My iPod hit 4:34 and the desert we were walking seemed never ending. It was the fourth day in the wild without shopping malls or shower heads and the sky just didn’t want to go dry. By the time we adjusted to the colours in our surroundings, adapted to something we thought was normal, a desaturated world where the greens were all dirty and the reds unclear. “Wait, when was the last time I saw redness?” I thought.
We survived this part of the trail and reached a cabin up north and set up our tent. Even when we laid rocks around it we had no idea what kind of storm was coming up behind the hill. Getting through my book, warm and cozy, I heard the wind getting stronger with every blow. It had this end-of-the-world-aura formula they use for bad horror movies in the americas. In less than 10 minutes we were holding down our fortress with our bare hands from the inside, outside, you were wet in a millisecond. And I was.
The bathrooms were filled with tourists drying off their tents on the ceiling, it looked like spider-man camp up there, dripping down on us, changing into something less wet. An hour of feeling uncomfortable went by, minute by minute accepting the oceans in my shoes as something people in the desert would dream of.
The panicky runny people outside calmed down, even stopped in amazement. They all got our attention from the inside, staring at something in the sky. We all ran out to see as our eyes, shocked with colour and light, winked simultaneously, slowly making out what was this little patch of a blue sky the sun managed to burn through the thick misty clouds. The light encompassed the area we were in and everything gained perspective as well as sharpness and contrast. The world seemed right for those 5 minutes and everyone around me was gazing at that window with dropped jaws. It dawned upon me that this was the first time I saw a clear sky in 11 days. I don’t know what everyone else was thinking, but I normally stare at the sky a lot, I often wonder how it would be to live without this blue gradient of a canvas that expands over us, or what it would be like if it someday just changed into green or some other silly colour? What kind of effect would that have on us and what kind of an explanation would science come up for this change?
