Endless Endless

Begin with the sunset.
     It is red. A hue of red found more commonly in fantasy stories. A color that doesn't really exist, until you see it yourself from the side of highway 66 in New Mexico. As the sun disappears it leaves in its wake red cursive strewn across the lower sky, portent but hardly legible.
     I woke up near the Grand Canyon for the last time. Breakfast eggs were accompanied by homemade biscuits and gravy. We packed up and shipped off. Flagstaff is the small town that the surrounding small towners visit. The coffee shop we stopped at belonged in a culturally rich city such as San Francisco or New York and I felt both out of place and at home. There was a new brand of hipsters there. These held onto the hippy part of the word and had a dirty biker native American feel. Somehow, we managed to also eat passable Greek food.
     We drove. Driving has become less a choir or boring interim. It feels more natural and Dave and I have immersed ourselves in the system. Despite our familiarity with the task, we weren't going to make it in time to our next destination, Santa Fe, New Mexico. We phoned the people we were supposed to camp with and meditated another day long venture.
     Night driving in rural areas is more absolute than its urban counterpart. Once the moon, or lately lack of moon, takes over, the world changes dimensions. The once expansive landscape where an eye can be lost in a glance is reduced to about the vicinity of one's vehicle and the occasional retro reflective sign. This produces Indian ink darkness and a milky bright sky. The stars are everywhere above the horizon instead of just up. They can be seen while peering straight ahead.
     Due to this visual and mental fog, I had no concept of my surroundings except in relation to what I had seen during sunset. We arrived in what signs told was forest but I had qualms against camping. I'm still uncomfortable with the idea of insects on my skin. I convinced Dave to push deeper into the night to Roswell, our next point of interest.
     The sky between us and Roswell, New Mexico was lightning. Far off thunderheads rumbled and glowed like a faulty night light. My predisposition toward the famously kitsch town was of particular eeriness. I'm not convinced in the slightest of the existence of extraterrestrials but a place can take on extra sensual properties entirely through word of mouth. It wasn't a fear I felt, rather a readiness for something unexpected. The hour of day may be in part blamed, but my impression of the town upon entry neared disappointment. It was small and scarce.
     Endless Lakes. Another example of how the name or reputation of a place can affect perception. This was the only nearby camp site and our place of repose. The site seemed empty. Endless lakes, endless sky, endless. All we could see while driving were pools of black water that rivaled the sky in color. The road seemed to be endless and the campsite areas were hidden by the mere suggestion of the site's name.
     We parked the car on what felt like the side of a dirt road. Dave, rugged and determined, vanished into darkness to sleep under the stars. He returned as I was calculatedly hunting mosquitos that were let into the car, my chosen place of rest. He reported that his skin had been ambushed by the insects and could no longer persist.
     It was a hot night but we left the windows to their erect vigil so that our only defense against the blood hungry bugs remained in place. I perspired more than slept. At some unknown hour, a truck's headlights pierced our windows. My body locked and my eyes followed the truck. It parked directly behind us on the opposite side of the dirt road. I felt like my heart could be the still running engine of the truck. Two men exited the large thing and began walking toward our dead car. They stopped and had some sort of interaction in the glow of their rear lights. I couldn't tell what they were talking about nor which direction they were looking for they were silhouettes against the red. After a seemingly endless period, the dark beings walked back to their respective places in the cab. I lowered the hand that hovered over Dave's shoulder.
     Sweating from the musty heat of breathing bodies and my sympathetic nervous system, I sat wide eyed in the darkness. An endless, sleepless night.