Sand filled my sneakers. It was unavoidable. The holes were too big. As I lifted my feet to continue the trudge, some sand flopped out of the heels in huge arcing sprays.; but more always entered through the toes.
It was cloudy. A dark cloudy, as if it were to rain. But this was the desert and it didn’t rain in the desert, ever.
The sand hill was massive, wretchedly massive; and the slope steepened every inch of the way. I couldn’t see the peak, the place where I could truly relax once and for all. It must have been covered by the clouds. Flopping down in the sand, I rested again.
I faced downhill with my knees hugged up against my chest, and I could see my tracks; they trailed off and out of sight where the horizon met the steel-gray sky. I tried to think of the past, to remember the things that had gotten me to this point. But I only saw the tracks, the marks merely symbols of places I had been.
Reluctantly, I turned my shoulders and neck to the right to peer at the obstacle ahead. Sand; a complete wall of sand that inclined steeper and steeper, and steeper and steeper, then disappeared into the sheet of gray.
