m shirtless and sitting down, I can’t look at my belly, spilling over itself in thick folds towards my crotch, without wishing I could take a buzzsaw and clear away the excess. It’s all ridiculous, of course. Big does not equal unhealthy — hell, I’m not even that big! But it’s no use. In my mind, a thinner, smaller, and more muscled version of myself permanently lingers in the wings, muttering words just out of earshot, impossible to make out but impossible to ignore.
Out here, though, I reasoned, the only thing I had to look at was my shadow. So I lost the rest of my clothes and piled them in a heap under my shoes, tucking in every loose corner so that the wind had nothing to pull at. Then I stood and ran my hands through my hair. Looked down. The light made parts of me swell, filled with blinding white moonlight. I saw my pale legs severed from my tan calves and arms, as if by blood flow. An unappealing sight. So I focused on my hands. Even in the glow of the full moon, I could see them painted with dirt from a long day in the desert, could make out the freckles and scars and oddities I’ve come to know so well. The sides and tips of them glinted, ghostlike. At least this part of me felt normal.
When I started walking again, I wondered if I would ever stop. The wind racing along the tops of the dunes sent tiny, breathlike spurts of sand buffeting into the air every few seconds, wedging themselves into the not-normally-present crooks of my body and tickling its more delicate components. When I heard it whoosh, I would shield my eyes for a few seconds, but in every other regard I opened myself to it, desiring to become part of the landscape, to linger there forever and let the sand and the wind and the sun scrub away every identifying detail or imperfection. In time, as I marched uphill to the highest point of the dunes in my birthday suit, I felt simultaneously as if I were stuck in a sensory deprivation tank and buried in the crowd of a massive concert: unimportant, surely, in the light of the grandness of the world, and yet so justifiably and stupidly important; a spectator to the creation of the universe and yet two words in a volume of books in an infinite library.
When I reached the top, the sunset had died down to a weak glimmer of yellow. I sat, ran my hands across my body, and jumped as a sob that I didn’t realize had been building made its presence known in my chest. But then, to my surprise, I didn’t cry. As I looked out over miles and miles of near-emptiness, all I felt was an almost abrasive calm. In the constant suffering of being in the outdoors — the physical discomfort, the logistical difficulty, the emotional toll taken by being away from home for so long — these are the moments one seeks out: when all the pain recedes, as a tide does, and reveals a trip’s true purpose. And that purpose is always to forget oneself. To forget how one’s body makes them feel; to forget the hours of planning, the constant feeling of disorganization, and the debilitating difficulty of being away from home; to scatter any commitments other than eating, sleeping, and keeping one’s things in order to the wind for just an instant. It’s an illusion, of course — even as I sat atop the dunes, buck-naked and contemplating the universe, I was thinking of the required duties (sleeping bags, tarps, water bottles) that lay ahead — but it’s the most important illusion in the world. Ironically, in going to a place where we’re forced to think about the most basic processes of survival, we learn to live.
After about fifteen minutes, I stood up, brushed myself off, and began walking down the dunes again. It was now truly nighttime; I’d seen the show, and the ushers were moving us to the exits. In the near-darkness, I spotted my clothes — a dim, fuzzy stack of belongings in a sea of sand — and put them back on, thus rejoining the world.
