Desert Riches

When Julie had her epiphany, she was at the end of her rope. As in quite literally at the end of her rope, hanging off the side of a cliff somewhere in the middle of the desert, with no one else around for hundreds of miles. She had hiked for three days to get to where she was now, hanging from a dry plateau full of nothing but red rocks and skeletons of sage brush, a dried-up ancient seabed carved through by rivers a thousand feet below. The late winter sun glowed golden far off on the horizon behind her, setting the landscape below and the cliff face inches from her nose ablaze in light and shadow, red rock blooming under the day’s last light. Her head swam with exhaustion and dehydration. For a moment she thought she could see them, the ancient sea creatures that had once swum far below, monstrous shadows weaving in the deep.

Julie had been stranded for hours now, hands chapped and bleeding from gripping the rope, her last lifeline to the world above. She had slipped while trying to lower herself just a few dozen feet off the cliffside, over-estimating her mediocre rock climbing skills in the culmination of a feverish treasure hunt that had sent her wandering off alone into the desert in December, in search of both riches and herself. It had all seemed so romantic, so exhilaratingly full of promise and mystery and adventure. Now this was where it would end: trapped, dangling over oblivion, the cliff face around her too smooth for a hand or toe hold, no path up and a long way down. A lifetime full of bad decisions ending with a failed stab at adventure, a centuries-old riddle glimpsed through an old pane glass window sending her off the side of a cliff alone in the desert, chasing her golden goose, hoping for that lucky egg.

A broken heart and lack of options had sent her careening across the country on a road trip with no real direction, no destination. First west, then south, chasing the warm weather as winter clamped down on the country. The town of Lost Tree hadn’t even made it onto Google maps, which made it feel like a ghost town of sorts. Or at least a town that time had forgotten. Lost Tree was a loose handful of sagging clapboard houses with more paint chipped off than remaining and a gas station with one pump, long closed. A tumbleweed, a murder of crows cawing on sagging power lines running off into the impossible distance, an emaciated dog pawing through some trash on the side of the road. And a historical society, for anyone who wanted to learn more about this town that even the residents seemed to of forgotten.

Julie couldn’t resist stopping to marvel at its existence, wondering who even thought to open it in the first place. She cupped her hands against the window, face pressed against the wavy glass. It was then that she had seen the sign about the century-old lost treasure chest. Handwritten, with a crude image of a child’s idea of a treasure chest full of riches fading at the bottom. She could just barely make out the detailed story asking for help in finding this family heirloom. An E.J. Sawhorse was searching for a buried treasure, something about a great-great-grandfather kidnapped by pirates in the Gulf of Mexico and escaping with not only his life but also their treasure. Cursed, of course. He trekked for months to hide it here, in the desert, leaving only a cryptic riddle on the inside cover of the family Bible and a rumor passed down through generations about what was inside. Gold and silver, of course, gemstones and jewels…and a secret written on parchment and sealed with wax, worth more than the treasure itself. E.J. Sawhorse had written on the flyer that whoever found the cache could keep the gold and jewels so long as the parchment paper was delivered with the seal still intact. Julie snapped a photo with her phone through the window, not thinking much of it.

But then she had passed a massive outcropping of rock shaped like a shipwreck about twenty miles outside of town, a rutted old wagon road leading off straight into the sunset like a clichéd scene from an old Western. The rock and the wagon road were one of the clues in the old poem. Once she saw them, she couldn’t resist trying to solve the riddle. Slamming on her brakes, she turned onto the old road, easing her car over the ruts until it ended abruptly, miles out into the desert. She had followed the poem and an old topographical map she had of the region from there, never once stopping to wonder why no one else had bothered to chase after the treasure when the clues seemed to be so easy to follow.

Her body wouldn’t be found until the spring, or maybe even for years, she thought to herself. Some intrepid backcountry hikers would find her tent first, with its breathtaking view of the valley, a couple meandering in mild May weather. She could picture it now, as she dangled in the dying daylight – her tent collapsed from a winter’s worth of sun and snow. They would wonder if it had been abandoned, a sinking feeling in the pits of their stomach when they saw the rope tied around a boulder by the cliff’s edge. Warily looking over the side, they would see her body either still dangling in its harness like some sort of macabre piñata or broken on the boulders below. They would pick through her things looking for an ID card, a name, wondering if she had really planned on surviving alone in the desert on packets of instant noodles and chocolate bars. Coming across her worn out black notebook left laying open on her sleeping bag, they would start reading for clues as to what had happened. Maybe they would start at the beginning: a years-long rut ending in a breakup, her moving out with no place to go; the languid entry where she wondered what would happen if she just called into work once and then never showed up again…and the gleeful next one about how she had. They would read her entries and feel her pain, commiserate with her about what a jerk her ex was, cheer on her quitting her dead-end job while crying out too-late warnings about her decision to go after the treasure, imploring her to not go hiking off into the desert alone.

