Disconnect to reconnect

I took Ruby into the desert to disconnect. No real agenda. No one waiting for me. No signal eventually, which was sort of the point. It wasn’t particularly hot that day. I had the window down, the A/C blowing easy, gravel crunching under the tires, and miles of desert in front of me.

Most of Lucky Strike wasn’t difficult. Some pitch. Some rocks. A little crawling. Point the Bronco up or down something steep and I’m generally fine. It’s the sideways stuff I don’t care for.

Off-camber.

Side-hilling.

Boulder crawling.

Things involving the distinct possibility that Ruby might decide lying on her side would be more comfortable. Still, up until Grassy Spring, it was mostly just a beautiful drive. Around this time I acquired an audience. A couple of donkeys stood nearby looking at Ruby and me with what I can only describe as concern for my decision-making.

What the fuck is he doing there? And why is he going THAT way?

I headed into a small canyon and rounded the corner.

The desert had planned an obstacle course. The road had washed out through the middle. The sides were considerably taller than the trail I’d been happily rolling along on, and the usable line ran for about fifty feet around a corner and across two washouts. There wasn’t much room to reconsider once I was in it.

Backing out was going to be a bitch.

So, just go.

Oh great now there is a boulder in my path.

To clear it, I had to drive Ruby up the side of the embankment, really off-camber, with that rock passing close enough to the metal of the door that I felt the daylight disappear between us. Gravity was making a compelling argument.

For about a minute, I was a stunt car driver. A stunt car driver without a spotter.

Slow.

Feel where Ruby is.

Watch the rock.

Don’t let her tip.

Keep moving.

Seesaw from one corner to the other.

Wait.

Roll.

Touch.

Okay. Move.

Wipe brow.

And then I was through.

The donkeys casually walked over the hill, apparently interested enough to see whether I came out the other side. Nothing to see here. I kept going.

That is the funny thing about driving yourself into somewhere difficult: getting through it once only solves half the problem. Eventually I reached the view I had come for.

I stopped.

No traffic.

No notifications.

No one asking me what I thought we should do next. Just Ruby, the desert and me. And one thought that had been politely waiting for my attention: I have to go back through that.

This time I knew exactly what was coming.

On the way in, I didn’t have time to think about it. I rounded the corner, saw the problem and figured it out. On the way back, I had plenty of time to think about it.

Worse, approaching the boulder from the opposite direction meant I couldn’t see whether Ruby was going to clear it. I had to choose the line first.

Climb the embankment.

Feel the Bronco lean.

Commit.

And only when I was actually passing the boulder would I know whether I had judged it correctly. By the time I could see whether I’d gotten it right, the decision had already been made.

That sounds like life because it is.

I went into the desert because I wanted to disconnect. Instead, with nobody there to tell me where to put the tire, when to move, when to stop or whether I was completely out of my mind, I had to pay attention to myself.

Feel what was happening underneath me.

Make the decision.

Trust it.

And keep going.

Sometimes disconnecting isn’t about getting away from everything. Sometimes it’s how you hear yourself again.