11/14/21

24 miles

In the middle of the night when I wake to pee the moon is there, shining brightly in my face. The moon! Our friend the moon is back! A little more than half full. We started this trip with the moon, and the moon is gonna carry us through to the end. I’m so happy.

The sun is the color of tang as it crests the horizon when we’re packing up in the morning. Shade tells us that last night, when he was listening to the local radio on his sandisk mp3 player while doing a crossword before bed in his tent, the most incredible banger of a latin pop song came on. I look it up on my phone (Pepas by Farruko) and then we’re having a dance party in the desert, the three of us, helping the sun crest the horizon. For the rest of the morning I can’t get the song out of my head and I listen to a bunch of remixes while I hike. Shade and I start coming up with choreography we could do, a sort of hiker dance. It’s a fun game.

The miles are chill today, on the sandy trail through the low cholla forest, and when the heat drops at noon it’s not as heavy as the past few days. Still, by 3pm I feel wonky. I’ve sweated through my pack straps, they’re crusted with salt. We sit in the dirt and talk about trips we did in the early 2000s, without cell phones, and then walk through another pastel paintbox sunset until all the day is gone and there’s just the moon, and our moonshadows on the sand. Camp is next to a huge metal cattle trough, fed from a well, that looks like an above ground swimming pool. We find flat spots without too many cow patties. This’ll do just fine.

Day 32 of this AZT blog is written and ready to go- I’ll post it (and its corresponding tiktok video, which you can see here) when this fundraiser reaches $13,650. Thanks so much to everyone who’s contributed so far!!

I’m using this AZT blog to raise funds for Trans Queer Pueblo, a rad org that provides support to trans and queer people seeking asylum and/or in immigration detention along the US/Mexico border. Here is the fundraiser– it was at about $9k when I first posted it, let’s see if we can reach their $15k goal! For every $150 raised, I’ll post another blog post. And thank you!