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“I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams…”
~Â Antuine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince
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[/imageframe][separator style_type=”shadow” top_margin=”20″ bottom_margin=”20″ sep_color=”#71b5dd” icon=”” width=”” class=”” id=””][fusion_text]Walking out of the store with full water bottles and sated thirst, the heat descends on me and drenches me. I’m a little nervous about whether my two bottles of water will be enough to make it 30 miles to Aguila, and walk back in to buy a little more liquid to be safe.
Back in the saddle and pedaling down the road, there’s a surrealistic quality to the flat road stretching out in front of me along the hot desert floor. A perfectly straight line of dark asphalt, disappearing into a cloud of shimmering heat far away in the miles ahead of me. Now and then, appearing magically from within this bright amorphous blanket across the road, a car will come toward me on the highway. As a car passes me going in my direction, I watch as they travel away from me and disappear into that magical shimmering cloud.
Saguaro cactus stand sentry throughout the sparse vegetation on both sides of the road, clumps of velvet mesquite in the low spots and washes. Along with the clumps of bright white flowers on the saguaro are holes drilled high up on the bigger ones. I assume the holes are home to the small finch-type birds I see moving around on the plants occasionally. As the afternoon progresses, the beautiful white saguaro flowers wilt, surrendering to the oppressive heat.
Far off on the vast plane of desolation to my left, sand and dust formed by the wind rises into a swirling dance across the desert. The little “storms†remind me of tornadoes, though there’s no “top†to them. They swirl from a narrow point on the ground up into a funnel of sand that rises toward the sky, where the funnel just ends. I suspect the air currents go higher, but the “top†I see is just the highest point that the swirling wind carries the sand from the desert floor before dropping it again, the falling sand creating a haze around the base of the funnels. In the Midwest, we call these dust devils, but I’ve never seen one that remotely approaches the scale of these I’m watching.
Several of these devils spin gracefully across the distant desert. Like a troupe of exotic dancers made of sensual sand, weaving their way across the desert expanse, singing a seductive visual song across the miles, a song made more sensual by the heat pressing all around me. The silence around me adds a bass harmony, completed by the high harmony of the surreal cloud at the end of the distant ribbon of asphalt spitting cars toward me while swallowing the cars moving away from me. I’m reminded again how often mystics seem to wander in the desert.[/fusion_text][/three_fourth][fullwidth backgroundcolor=”” backgroundimage=”” backgroundrepeat=”no-repeat” backgroundposition=”left top” backgroundattachment=”scroll” video_webm=”” video_mp4=”” video_ogv=”” video_preview_image=”” overlay_color=”” overlay_opacity=”0.5″ video_mute=”yes” video_loop=”yes” fade=”no” bordersize=”0px” bordercolor=”” borderstyle=”” paddingtop=”20px” paddingbottom=”20px” paddingleft=”0px” paddingright=”0px” menu_anchor=”” equal_height_columns=”no” hundred_percent=”no” class=”” id=””][one_fourth last=”no” spacing=”yes” background_color=”” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” background_position=”left top” border_size=”0px” border_color=”” border_style=”” padding=”” class=”” id=””][imageframe lightbox=”no” style_type=”dropshadow” bordercolor=”” bordersize=”0px” borderradius=”0″ stylecolor=”” align=”none” link=”http://www.amazon.com/Pilgrim-Wheels-Reflections-Cyclist-Crossing/dp/0982639120/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1425163739&sr=1-1″ linktarget=”_blank” animation_type=”0″ animation_direction=”down” animation_speed=”0.1″ class=”” id=””] 
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Pilgrim Wheels Excerpts
This post is part of a series of posts, representing excerpts from Pilgrim Wheels, a story of a cycling journey across America. Pilgrim Wheels was released on March 1, 2015. Before it’s release date, it had already won the following awards:
- Great Southwest Book Festival – 2nd Place – General Non-Fiction
- LA Book Festival – Honorable Mention – General Non-Fiction
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