Emptying out

Through midday, the desert sun was bold and laid its light evenly across the valley. Maybe it was my fatigue, but in the flat light, the tin-roof restaurant ahead of us looked like a toy.

Savannah pulled hard on the leash. We’d been walking for three days to reach this restaurant - Savannah was as eager for shade as I was.

I parked the cart outside the stone wall bordering the patio, pushed through the wooden saloon doors, then tied Savannah to a table and poured her a bowl of water.

“I’ll be right back, babe.”

Inside, the thick stone walls kept the restaurant cool. The concrete floor, painted the color of moss, seemed to grow outward by the light of the entrance while a few long cracks reached into the restaurant like roots. Lining the walls were white plastic tables and red plastic chairs. A dozen or so flies circled near the ceiling. At the far end, the wall and ceiling above the kitchen door was stained black from smoke.

To my left, three truckers bent over their plates. Their hats sat in a pile at the end of the table and while I stood near the entrance, one of the men nodded to me before returning his focus to pulling apart the oily chicken thigh before him. The air smelled of chicken soup.

A woman, tall and slight, with pinched-high cheekbones and skin weathered from the desert, wore an olive-green apron and came by the table of truckers to set down a glass pitcher of limonada. I watched the pulp drift down while the woman drifted to me in the same easy manner. 

“Do you have a menu?” I asked.

“We have chicken, fish, rice, beans, and soup.”

“Chicken is good. A plate of rice and beans and chicken, thank you. And soup also, please. Can I sit outside?”

“Of course.”

“And can I have that as well?” I pointed to the pitcher of limonada the truckers were pouring.

“A glass or a pitcher?”

“A pitcher. I have much thirst. Do you have ice?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

“You came on bike?”

“On foot.”

“From where?”

“In Chile, from Arica, but I walked from The United States.”

The woman let out a soft click. “Sit yourself.” She nodded to the door.

Outside I took a seat facing the street and Savannah curled beneath the table and went to sleep. The concrete was cool and so was the shade. A warm breeze ran over the low wall. The napkins pressed beneath the salt and pepper flickered. Savannah was the same color as the land.

Across the Pan-American, a plastic playground offered the only notable color. The slide and swings were bordered by pale saplings that tilted south from the constant wind and next to the playground was a white and green municipal building pressed into the sand like a brick. A crest of two crossed rifles marked the entrance, but otherwise, the building was undecorated. The modesty of it was a good fit for the valley. Behind the building, a mountain of sand teetered like a growing tsunami. A pale and cloudless sky was farther above. In either direction, this outpost of a dozen buildings was the only civilization for a hundred and twenty kilometers.

The desert here transitioned from three thousand-foot plateaus to sea-level valleys. The plateaus were long and the only shelter on them was the occasional concrete bus stops. The bus stops flagged a road leading to a copper or lithium mine buried in the Andes. Whenever I came to one of those bus stops, I took a nap - it was the only shade not of my making to be had. On the previous plateau, Savannah and I walked sixty miles without finding a single structure to rest at. But the longer a man is without something, the greater the satisfaction he derives once he receives it. As I took in the first meaningful shade I had in three days, a profound relief crawled into me. I basked in the shade as a snake basks in the sun.

Only the waitress setting a pitcher of limonada on the table was sufficient to break me from my estivating stillness.

“Thanks,” I said.

I poured a glass and drank it in one go. The sweetness rushed to my head and down my neck. I poured another glass and finished it as quickly as the first. By the time my food came out my stomach was rumbling and the pitcher was empty.

“Can I have another?”

“Of course.”

I dug into the food. There was no need to take a meditative approach to find satisfaction in the simple meal, all the exercise and all the bland peanut butter jellies I’d eaten over the past few days did the work for me.

Savannah perked up at the smell of chicken. She poked her snout beneath the armrest and I pulled apart the chicken breast to give her the bone. She crushed through it in a few seconds.

“That’s it for now, baby. That’s all there is.”

She glanced away, then she lay on her side to take in the cool concrete.

