Exhaustion

We've spent much of the last month shifting boxes and things. Some things were small, delicate and fragile, others were huge cumbersome beasts that threatened to snap us in half if we so much as breathed wrong.

It was the whole reason for this trek into the desert. A wise man, an elder, passed away and his granddaughter (honestly nobody really knows if they were actually related or not, but that's what she was referred to) decided to become a traveler. The village they lived in had died, and she was practically alone so it made sense. No one knew how old the elder was, but he always claimed his great grandfather was from the time before.

With the amount of stuff in the house, I believe it!

Unfortunately, Giselle, his granddaughter, was too attached to so many of the items. Space and weight is severely limited, even in the biggest of caravans. The house she was in was so packed full of huge solid furniture, and delicate glass ornaments (which wouldn't make it through the first mountain pass), there was no way she could keep it all. It all contained memories for her, though, and parting with her grandfather's prized possessions wasn't easy. There were more tears than I ever care to experience again!

Something happened to us while we were attempting to talk her out of keeping absolutely everything: we fell in love with some of the things, too. I was reminded of my childhood, part of a community, having a place I belonged. True, that community had a tendency to change, but I had my bearings, I always knew where I was in relation to the Earth.

Steve never really had that, nor did he ever desire it, until now. Seeing the massive garden and ranch the old man had may have had something to do with it. We spent the cool desert evenings sitting on the back stoop watching the stars.

We've headed inland to find home. A place to settle in. A place to belong. A community to grow.

Strange

The desert is such a strange place to be.

We were following a particularly flat, straight, utterly lifeless stretch of the trail when we spotted a lake just to our left. We are very aware of how little water we have, and it was very tempting to leave the safety of the well traveled path. Luckily, our water stores are still in good shape, and we have been warned of some of the dangers of the desert. Upon closer examination, the "lake" turned out to be an oasis. It's not hard to see how so many travelers get lost and disappear out here chasing phantom liquid.

The creatures here are equally strange. The other morning, just as the sun was breaking over the horizon, a line of large animals wondered by us, then cut across the desert sand keeping in a single file line. They were similar to our horses, but much larger with shaggy, sandy colored coats. The skin on their backs was soft looking, bunched up like they were born with too much skin and muscle and the excess got piled up there for some reason. And their knees were backwards! It was quite an unusual sight. I don't think I've ever seen anything like them.

Steve called them something as unusual as their appearance, something like catamals. Or something. I think the hardships of the desert are getting to me. The hardships of traveling are finally weighing on me. I've been dwelling a lot on my childhood lately. There's a part of me that wants to settle in a place, be part of a base again. There's so much more to see, though! It's a confusing dilemma.

There's still time to experience things. We have this run to finish, and then... Well, the "and then" will come next I suppose.

A new adventure

We've begun a trek across the desert- it’s a long story. So far, it’s been a bit unsettling. There are so many structures out in the middle of nowhere; this area must have been inhabited at some point. Some of the buildings have obviously been burnt out, others just look like they've been reclaimed by the desert after people abandoned them. Who would want to live in the middle of an arid desert? I wonder if this used to be a lush area that slowly dried up and forced people to leave in search of water and fertile ground.

One thing does bother me quite a bit, though. On all of the buildings, there are strange markings. Sometimes they seem to be layered like too many people had messages to write, and not enough space. It does appear to be language of some sort, but there’s no way for us to decipher it. And it’s in all kinds of colors, too! Pinks and blues, and of course black. Some just look like scribbles, but others truly are works of art. I wonder what the civilization was like that lived here.