Unencumbered

It was windy, as it often is in the desert, and it was sunny, and there was no one in this obscure corner of California’s Joshua Tree National Park, where I’d gone to clear my head and get the blood flowing in my legs. All in all, it was a typical weekday for me and, I suspect, the Mojave.

I shouldered my daypack and legged it down into a narrow canyon, hit the bottom, then struck cross-country up the sidewall of an arroyo, angling higher through cat’s claw and yucca and creosote. Wearing Carhartt work pants, I was in gross violation of the cardinal rule never to wear cotton when adventuring. On my feet were slip-on Blundstone boots, not sturdy laced hikers or grip-lugged trail runners. I carried no paper map, nor a compass. Nobody knew where I was. The people who write the rules would think me a danger to myself and possibly others who might have to search and rescue me.