Or maybe they would start reading at the end, that would make more sense.

"Tomorrow I’m going to rappel down the cliff to look for The Sawhorse Treasure!!!! I have a good feeling about it, I don’t know why. It’s close, I’m sure of it - THIS is where it is. I think it’s hidden in a cave on the cliff face, I can almost see it when I lay on my stomach and look down off the edge. After all: The gems are hid/in treasure’s trove/ high above where a creek becomes a river/ Where day’s last light beholds/ all that you seek/ tangled in all that cannot be sold/ where even the raven’s shadow shivers."

The words seemed foolhardy now, the poor poetry that sent her wandering mocking her even more. No one knew where she was because she hadn’t told anyone, a strong headed oversight she was now seriously questioning along with every other major life decision that had led her to where she was now.

It was then that she had her epiphany, while contemplating the dramatic discovery of her body and her death, surely close at hand. The epiphany came in the form of a rock. Or, rather, a crack in the rock that caused a slight protrusion, which now the sun cast in sharp shadow against the otherwise smooth cliff face. Like the hands of a sundial, the shadow was telling her the time and the time was now. And now and now and NOW. Julie laughed. Right now was NOW, the shadow of the rock was loudly proclaiming, the brilliant red of the landscape dotted with Juniper trees was shouting from below: NOW was all that mattered. And that NOW was a handhold.

She swung herself toward the cliff, the sun sinking fast, silhouetting the mountains on the far-off horizon. Her fingers grazed the outcropping, her body swung back. She braced herself against the cliff with her foot. It was just slightly beyond her reach. She swung up again, pushing with the rubber sole of her climbing shoes, grazing the bottom of her fingers on the rock, skin coming back with strips down it like a desert highway. The sun was a half pad of butter now, melting on the horizon. Julie shook the pain out of her fingertips and swung again, grasping the narrow outcropping. She let out a grunt that filled the valley below, the force of the sound propelling her upward on this, the tips of her fingers. She scrambled against the smooth cliff face with her feet, swimming against the air and the rockface, pushing herself ever upward. The narrow handhold became a toehold as she leapt for and grabbed a solid outcropping jutting out, shaped like a child’s toy boat, her legs spidering out at odd angles as she swam up the side of the cliff. She was pure movement, not thinking, just doing, following the shadow of the crack that now appeared for her fingers upward toward where the world abruptly ended and the sky began. Up, up until first her right hand then her left slapped onto the sharp rocks and rolling pebbles of the ground above, cutting into her skin like vinegar, like life. With one final groan to fill the valley she found herself face down on the ground, gasping for air, feet dangling just barely out over oblivion.

She laid one cheek against the cool ground, breathing deeply, feeling the rocks cut into her skin. A gnarled old juniper tree at the cliff’s edge swam into view, its branches extending out over the void, roots clinging to a massive boulder. The sun shot out its final rays over the desert, lighting up the world with gold and shadow one last time before calling down the day. Something glimmered from the base of the old Juniper tree, a flash of sunset reflected tangled up in the roots. Julie struggled to her feet without taking her eyes from where the gold had flashed like a shooting star, burning hot and bright against the shadows. She half crawled, half stumbled to the tree, tripping over the uneven ground. There, tangled up in the Juniper roots and the rocks, almost locked into the cliff by time, was an old wooden box. She pried it out with a nearby rock and sat back on her heels, laughing. Engraved on the front was the rough image of a seahorse with a horse’s head and mane, one eye staring up at her. The box was heavy. She dragged it across the ground back to her tent, arms like jelly, palms of her hands and pads of her fingers raw. She thought she could feel the ground swaying underneath her; legs unsteady from half the day spent trying to stand on air.

Her tent was still there and for some reason this surprised her. Its humped shadow the welcome shape of a friend in the blue dusk. Exhausted, she wrestled open the zipper and crawled inside, pulling the chest in after her. A full moon was just starting to rise over the mountains in the east, casting the desert in silver, a few stars bright as diamonds winking down from the sapphire sky. Julie dumped the contents of the chest out on the sleeping bag next to her notebook and started counting her riches.