The three truckers stepped out of the restaurant and the man that nodded to me before stopped at the saloon doors and turned to me. He moved haltingly, as though his joints were rusted gears. His beard was mottled with gray, and black hair fanned out from beneath his faded baseball cap. He was someone’s grandfather, or perhaps someone’s great-grandfather. The softening a man gets from holding successive generations of potential radiated off him.

“You’re the walker. I’ve seen you for weeks to the north on the road.”

“You’re driving to Lima?”

“Ilo. You passed there, no?”

“I stayed there for a night. Beautiful place. The colors on the ocean were fantastic. And good ceviche in the market. I wanted to stay more time.”

“It used to be a big port, but now they mine copper in the mountains.”

“Like the rest.”

“Yes. Where are you going?”

“Well, I have cousins in Uruguay so I’m walking there, but for the moment I’m walking to San Pedro de Atacama.”

“And over the mountains?”

“That’s the idea.”

“The altitude is dangerous. It’s cold there.”

“You have passed there?”

“You can only pass in the summer. There’s much snow in the winter.”

“But it’s summer now, no?”

“From what I’ve heard.”

“There’s nothing there, yes? Without water, without towns?”

“Without everything. But the desert to San Pedro is dangerous too. You need much water, much food. There’s nothing here. There are drivers if you need help, but don’t think that the desert is easy.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Well, take care of yourself, crazy.”

“Thanks. And you.”

“Good luck. Take care of him too.” He gestured to Savannah.

“Of course. Enjoy the drive, brother.”

The man held up a hand. The other two truckers stood on the opposite side of the wall. They nodded and turned. A few minutes later their eighteen-wheelers roared to life and rumbled out of the valley. The warm breeze poured across the outpost and again it was quiet. Savannah was asleep at my feet. On the concrete by her nose was a triangle of perspiration left by her breath.

After I finished the food and the second pitcher of limonada the waitress came to take my plate.

“It was fantastic. How much do I owe?” I asked.

“Already it’s paid.”

“Already it’s paid?”

“Yes, the man has paid for you.”

“Good man.”

“Yes, he’s always here.”

It wasn’t customary to leave tips in Chile, but I left a couple of dollars worth of pesos anyway - a purple bill beneath the empty glass.

Savannah and I returned to the sun. I pushed our cart down the street to a market. I bought twelve liters of water, bread, jam, a liter of ultra-high-temperature milk, lemon cakes, five bars of chocolate, raisins, a loose bag of peanuts, and two kilograms of dog food. I stuffed it all into my cart. I would have bought pasta, but I knew I’d have no water to spare. The next town was three days away.

As I pushed the cart forward, Savannah trotted eagerly beside it. Her hair was short; I had her trimmed and pampered in Lima. But Lima was a month ago and neither of us was ever particularly clean anymore. A mixture of sand and sweat stayed stuck to my skin. And Savannah, besides being so dirty that whenever I patted her a plume of dust wafted into the air, had a streak of fish tar on her side from rolling in a pile of liquified fish parts three weeks earlier.

Cuya disappeared as the road wove between the plateaus. The valley tightened like a corset and the sand and rock walls beside us streaked skyward like palisades. As the valley pinched, the wind strengthened. Soon it was raging against us.

Savannah moved so she was behind the cart with her head pressed against the back basket. I put on my sunglasses, pulled down my hat, and tucked my chin to shield my eyes.

Each step forward was challenged by the wind. Whenever a truck passed it carried a vortex on its tail which caused me to brace as the gust struck my chest.

“What a battle,” I said to Savannah after a while.

Savannah didn’t mind though. Her legs scurried. Her tail curled high. She’d grown up doing this. She’d come of age in the heat of Texas and Mexico. What was a little wind to a professional?

For two hours the wind blew against us. The valley was smattered with dark stones, but none were large enough to take shelter against. In the noise of the wind, I couldn’t think. It wasn’t until the valley widened that the wind died and I was able to relax.

A little farther on our path forked. To the left, shrubs and short trees followed a dry riverbed. To the right, a low bridge stretched over that same riverbed, then rose gradually to the plateau.

