Flash/Crack, Argentina

Vibrant colors, glowing in shades warmer than normal, drew me into a beautifully carved canyon at the end of a sweaty day. Slivers of shade soothed my salty skin as the sun projected a declining azimuth that embossed every nook and cranny into enhanced dimensional proportions. The few trees that found nourishment in the hot, dry sand exploded with greenery in sharp contrast with the red backdrop. Bones cooled while dinner simmered.

The intensely glowing, thinly trimmed fingernail from the previous night projected a new moon, and since the present setting showed no signs of habitation, the stars would be blinding. With that in mind, the tent took the night off. Bag in the sand, I slept with my glasses on. The stars twinkled rhythmically.

After a few hours of gazing, my periphery picked up some activity in sharp, blinding bursts of washed, white light. Clouds began bumping into one another, discharging their agitation in frequent blasts (flash/crack). I held onto the last visible strip of stars as the eye hovered directly above me, but soon, the cycloptic storm lost its vision and closed in with blind fury. Delirium prevented me from taking protective measures against the impending storm because logic detracted the chance of rain in such arid terrain. Nature proved itself, once again, as an unpredictable, viable force, worthy to be reckoned with.

Light rain began to fall, easily shed by my sleeping bag, but as the drops grew globular and cold, I began to feel seepage inside my cocoon. Like an anxious caterpillar halfway through metamorphasis, I poked my head outside to survey the situation. Spooked by what I saw, I burst from my wrap prematurely, naked and wingless. Small, muddy rivers had formed around me, growing more voluminous with each compounded drop shed from the mountains above. The island on which my stuff sat was slowly washing away, as was my bike, leaning on the rapidly eroding bank. Hindsight mocked my ignorance with bellowslike laughs (flash/crack), illuminating the brutal truth of camping in a dried-up riverbed in the middle of the desert. Flash flood, idiot.

Splashing knee-deep through the thick, bubbling river, I heaved my bike halfway up a solid embankment. Too low and I'd be washed away. Too high and I'd be lit up (flash/crack). Hurriedly wading back to the island, I rescued my marooned sleeping gear, totally soaked and useless, of course. A quick scan of the basin through wet, foggy glasses convinced me that I had gathered everything. Back at the bank, I had to find shelter. The coat of adrenaline that had dampened my shivers withered in the pouring rain as I crouched, fetally, next to some spiny bushes.

Scrambling through cold, muddy gear-stew, I tore out my tent and carefully assembled the tent poles with one eye on the sky (flash/crack). Hilariously pitched on an uncomfortable slope, I nestled into the sticky, crackling embrace of an emergency blanket. From inside, as the river lapped at the vestibule, I laughed, humbly acknowledging my error, gratefully realizing my fortune at having escaped the vomitous discharge of an overwatered landscape.