We found a little nook, my friend and I. It was hidden up, back, behind, and within the gigantic penile structures made of sand. We settled ourselves on the floor of the little cave, taking off our shoes and digging our feet into the pink dusting there that hadn't been touched since the last load of school kids had been bused in on bright yellow buses. Middle-school-sized footprints ran around the space, light pouring through from a skylight in the rock directly above us. Another small window in the putty-colored rock just next to us revealed the angles of jutting sandstone all around.
We were in there to escape the Desert heat, but mostly we were in there to get stoned. I pulled out a 1/4-inch socket from a socket-wrench set out of my jean cutoffs pocket. The set was part of some crap tool kit I kept for emergencies. My sister, Natalie, had given me that set as a Christmas gift a couple years earlier. The quarter-inch socket was never intact. I always hoped I'd never need it, because the inside of it was coated with resin, and I wasn't ever quite sure how it'd handle removing a bolt on a car tire.
My friend drew out a lighter. The pipe was already loaded. I simultaneously handed it to her and set down my camera. Trish had long red hair, and no red freckles. She was a friend that rarely ever smoked, and my room mate had grown this stuff himself (he'd also made a bong to go with it. He absolutely loved the Home Depot). We'd already hiked Wild Horse Canyon the night before, mumbling "ohms" as we did Yoga along the way-- sounds kind of like hippie esoteric bullshit now, but we were just enjoying ourselves. So the following day, up among the heads of the penile structures and hidden from the goblins and 14-year-old boys, we got thoroughly stoned while comparing scars and bras. Even dumb shit seems to mean more when you're out in the Desert. The days are 30 hours long instead of 24, and you're invested in them from the moment the Sun comes up until you fall asleep underneath the panorama of our galaxy. Within the reach of the Sun in that 30-hour day, time lapse means little. It is all warped and pushed with a thrust into moment after moment, and the buzz and hum-drum of cars and nonsensical commercials are absent in the Desert. So your eyes are wider-- like a Madagascar lemur's eyes. But the memory of white noise leaves one slightly suspicious of even pre-teens. We weren't really camping, this trip though. We'd been sleeping in my car, a Subaru wagon, too lazy to set up our tent (My roomate called that wagon "The Gookaru". Looking back, it seems like it was in poor taste. But at the time, I knew he wasn't a bigot, just too clever with words for his own good).
I peaked out the window next to us. Not much to see--- rock blocking our view. I threw some gum in my mouth and we exited back the way we came, descending down a narrow trail back onto the valley floor of the goblins.
Kids from junior high, probably from some desert suburb an hour or two drive away, giggled and strolled in huddled groups or ran round and round the valley. Their shoes leaving marks looking like moon boots in moon sand. We began to have a game with them, shooting their pictures, darting past the goblin penile sentries. It didn't take too long awhile to realize that the goblin sentries themselves were much more interesting than pubescent astronauts, and that's when we began shooting and cataloging them instead. And then, when we were sick of being stoned and playing games, we left the valley and went away. That day it was easy to get out of the Desert.