The riverbed, bordered as it was with a spattering of shrubs and trees, was as good a place to sleep as I was likely to find. To climb out of the valley and reach the plateau would take two hours, and even if I wanted to make that climb before nightfall, it was unlikely there would be anything up there to take shelter within or beside - though any wind usually faded at night.

I turned off the road and unhooked Savannah’s leash. She ran ahead. I navigated the cart between the thorny shrubs to reach the foot-deep riverbed. I followed the riverbed until finding a bend where the land was flat and shrubs with olive-colored leaves curtained us from the road. After sitting out Savannah’s food and water, I got on my knees to search the area for thorns. I picked up a few and I tossed them to the side. Then I spread my tarp and sat against the wheel of my cart.

A truck engine rumbled as a driver shifted gears to climb out of the valley. The sound was far off and not bothersome. Soon it was quiet. A finch swept across the riverbed, moving from one delicate branch to another. The sun was behind the plateau. It set the valley in a searing light; reds and oranges amplified by the sand.

For a moment, fatigue dulled my senses; colors bled, edges blurred, and sounds were muted. My body ached and the ache pulled on the stream of time until past and future were layered to a single watercolor - each flight of the finch, another stroke of the brush - Lianna in her green shorts; Britny’s cheeks stained with mascara; Fitz and I walking to school; my mom painting in her studio; my dad in Hawai’i at twenty-two, me on a tarp in Nicaragua, Savannah huddled in the forests of Ecuador and Savannah beside me now.

How did she do it? She never slowed. She never complained. Surely, she had stomach cramps and muscle pains the same as myself, and yet not once did demand a break. Each day she held herself with regal composure.

“Come here, baby.”

Savannah trotted over and her tail wagged erratic and low as though she’d never been taught how to do it properly. She pressed her head against my chest and I rubbed her hind legs firmly with my palms.

“You stink, chica.”

She pressed her head against me more firmly.

“Yeah, you stink. Had to roll in that fish, didn’t you? Come here.”

I pulled her side closer and sniffed the black streak there. I picked at the fish tar and she yelped and jumped back.

“Oh, I’m sorry, baby. Come here.”

I kissed her forehead.

“It’s all right. It’ll fall off eventually.”

I gave her a pat on the side.

Savannah wandered off to explore. I inflated my sleeping pad, unfurled my sleeping bag, withdrew my plastic food crate, and made myself a few peanut butter jelly sandwiches. When I was younger I ate peanut butter jelly sandwiches every day for lunch, now I was eating them every day for dinner. I didn’t mind then and I didn’t mind now.

My father always said about me, “You don’t live to eat, you eat to live.”

Oddly, that was a trait I likely picked up from him despite him being a man who more closely personified the live-to-eat character trait. He enjoyed food as much as anyone, but that characteristic was secondary to his instinctive ability to parse what really matters in life. As the youngest of nine, the notion of gaining wealth through possessions quickly atrophied in him. In his early twenties, he lived on the south point of Hawaiʻi under a tarp for three years and harpooned fish for food. During my growing up his incidental reflections (he did little purposeful reflection) always led to the lesson that happiness is found within. And over time, the light of his thinking bleached my own.

Thanks to him I needed very little to be happy - enough food and water, a companion, and a good adventure.

When night fell, Savannah dug a hole in the sand and curled inside. I read Life and Death in the Andes. After a few chapters the darkness caught up to me and I grew tired. I put away my Kindle and turned on my back.

The stars were out, as they always were in the Atacama, but in the valley, they weren’t as impressive as on the plateau. There were thousands of stars visible, but the bush bent over me and the mountains of sand around us cut them off at the edges.

Soon I turned on my side. I watched Savannah’s chest rise and fall as she slept and a few minutes later I was asleep as well.

In the morning a sharp pain at the center of my lower lip woke me. I touched my finger to it and found my lip had split open - I’d forgotten to apply lip balm before I went to sleep. Not only was the Atacama the oldest desert in the world, it was the driest as well. It’s believed there are sections of the Atacama that haven’t seen rain in a thousand years. And though the median humidity is about thirty percent, the humidity at night in most of the desert approaches zero.

