generally, the less said about the desert the better. deserts are not to be enjoyed during the day, not even in the fall, when "liveable" is a reasonable descriptor. suffice it to say that i remember something about people eating prickly pear pads, that you can scrape spines off with a flat rock, and that shade is your friend.
but the shack was a surprise. who lives in a place like this? the dog and the shotgun made sense, it was the shack itself i couldn't quite get over. are there really hermits? it didn't help that we didn't share a language. that was unfortunate. and i couldn't really figure out what it was that he was speaking-- not even a language family: nothing. however, for a hermit he was surprisingly reasonable. i guess that while you may have left society for a reason, after a while you sort of get over it. and he must have been at least sixty, which tends to mellow you out.
trust really should have been one of my issues, but as thirsty as i was i kind of only has that one issue. water was a universal language and after rather more than my share of his sitting on the little patch of hardened dirt that served as his porch i was able to take stock of my new world. the dog, it turns out, was also fairly old and arthritic and, strangely, fat. i scratched her belly, which she rolled up at me, lolling her tongue. this, too, is a universal language. we smiled at each other and watched the afternoon sun slide down the sky.
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