Underwood Canyon – 3/8

The trail climbed without remorse, rising to the top of the Santa Teresas to peer out over the all the ragged land I’d fought through yesterday.

The climb left my legs rubbery and my lungs struggling in the thin air. I slid out to the cliff’s edge and stared down and the jumbled rocks of Holdout trying to trace my path through them.

The mountains had turned my head somehow and I had trouble orienting myself among the spires and domes. It all looked familiar and foreign at the same time, but I could not mistake my future. 

The Pinaleños rose in the distance, giant mountains swallowing up the horizon, three thousand feet higher, snow-capped, and waiting across a low sea of desert.

I stared at the crescent of white smiling at me from the distant peaks and thought of what I told my mom when she asked if there was a way to check if there still snow on the tall mountains.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “There or not there, I’m in it either way.”