The shadow line - Wild Rivers, NM

The shadow line - Wild Rivers, NM

It was sunset when I started to climb the cliff to head back to camp. Or was it? The bottom of the valley was shaded in cool dark where the sun had disappeared behind the western cliff. But as soon as I began to climb I stepped across the shadow line and was back again in the striking late afternoon sun.

Time stopped. Or, time continued to progress in its own mysterious ways, but I could not perceive its motion. As I climbed breathlessly up the gorge side, the world turned at the very edge of my perception. The sun matched exactly the speed of my climb. It maintained a presence always at my side, never setting, never rising, never moving even while I labored forward. It sat always in the same angled, piercingly inquisitive position relative to myself.

Time stopped temporarily, for one creature on earth at one moment in our long history - my strange, soft human self crawling slowly up a cliffside in northern New Mexico. I continued to step forward, over rocks and more rocks, past sage and lichens, listening to the wind in the ponderosas and the ticking of sweat, breath, and blood in my ears. My body and the sun’s teeter-tottered reciprocally, balanced on the far rim of the canyon.

I continued upward, the shadow of sunset at my heels. I grew discouraged, out of breath. My mental state deteriorated as the cliff seemed to grow in front of my, as the constant sun angled sneakily beneath my hat brim but above the ridge of my sunglasses, shining rudely at me, egging me to either get on with it or quit. The earth had grown stationary, ceased its slow endless roll, and the zigzagging switchbacks of the trail appeared to be the only thing left in the world besides the sun, the cliff, and me.

A sudden burst of cliff swallows woke me from my trudging discord, and I realized that I was suddenly and improbably near the top of the cliff, with the sun still following faithfully along with me. I emerged at the top of the gorge onto the wide desert plateau and watched the sun resume its normal course. I imagined it was relieved to be finally untethered from my journey and free to rest for the day. The sun set, finally. Or, did it? The earth continued to turn and gracefully hid the sun from my view. I watched from the rim of the gorge, grateful for the light and the dark, grateful for life and the sensate world around me, and aware that the sun is always setting, and not setting, somewhere and with someone else.