What's On My Mind?

I need to go to the desert and spend a few days. I need to camp in the sand and burn my food over an open fire, then watch the embers glow as I drink coffee sweetened with bourbon for dessert.
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I need to see stars burning in the sky like torches across a lake. I need natural silence, punctuated by wind and rustling animals in the dark outside the firelight. I need to sleep in a tent, and wake up to warm sushine glowing through the fabric wall, with a restless bike outside, snorting and stomping, impatient to hit the trail like a mare who smells water over the next rise.
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I need to ride trails full of rock and snakes and scorpions and cactus, and hope to avoid all of them as much as I hope to see them. I need to climb and sweat, descend and dry, then repeat the process untill my clothing is decorated with concentric growth rings of salt, each ring representing a climb the way that annual rings on a tree stump show the passage of the years.
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I need to fly and crash and pick myself up and keep going, glad that nothing is broken, yet bleeding all the same. I need to be so thirsty that lukewarm water from a plastic reservoir tastes like nectar, and the beer after the ride feels like life, itself, sluicing down my gullet.
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I need to see waterfalls form on the canyon edge as a thunderstorm bellows across the landscape, lightning flashing like God's inspiration. I need to hear the ravens complain about the wind.
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I need to go to the desert and spend a few days.
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