May | 2021 | Open Field

The coach journey had dragged. I’d woken twice in the long night, peered around the dim cabin. Nothing was visible outside the windows. Sheets of black, as though the wide, dry desert of northwest Argentina had been replaced by a closed box.

The first time I woke it was the engine that caught my ear. It was straining, straining against a hill whose incline I could only sense through my weight on the seat. As far as I could tell, the other passengers – all sitting some way off – were still asleep.

It was just me and the driver who could tell that we didn’t have enough power. If it had been just the tarmac of this single road, we probably would have had no problem. But sand must have drifted across, and we would surge forward, slide back, wheels sending wild vibrations through the vehicle. I listened for a while, feeling resigned to an endless rise and slide, and must have drifted off.

The second time, there were lights outside the window. I blinked and focused. A roadblock in front of the coach, men with caps and guns. Jeeps glared back at our light as the door by the driver hissed open and a man in khaki began a slow, unfriendly patrol between the seats. Everyone was awake. We all huddled in our seats trying not to catch his eye. Even decades after the fall of the dictatorship instincts run deep.

Finally, he’d had enough. We all had to get out. Our bags were heaped up in the road. We stood in the desert cold, sleep hovering out of reach, nerves twitching, eyes sore with the unforgiving light. The soldiers singled out a young woman, emptied her luggage onto the tarmac in front of us. Eventually they confiscated her cigarette lighter and allowed her, trembling, to return to the warmth of the coach. I was glad for her that we other passengers were witnesses.

The last time I woke on that journey it was dawn. Where there had been darkness, now the sky was all light – enormous, vast, overwhelming light that poured like water across my face. There seemed no end to it, just gradations of brightness from directly overhead to the tops of the mountains that ringed us. As the coach plunged on the light grew and grew.

The desert was revealed, its rocks and colours, its cacti and emptiness. Reds, oranges and yellows were stretched and spread under the width of the sky. No buildings, no people, not even animals were visible in this empire of colour. It was the domain of rocks, dust and light. Only the road, a grey unspooling thread, seemed conceded to the world beyond.

As we travelled I tried to focus on one point or another, look into the details, the cracked intricacy of the terrain. But my eye was always compelled to look again at the whole scene, the beauty that came out of the ancient surrounding stillness. The coach swept on, apparently without destination.

Open Field

Words about the natural and the human

Monthly Archives: May 2021

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