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This is a poem I wrote for English class about a solo walk, sit, and write in your journal assignment we had in a field trip I was recently on in Joshua Tree National Park, a dessert near the Mojave dessert in Southern California. A wash is a strip of sand where there aren't many plants, it's where the water washes all down to from the mountains near it. It's on Booksie (Username: Flighte)

Alone in the Wash

I run my fingers
Backwards along the sand,
Feeling each grain.
I scrunch my hand in a fist,
gathering the sand
and then letting it slip out of my grasp,
back into the wash.
I cross my legs
and pull my water bottle into the corner
where my calf meets my other calf.
A gust of wind pounds down on me,
Pushing up the pages of my journal,
and sending the brim of my hat into the air.
My hair whips my face,
and my broken sunglasses tip down,
lopsided.
But I don't care.
I continue to scribble
countless,
meaningless,
self-centered,
rants within my journal.
I grow tired.
I fold my journal
and squish its pages between its covers.
'Believe'
the front cover reads,
'Believe there are no limits but the sky.'
-Cervantes,
In black etchings.
I surprise myself
by finding a shapeless stain
denting into the lighter blue.
My journal's suffered:
Batting around within my backpack,
Tossed around by children on a bus,
Me, Squeezing it between my fingers,
Prodding at its insides with the lead of my pencil,
Folding its pages,
over,
and over,
Placing it underneath my makeshift pillow-
a jacket,
and then sleeping on it,
and then letting it lose itself within my sleeping bag,
a mechanical pencil shoved within its spine.
Wouldn't that be painful for a human?
A pencil?
Stuck within their spine?
Or any other animal, for that matter?
Still I use it.
And I write this,
Scribbled between black lines,
in my journal.
I'll probably tear this out later.
Just to make it suffer more, right?
I look up, unaware of the time. T
he blinding sun has slid down,
about a finger's width above the mountain,
far,
far,
far ahead of me.
Behind the cacti,
bushes,
and Joshua trees
spread before me.
I should probably go back to camp now,
though I can't be sure.
So I drop my journal in the sand,
pencil tucked in its spine again.
I use it to help push myself up,
leaning on to it with my hand,
and clasping my fingers around its edges
before pulling my arm up along with it.
I reach down
and hook my forefinger
around the little, black strip of plastic
holding the cap of my water bottle to the water bottle.
I then flick my wrists up and into the air,
stretching backwards to straighten my back,
and head off in the direction of the campsite,
still unsure of whether it's time
to go back or not.