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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desertphile" data-source="post: 351" data-attributes="member: 73">3/3Many times I have feared the desert. When we were about 30 years old my brother called me on the telephone and told me he was driving into the wilderness to the northwest of Ibex Spring for one night. I was anxious when he did not return after three nights. I know my brother was as savvy as a coyote in the desert, and he could be dropped off anywhere in that area with just a belt knife, a tin cup, and decent boots and he is good for a week or three. But I was anxious to go look for him.There was no sign of my brother at Ibex Spring, nor at Horse Thief Spring, Pachalka Spring, Kingston Spring, Coyote Hole, Tecopa, and a half dozen other seeps and springs I checked. In many places I had to park my pickup and walk to a seep to see if my brother was there, as my car cannot travel over soft sand.After a weary three days of searching, six nights having past with my brother in the wilderness, I found his car about two miles from a seep in the area east of Bad Water, with the front right wheel hanging awkwardly by its broken axle. I walked to the seep and found that the brush around and in the seep was dead and worn down by wind, suggesting the seep had been dry for many years.My brother was squatting over a large rock, with a small rock in his right hand, pounding what appeared to be a tiny chipmunk or kangaroo rat into paste. It was obvious that he planned on eating the entire thing eyebrows and all. With the tiny bones crushed, it would make a disgusting meal but perhaps better than no chipmunk at all. I walked up to my brother, vastly relieved to see him alive and apparently well, and when he saw me he said, “Oh, what in the world are you doing here?” I pretended surprise at finding him there also, as if I had just happened to be passing by. He went on smashing the chipmunk, trying to out-cool me with placid disinterest at his being stranded in the desolate wasteland with no food and no water. When I asked him if I could eat half of his raw chipmunk paste (brains, bones, eyes, toe nails), he looked at me with shock that I would ask, considering how hungry he must have been.“Gosh, Martha Steward, you ain’t really gonna eat that thing, are you?” I was horrified. It seemed to me that even a tiny bit of chipmunk goo is worse than none at all, no matter what the FOXFIRE books say.“Damn right I am! It took me four ass-fucking days to snare this little son of a bitch!” He then licked the small rock in his hand, dropped it, and with his fingers scraped the revolting slime off the big rock and stuck his fingers in his mouth.“Gosh!” I was fighting to not vomit. “Is it as good as Ma always used to make it?”“Even better!” my brother insisted, looking a bit green in the face. But he ate the whole thing, which impressed the bloody shit out of me. He then told me to hand over all of my water.“Water? What water? I was just now going to ask you for some water.”The problem with joking about my brother almost dying of thirst, with my brother, is that he can hit people much harder than I can. The fist, when it promptly came my way, was covered with bits of tiny mammal paste and brother spit: for sure I did not want it against my face. I blocked it with my shoulder, unslung my back pack, and handed over my water.I love the desert: it is mindlessly unforgiving; one day it will kill me, and that’s okay.</blockquote>

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