do not die today

Do Not Die Today, reads the sign posted at the start of the dusty trailhead.

I glance at my husband, the father of my children,

Who shrugs, as if to say: well, obviously.

We trudge onward, quiet steps crunching rock that litters

A perfect, flat landscape, deceptive in its beauty.

No red flags, though, just arrows spaced out every hundred feet or so.

They mark imperceptible edges, as brown as every shrub and stick.

Simple guides toward piles of heat-bleached boulders,

Placed on the parched ground like God’s playthings. 

I see a solitary tree, angled and crooked in its branches.

Broken arms bent to carry the clusters of leaves, 

tender and spiky at the same time.

A safe haven for small things seeking shelter.

I imagine the pioneers, with their famed migration west,

Who discovered this place, or likely just deemed it theirs.

Who named the odd, twenty-foot trunks in a way that made sense to them:

Hope outstretched to the heavens, praise be to Joshua.

I picture mothers holding babes to their breasts,

Trying to offer seeds of comfort and relief

Despite burning shoulders and aching lower backs,

Facing endless steps ahead on a path with no warnings at all.

But we—we are following the rules.

With our icy water bottles and trusty hats and paper-bound maps.

We will be safe.

And we are, until we’re not.

The footbed fuses with a former stream, and for a moment,

We are lost, never to be found.

Alone, walking nowhere, on accident.

Wait—

I think it’s just—

Were you—

It’s all the same—

I thought we—

No, look—

Okay.

Here it is. 

Here is the way we are supposed to go.

We laugh at our panic, relief bursting skyward.

Press our palms together in supplication.