The weather had changed with a sudden fury. I had been working in the confines of a remote canyon for several days. Working means I had been lollygagging about, looking at plants and animal signs, lying on smooth rocks, out of the wind, warming in the afternoon sun of late winter. I had toiled daily to find the right angle to view this or that, to frame the views of the horizon in the correct light, at the correct time, when the arid ambiance was just right. No, I am not a photographer. I seldom carry a camera. This is just how it is for one whose work is to seek the Great Chihuahuan Desert’s version of the vision.

 Such labor is notably futile. The attempt to catch the desert vision is pointless because one cannot capture it. It exists only in the deranged minds of a few people, generally disgruntled sorts- edgy, disheveled, odd people; misanthropes who may well be dangerous, mostly to themselves. The vision captures these folks when it will. It does not ask permission. A dry prerogative, as it were, one that leaves the lucky victim no say in the matter. You sometimes see the inflicted neophyte standing by the desert roadside, agog, directed and dedicated to staring at nothing anyone else can see, certainly not their companion sitting in the car, impatient, frightened or worse, bored, craving and demanding to return to the fester of civilization.

Yes, such work is hard and pointless but the compensation is high and offers fringe benefits beyond compare. You are paid in colors and scents. The pay stub states you have had solitude lapping into your soul. Silence, badlands’ silence, has ensconced your ears. Your essence has been coated with the joy of coat after coat of desert patina. And you can die in the distant desert without tubes, needles, codes or paperwork. Find a job and an insurance plan to beat that.

I was entrenched in the microcosm of a mineral formation in a short but sheer cliff of a sub-canyon within the canyon. I don’t think I was drooling, but I might have been, the sight was drool worthy as I gaped at the natural artwork. I am not a geologist, not even close. I don’t think of evolutionary process when I look at multicolored streaks of stone in stone -- I think of beauty. It must have been an hour or so that I had been glued to this small formation, enraptured in its intricacies and its textures, lost in its dialogue, when the sun suddenly grew dim and a cold blast of wind almost knocked me sideways. The cloud, dark, boiling, menacing, was pouring over the northern rim of the canyon. I should have sensed it long before.

My camp, if you could call it a camp. I had no tent, chair or table, was about an unsure-footed mile away, at least half an hour in such tricky terrain. I turned in that direction and reaped some big drops of icy precipitation. This was no buena. I needed to get into my pack and retrieve the cheap blue plastic tarp and the rain poncho I had for such occasion. Ok, the poncho was not the real deal as sold in outdoor life magazines. It was a fifty-five gallon liner for a trash barrel. But the big bag makes a fine poncho, much finer than most store bought ones. I had retrieved it out of a barrel at a roadside park. The maintenance folks with an eye to future, often leave two or three such liners under the one in use. I had just borrowed the one in my pack and had planned to return it as I left the area. Besides I was not well geared for the spontaneous trek up the canyon so I was being a good guy by taking the liner and saving a gas eating eighty mile round trip. No harm, no foul and I was being ecologically correct by getting double use from the bag. A flowery description for an act of common theft. Ethics can take on iffy parameters as one seeks the metaphysical good fortunes of thorn and grit.

Purloined or not the liner could do me no good so far away. I looked about. There was a Mexican buckeye growing from a crevice in the cliff. All right for minor shelter from a light sprinkling of rain but not for the downpour that the cloud seemed ready to offer. There was an overhang to the tall pour off about thirty yards up the creek- that would keep me dry unless it turned into a waterfall in a heavy rain and drowned me. There is some sweet irony to being drown in a place of such wonderful and overwhelming dryness but generally only the really blessed are shuffled off the mortal coil in such a winsome manner. To my left was a semi-cave, not very deep, maybe twelve feet long. It was made, I am sure by some frightening event that loosened a solid slab of stone out of the side of the mostly dry creek bed. It may have had four foot of height. It looked inviting and was in such a bend that when the rain came galloping down the creek it might stay dry or mostly dry or a little bit dry. I didn’t have many options.

