Lucky suns and ditches

We plunged zombie-armed into the fabric of night, a homogeneous, untouchable, lightless velvet that cloaked the pines as we groped for a spot to pee, fingers extended, ready to touch god or be obliterated against blackjack trunks.

We returned to the truck with empty bladders and cautious steps until we jammed our digits into steel and slid them along its body feeling for a door handle and the way back to sleep.

A last look at the sky through the window revealed towering silhouettes, pine shaped cut outs in the stars. So many stars. None of them ours.

Our sun is a black pinhole when laid over the biggest and brightest stars, but it’s our star and it would rise soon. Nearby the sprawling Grand Canyon is quiet in the dark. A shelter, a village, an ecosystem, a ditch carved by weather and time, but it’s our ditch, and watching the star rise over the ditch is a site we feel lucky to see. So, we drove out of the forest in twilight to catch the dawn properly from the South Rim.

After the solar rim ritual our pilgrimage took us to another ditch. A multi-component site. An overlooked feat of civil engineering that quietly spares the city from snow melt and monsoon floods. A heroin den or wayward home for some. A bordello, prophet’s tablet or canvas for others. For us, the megalith beneath the street was a shrine to the carve, where we paid tribute in turns, offering sweat for joy until lunch.

Head over heels in the Tunnel of Love.