The Heat Doesn’t Let You Forget

It's already over a 100 degrees in the Sonoran Desert and it's only April.

Photo by Ganapathy Kumar on Unsplash

By midnight, it was still over 100 degrees.

The kind of heat that doesn’t sit on your skin—it presses in.
It fills the van, the cushions, the air you’re trying to breathe.
There’s no escaping it. Not really.

I had the windows cracked as far as I dared.

You learn quickly that safety and comfort don’t always go together.
You choose one.

I sat there in the dark, not sleeping, just waiting for the hours to pass.
Listening.

A car pulling in.\paywall

An engine idling too long.
Footsteps that may or may not be coming closer.

When you live like this, you don’t ever fully rest.
You drift. You listen. You stay ready.

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I used to think of nighttime as something peaceful.
A time to settle in, to turn off the day.

Now it’s something else.

Night is when the questions get louder.

How long can I keep doing this?
Where will I park tomorrow?
What happens if something goes wrong out here?

And still—morning comes.

It always does.

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There are small victories you don’t think about until this becomes your life.

Finding a place where no one knocks on your window.
A breeze, even a small one.
Waking up and realizing nothing bad happened during the night.

That counts for something.

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I’m 75 years old, and this is where I am.

Not where I planned to be.
But still here. Still moving forward.

Still writing it down.

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This is part of what this life really looks like.

The parts most people don’t see.

If you want to follow the full journey—and support this work—you can become a paid subscriber.

Because stories like this don’t get told unless someone is still here to tell them.

—Carol