The Dunes

The man looked out over the dunes. As far as the eye could see, there were only dunes. The man did not see what he was looking for. He closed his eyes and sighed.

The man picked up his pack, and trudged on.

The man thought of his movement as trudging. Even though, to an impartial observer, it could also be called walking. Or hiking. Or trekking. Or any number of other words.

However, the man felt that trudging was what it was like. And this choice of words was somehow vindicating, as if he deserved to be pitied for his plight. And that made him feel better. A little.

The man spent all of his time in the dunes. Except, of course, when he found an oasis. Presumably, that was what he was looking for now. An oasis. The mere word felt refreshing. It sounded good on his tongue. It brought to mind images of pools of cool water, damp and leafy trees hung low with ponderous fruit, shady bowers to lay his body down and finally rest.

That vision kept the man going. Although it was one thing to imagine the oasis, and another thing to actually be there.

The man was a tireless traveler. Although he met many other people in the dunes, he did not often stop to talk with them. The man knew what he wanted, and he trudged endlessly on towards it.

Whenever the man found a oasis, he felt sheer bliss. Bliss doesn't fully describe how he felt, but it was a good enough word, because trying to put it into words sort of defeated the whole point of how, well, blissful it was.

When the man was in an oasis, he forgot about the dunes. He forgot about the heat, and the sunburn, and the hunger, and the thirst, and the loneliness, and all the sand. There was a lot of sand in the dunes, to say the least. The sand was gritty and it got everywhere. It was just one more thing in his long list of laments about how hard things were for him. In the dunes.

But the man always moved on from an oasis. In fact, he had just left one, and was on his way towards finding another. The water had dried up there. This happened every time, sooner or later.

Sometimes the oasis lasted just a little while, as long as it took him to drink his coffee. Sometimes it lasted an entire day, when he spent it with a friend, or his loved ones. But regardless, the oases always dried up, and then the man had to move on. But he was getting tired of the whole routine.

While it's true that spending time in an oasis with other people was especially blissful, it also seemed that traveling with other people made it harder to find an oasis in the first place. Plus, they slowed him down.

The man didn't think of the dunes as a desert, per se. He did, however, think of them as a wilderness. Not in the sense of deciduous forest, but rather a place where wildness reigns. A place where life is hard. This was his perception of the dunes.

It was at this time in his life that the man was beginning to grow weary of the dunes. Which was funny, because he had never been anywhere else. The dunes were all he had ever known.

However, something in his heart told him that there must be something else. And he believed it strongly. He didn't remember when he began believing it. But it didn't really matter how this idea became lodged in his heart. The point was, it was there.

It is impossible to describe exactly what the man expected to find, but for lack of a better term, he was looking for the big one. The oasis to end all oases. A place where the water never dried up, and the vegetation sprawled, and the fruit was succulent, and the man could finally find peace.

And so he was trying to get there. This was why the man was always trudging.

Yet, the curious thing was that when he looked at his life so far, he did not seem to have ever approximated the big one. What I mean is, the man didn't know if he was getting closer to his destination. Perhaps he was trudging in circles. Perhaps he was even headed in the wrong direction!

All of these thoughts swirled in his mind as the man continued his journey. He was becoming lightheaded. He was ready to give up.

And then suddenly, over the next dune, he saw it! The telltale sign of a palm tree.

And then his heart sank. Why should he care? Why should he want to go there? He told himself it would be exactly the same as before. The water would dry up, the oasis wouldn't last, and he would have to move on. The man was tireless, yes, but he was getting tired of it all

But the man kept moving in that direction. Eventually he arrived at the oasis, and he was surprised to find another traveler there. The man was so exhausted that he didn't notice many details about the traveler, so he couldn't remember much about him afterwards. But that wasn't important. It was the the traveler's words that he could never forget.

That night, the two fell into conversation, and at one point, the other traveler asked the man a question that changed everything.

It is unknown exactly what he said, but it was something like this: "How do you know you are in the dunes?"

The man didn't know how to respond to this question. It didn't seem to make any sense. Obviously, he was in the dunes. They were both in the dunes. Just look around, and see all the sand. Feel the heat. And so on.

