Into the desert

You are walking through a vast, vast desert. The unmarked and unvaried sand stretches in front of you, featureless as far as the eye can see. Wind whisks occasional clouds of sand across the surface, and its undulating whistle is the only sound you hear. You have been walking this desert for a long time, and you will walk it, whether you like or not, for as long as it takes. Perhaps you have always been trudging across these sands. Perhaps you will always be walking across this desert. The gritty sand burns your feet, and the wind whips sand into your eyes and chafes your face, your legs, whatever skin is exposed. Your legs ache with the necessity of walking, and slip on the sand, but you cannot stop. You can never stop. Perhaps you will always be walking this desert. Your thirst is great, and the heat during the day is as unbearable as the cold of the night, you are constantly lured by the possibility of an oasis, the hope that one day you will reach the other side, and be doomed no more to walk the desert alone.

Sometimes in the distance you think you see an oasis, or opulent palaces with cool shady balconies, deep sparkling pools, laughing company and soft plush carpets into which your feet could sink in blessed relief. But when you reach these places, they are proved to be mirages, and your feet sink only into the gritty sand you know so well.

Once, twice, the past blurs together, but perhaps many times, you have come across a real oasis. Sometimes you could tell from the outset that this was all it was, and sometimes you allowed yourself to hope that you had reached the end of your travels. But always, in the end, your endless walking brings you out the other side of these oases, and you have had perforce to carry on, out into the scorching sun, away from the soft muds and grasses by which your feet had been so fleetingly made glad.

One day, one day otherwise as like any other as every grain of the endless sand is like any other, you see a mirage in the distance. You are always wary, for you have been tempted by mirages before, and as often been betrayed by them into an ever more despairing acceptance that your desert is without mercy and without end. Nonetheless, you approach the mirage, and it does not waver.

A vast oasis reveals itself as you draw closer, and as you step into the balmy shade of the first of many trees, you allow yourself to hope. Perhaps, you think to yourself, in a thought so daring that you hardly acknowledge it, a hope so great that you can harldy bring yourself to hope it, perhaps this is the end of the desert after all. Perhaps I have slipped on my last drift of sand, perhaps I have slithered down my last searing, soaring, steep dune. Perhaps I am safe now.

You walk through this oasis, delighting in the company of the small desert animals who gather around the pools of water, delighting in the water itself, slaking your unending thirst, delighting in the shade at noon, and the warmth at night, and the song of birds. Even your raw and sunburned skin is recovering here, out of the fury of the sun and the cruelty of the wind. Always, of course, you walk onward, praying that every step is taking your further from that desert to which you hope never to return.

Sometimes, there are rocks on the floor of the oasis, and you trip, or graze your feet and hands. Betimes the water seems to attract insects, and you are bitten and find yourself uncomfortable and itchy, but no matter, you are grateful for the shade, grateful not to climb those Sisyphean dunes, grateful for the variation the vegetation provides to an eye wearied by the unending sameness of the desert. By and by you notice that there are patches of sand among the grass, but you do not want to think about this. You begin to notice larger areas of sunlight between the trees, but you must walk on, and perhaps, you think, this is what the landscape is like, out of the desert.

Soon you notice that the song of the birds has ceased, that the clear water has become muddied, and the stretches of sand between patches of grass are wider than the areas of grass themselves, and a great, familiar fear rises in your breast, threatening almost to choke you. You close your eyes to these signs, and walk, heedless on, as you must.

Eventually, inevitably, your fears are realised, and you reach the edge of the oasis. This was not the edge of the desert, this was never going to be the end of your trudging, only your desperate hope allowed you to believe it might be so. You step out of the shade and into the blast of the sun. The wind whips sand against your side, excoriating you not-quite healed skin. Your feet slip on gritty sand, and the only sound is the maudlin sussuration of the wind.

You are walking through a vast, vast desert. The unmarked and unvaried sand stretches in front of you, featureless as far as the eye can see. You have been walking this desert for a long time, and you will walk it, whether you like or not, for as long as it takes. Perhaps you have always been trudging across these sands. Perhaps you will always be walking across this desert.