Night hiking in the desert

I’ve been thinking back to early in the trail, on a night when HB and I night hiked into Tehachapi. I had felt horrible earlier in the day, when the heat in the early evening had been too much to bear. Around 9 or so, we ran into Fireball, who proposed we sleep for a couple hours at a horse camp and then wake up at 2 to finish the trek into Tehachapi.

Hiking through the inky night was surreal and beautifully disconcerting. I felt like I was floating, unmoored from time and space.