This is what the man knew: The man was in the dunes. The dunes were a wilderness, a place where wildness reigned and life was hard. The dunes were full of sand and heat and thirst, and they forced a man to trudge in order to get to where he needed to be. All of these were facts.

...or were they?

The next day, the man woke up and found that the other traveler was gone. The man wondered if he had dreamt the whole thing. He hoped it were so, because the question the traveler had asked was ridiculous.

The man then continued on his journey, and things were as they were before. But now, no matter what he did to try to distract himself, his thoughts kept coming back to the question—How do you know you are in the dunes?

After a while, the man couldn't take it anymore. He gave up and allowed himself to ponder the question. But he couldn't sort it out. On the one hand, his soul told him that the big one was out there. But on the other, all he had ever known was sand and dunes (and the occasional oasis, but it was always small, always temporary). These two things were impossible to reconcile...

Unless...

But that's impossible...

The man had a very strange idea. He didn't like it at first; he was scared to even acknowledge it. He pushed it out of his mind so he didn't have to consider it. And yet, at the same time, he recognized that it might also be his salvation.

Finally he allowed himself to consider the idea, and to stare at it face-to-face.

Here was the idea: What if there is no big oasis?

And then, immediately after, came another idea: What if I'm not in the dunes?

This idea was simultaneously repulsive and irresistible. It made no sense; it was impossible, and yet at the same time, he could not avoid a subtle curiosity, a hope.

If the idea were true, it meant that there was nowhere for him to go. That he would never arrive at a big oasis where all of his woes would be relieved. And it meant that he would spend the rest of his miserable life out here, in the dunes.

But also, the idea offered the possibility of an enormous relief. It meant that he didn't need to always be going. And that he didn't have to be miserable. Because if there were no big oasis, then he was the only one making himself miserable.

The idea meant that perhaps he had been wrong. Wrong about everything.

Then another idea came: What if he weren't trudging? What if he were just walking? Or strolling? Or even... but no; he had not done that in a long time.

One by one, these thoughts hit him like gusts of wind in a sandstorm. And they began to knock him down. He fought them, but they fought back. Harder and harder and harder, until—he couldn't take it anymore.

Eventually he stopped walking, because it was too much to walk and think at the same time. Plus, where was he going, anyways?

Wait a minute... walking. He had just said he was walking. The man had been walking, not trudging.

The man stood there. He made a decision there. He decided he was done. He decided he didn't want to always be going from place to place, trying to get there. He began to imagine the dunes as his home. This was all he had ever known, anyways.

And then, something miraculous happened—the man was struck by lightning.

This, as you may know, is extremely unlikely to happen in the desert. But it did happen.

The man was unconscious for a long time. It is impossible to know how long, as there were no witnesses. But eventually, he came to. And what he saw was astonishing. He couldn't believe his eyes.

The man's head ached. He clutched his head. Slowly, he came to his feet. So this was it... his revelation had become manifest.

Then, a funny thing happened. The man began to dance.

No music was playing, but nevertheless, he danced. And he was happy.

The man recognized that he was still in the dunes, but it wasn't as desolate as before. He was no longer miserable, because he was no longer making himself miserable, thinking of the dunes as something that he needed to pass through.

After a while, when he was done dancing, the man picked up his things and resumed walking. He still needed water. He still needed some shade. So he still had to find an oasis. But it was different now.

The man didn't feel like he NEEDED to be anywhere else other than here. This was his home. The man tried to carry the revelation with him every day as he continued his journey, going from oasis to oasis.

It wasn't always easy. Sometimes it still felt like the wilderness. Some days were really hard, and hot, and gritty, and so on. But more and more, the man found that was ok with him. And so he kept walking.

The man no longer trudged. Instead, he strolled. He cruised. He explored. He roamed. And often, he danced.

The man found many more oases during his journey. And to his delight, he found that they seemed to last longer, and come more frequently than ever before. And the man spent more time with the other people that he met along the way, especially his friends and loved ones, because he knew that they weren't slowing him down. And they seemed to make the oases last longer, somehow, even though there were more people sharing the water.

And the man spent the rest of his days in the dunes, but he didn't think about them as dunes, or the wilderness, or the desert. He just thought about it as home. And that was ok with him.

And he danced.