At night, in the desert, you’re always being watched.
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I can hear them in the brush, scurrying – stopping dead as I near. Rabbits, lizards, snakes, maybe a coyote. God knows what else. Birds, bats – we’re watched from above as well.
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Joni Mitchell once released an album called “The Hissing of Summer Lawns”. I thought about that last night as I stepped out the front door around midnight, a bag of trash in my hand, headed for the curbside. I found myself listening for the hiss of the lawn because there were no other sounds. The breeze that normally rippled through the trees was quite absent. There was no scurrying in the brush. Not even a single cricket. There were only my footsteps, tapping the concrete and echoing down the street – maybe even to the mountains, and that slight rattle and crinkle of the Hefty bag. Like all the random junk inside was jockeying for position before its final ride.
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Then I noticed the sky. It was beautiful. Just a few big fluffy clouds floating in the glow of a perfect full moon. I knew I’d be rushing in to tell the wife and kids. There’d been a sadness in the house all day and I thought they all might get a kick out of the striking night sky. Smile and laugh they all did. Their giggles headed to the mountains to find their dad’s echoing footsteps. The iPhones were out, snapping pictures of the big ol’ moon.
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We were still grinning as we returned to the living room. The girls raced to post their photos on the internet. The smiles were wide until I happened to notice something in the bottom left corner of one of the photos. What exactly is that?
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At night, in the desert, you’re always being watched.
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