Backpacking in Big Bend National Park – being revived

So we're tramping around Big Bend National Park (see previous post), David and Clark (both architects) and me (a single mom in grad school, working 2 part-time jobs). The second day, I could tell I was getting tired. The "new" had worn off, a desert mountain was a desert mountain; I was very hot, sweaty and dirty – no bath. My shoes were heavy, I had a slight sunburn; and, to conserve water, instead of spitting my toothpaste water, I was swallowing it. All glamour was gone. Mindtalk: "I really should have been studying. One more day, all I had to do was gut it out one more day" … arrggghhhh.

That point in time is a familiar place for me. What started out as fun or a good idea eventually got 'hard' – not fun. And my basic reaction is to "gut it out" … endure it, wait for it to pass, numb out in order to conserve energy, exist through the rest of the ordeal until I can be released from this current smushed-down-suffering.

And sometimes, that's the way it happens, the endurance test eventually ends. And sometimes, like that time in Big Bend, something happens (a lifeshock) that snaps me out of my apathetic state. In this case, it was a field of cacti full of flowers in the middle of huge mounds of dirt and rocks. It was an unexpected, stunning sight – splashes of bright crimson in a brown, ocher, gray world.

Tons of pictures later, we sat down in this field of flowering cacti, toasted each other with our canteens, appreciating having been gifted with another of nature's glories.

My suspicion is that this lifeshock was the latest in a whole series of lifeshocks that I failed to recognize earlier.