I removed myself to the hollow without getting soaked. If I had delayed forty-five seconds I would have been wet and cold, not really that good of a thing for someone in a deteriorated state of health. Nature prides itself on being brutally unfair but it had just cut me a break. I was able to sit up, out of the gale, and watch beautiful, much needed water hit equally beautiful dry desert ground, just a short foot away. It was a good deal if the wind didn’t shift.

Be prepared is the Boy Scout motto. Now I was always, in the salad days of my youth, a half assed sort of Boy Scout at best. So it is no surprise that now, in the ever diminishing fourth quarter of this game called life, that I am, to be loyal to the past, usually half-assedly prepared. And so I was on that day. I had some peanut butter crackers in my hiking vest and a ninety-nine cent space blanket secured in a package about the size of a deck of cards. I had used one before- most likely it kept me from succumbing to hypothermia a few years back. It is somewhat like wrapping one’s self in cellophane. It sure as hell wasn’t a blanket and I doubted that it or any of its ilk had been on a NASA or a Ruskie or a People’s Republic of China space mission. But a space blanket it was or so the label declared. I suppose the descriptive of cheap, thin, pissy plastic was in use somewhere else when the thing was invented and named.

As I pulled the space blanket around me I observed the visibility was about a foot or two. The rain was coming down in almost horizontal reams. I liked it. I had food. I was dry and my butt was warm; to ask for anymore would have verged on avariciousness. I could not remember if avarice* was one of the seven deadly sins or not. One of the drawbacks of deep, desert delving is the woeful dearth of a decent reference library to answer such questions lost in the fog of time.

There was a crack in the wall behind me, a few inches to the left of my head. Being of a curious nature I twisted myself around for a better view. It was far too dark to see much but there seemed to be a piece of leather lodged back in the hole a half a foot or so. I started to reach in for it but decided I had best look a bit more carefully or I might anger a spider or mouse. I got my tiny AAA, single-battery flashlight from another vest pocket, the one that housed the compass I had never used in fifteen years and directed the flashlight’s beam into the opening.

Good news! It wasn’t an old leather bag full of Spanish gold, hastily hidden as a soldier of yore had tried to preserve his scalp from an Apache hunting party. No, indeed, it had such lines that indicated that if I could see the entire object that the markings would be diamond shaped. It also was tubular of form and had scales.

I, with some haste, pulled my face away. I couldn’t see the diamond-back rattler’s evil looking triangular head. Which was a good thing for if I had, it was almost certain that instead of merely breathing hard I would have been breathing hard and would have been trying to suck poison from the puncture wounds in my eyebrows- a most difficult task for even the most accomplished contortionist.

I considered my options. My walking stick, Winonna, (what? You don’t name your walking sticks?)was useless in such a confined situation. There was a plethora of rocks that might be converted into weapons but that was if the snake decided to come out of the hole for a bite. There was the sharp knife in my belt. I could unfold it, coyly stick my hand in the hole and sever the reptile in half. Then I recalled the desert lunatic’s version of the Hippocratic oath "FIRST, DON’T SCREW WITH THINGS."

That was the course of wisdom. Leave the damn snake alone. I was the guest here and it would be impolite to molest the natives, I might not be asked back. It was early for snakes to be out yet, still too cool. Most likely there was a bunch of rattlesnakes farther back in the hole waiting for warm weather so repasts could be made of kangaroo rats and doves that landed for drinks in the canyon’s sporadic springs. Apparently the snake was still too winter lethargic to pay much heed to me if I left it the hell alone. A snake in this remote place was far more worthwhile than a human.

That settled, I moved a couple of feet down the wall. It wasn’t as choice of a spot but in concession to diplomacy, it would do.

*Greed is listed by Wikipedia as one of the seven deadly sins. Avarice is often listed as one of the definitions of greed. The other deadly sins, according to St. Gregory the Great are lust, envy, sadness, gluttony, pride and anger. Sadness has generally been replaced on the list by sloth. The author has been up close and personal with all these sins except envy. Were he younger he would consider repairing this gaping hole in his personality by taking an internet course in how to become more effectively envious.

When Irwin Wingo isn’t entrenched in the microcosm of mineral formation he dispatches for Lowbagger.org.