I drank a good amount of water, dabbed Neosporin on my lip, and noticed the lines on the back of my hands were parched white and a cuticle was split and bleeding as well.

Savannah eyed me while I shuffled around but didn’t climb out of her self-made bed. It was only once I looked at her that her tail began drumming the ground. She rolled on her side and pawed at the air and I went over to her and rubbed her belly.

“Good morning, baby.”

The pre-dawn air had a nip to it so I slipped back into my sleeping back. And since the days were thirteen hours long, fifteen including dawn and dusk, I was in no rush to pack. I boiled water for coffee then once the water was boiled I turned off the gas and tapped a bit of Nescafé into my aluminum mug and poured the water over it and let the coffee sit.

There were more finches. Half a dozen flitted across the riverbed. They were the only wildlife I’d seen in the Atacama. There were hares and mice and lizards in the desert too, but none that I had seen.

After finishing my coffee and eating two granola bars with peanut butter, I packed the cart, and Savannah and I returned to the Pan-American.

We crossed the bridge and began our ascent.

A few trucks rumbled into the valley in low gear. One shuttered to a stop beside us and a man in a Yankees cap peered out the passenger window.

“My friend!”

I stopped at the door and looked up.

“For you, my friend.”

He passed me a sleeve of crackers and a joint which he held in place on the crackers with his thumb. I laughed and considered telling the man that I didn’t smoke, but instead took what he offered.

“Thanks, my friend. Everything helps.”

The man had to yell over his engine. “The desert is boring, friend!” He touched pinched fingers to his lips. “But a little music helps!”

“Thanks.”

He gave me a thumbs-up. “Good luck, my friend!”

I put the crackers in the back basket of my cart and sat the joint in the top pocket of my backpack.

An hour later the road flattened as Savannah and I reached the plateau. A lonely restaurant was to the right that I hadn’t seen on the map. Inside, I had fried eggs and potatoes and another cup of coffee. I drank a liter of water and bought another to bring with me.

The rest of the day was empty. The highway shot like a black arrow to the horizon. I listened to podcasts and music and when the sun was setting I turned into the desert.

Somewhere out there I laid my tarp. I ate more peanut butter jellies and watched the sun pull the desert’s luminous colors beyond the ocean. The sky was blue, then it was orange, then red, then deep blue, then purple, then finally the sheets of color were off and the world was black.

In the darkness, the stars broke through; at first by the dozen then by the thousand.

To let in as much light as possible, I laid down and kept my eyes relaxed and unfocused. New stars broke through the black until the only break in them was the cloudy and purple Milky Way tearing open the sky. Near the top of the tear, stars poured through in a profuse multitude. At other sections, there was a cadaverous black. And at the edges of this incomprehensible tear was an argent lining which highlighted the blacks and blues and accentuated the storm of stars raining down.

Soon there were so many stars that I felt the weight of them on my chest. They hinted at truths too vast for me to comprehend. My breath became short. My heart climbed into my throat.

A year and a half of walking had passed; five months in the desert. My mind was beginning to reflect the landscape around me. My thoughts, like once great stones, were resolved to dust by the erosion of walking and thinking. And now, below the stars, I realized I had nothing left to turn over, I had thought all the thoughts; I’d come to peace with my choices, my errors, my idiosyncrasies, and the forces far beyond me.

And just like when I was fourteen and trying to imagine death, if I stayed still long enough, I lost the feeling of my body altogether. In those moments, the stars pressed their mightiest, beyond the physical and against my soul. They were annihilation. They pulverized my ego. They shredded the self. Each moment a new star appeared and each new star came from further in the past than every other.

You are nothing, they said.

You are nothing.

It wasn’t antagonization. It was fact.

What pathetic sliver of time did I occupy compared to the light of the stars? Or compared to the darkness between them? What was twenty-seven years beside millions? How many lives had ended under the stars’ indifference? And how many lives were yet to come before the light of stars faded? How quickly would I be forgotten? How quickly would all those who remembered me forgotten? It was only a moment. Everything would be over and forgotten in only a moment.