I love moments that feel transcendent of time and space. I think that’s why I like planes, and boats, so much. You’re not touching the ground, not really. You’re separate on your own sort of wavelength without time.
As I sat on our small plane to the Atacama Desert, the moon was clear and bright against a vivid blue daytime sky stretching over mountains as far as the eyes could see, next to a huge lagoon and a patch of desert beyond the foothills. It was unreal.
I absolutely love flying. Going to places that you couldn’t reach by bus or car, places just a little further out of reach, it’s incredible.
The desert is kind of like the ocean, this mass surrounding us that lets you see the sky in full and lets you know that there is so much out there beyond us. Driving through the Atacama Desert in the dark felt a little like sitting on the back deck of the ship at night, watching this emptiness around me swallow the night while providing this sort of comfort that can only be found in spaces with this void-like quality. Thinking about how I was sitting on a bus in the driest place on earth and that this is just life, it’s unfathomable.
These uninhabited spaces that host us for a while but are never truly ours, they belong to more than we could ever be. These spaces are as wide as the sky and as tangible as the stars as they allow us to pass through their magnitude, but we can never truly stay.
Our time began with sand boarding death valley for a morning, hiking the dunes allowed us moments of awe at where in the world we were before we took the 15 second trip back down only to start again.
It found us biking around the town in front of this incredible volcano on our own just before sunset- the time of day where things feel a little calmer, more still. It led us into one of the most shockingly vivid sunsets that has ever surrounded me, I could see it every way I turned.
We saw the rainbow valley and the valley of the moon all in a day, places out of a National Geographic magazine that it was a wonder to set foot in. Another sunset beyond description to prove that the desert, specifically Atacama, is a place full of life and vibrancy. The hostel which provided us a common area outside to drink wine and talk about our lives, before moving into a room to keep talking long after the outside closed.
After days of adventure, a morning of exploring the town proved successful when I finally bought some pants from Chile- worth the wait, no doubt.
This was one of those weekends you want to hold on to. Not just for the pictures or the stories, but the feeling of standing in a desert thats name has been spoken to you so many times in so many places for so many reasons and for a moment, you get to stay.
Then it’s gone.
There is such a quick turnaround from unpacking a bag to getting back up for class to packing for another weekend trip. The desert as a whole did not help my asthma, something I’m sure my host family and friends are just as ungrateful for as I am, as I cough like someone who smokes 2 packs a day.
But even that inconvenience is a lingering reminder of our quick change of pace, leaving the city that has become our home to venture out and seek more. We always gain something, be it a cough or some profound realization of the world we live in- there is always something to be taken away from an experience like this.
I’m leaving tomorrow for another trip to another city that will show me new things and places and that’s what it’s all about-taking in each incredible moment but not settling, not failing to seek more moments that will add to our wonder of these places that just happen to host us for a while.
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