That Damn Rooster

I wondered how many dreams the dreamcatcher had caught. It couldn’t have been that many: I had only slept for four hours. I thanked the rooster for that. Yes, there was a rooster here, outside my Airbnb “glamping yurt” — the one with the dreamcatcher, where I was trying to sleep. I hadn’t known about the rooster.

I sighed, accepted I was awake, unzipped the front of my yurt, and looked out onto the sandy, scrubby yard. There were two dogs, two goats, a litter of piglets, two chickens, and a duck. I looked up at the clear blue Arizona sky and smiled. Then a baby chicken pooped on my foot.

This was traveling during Covid.

When I had planned my vacation earlier in the summer, my only goal was to escape the grim reality of Manhattan. But I hadn’t expected this. I hadn’t expected to be drinking purified stream water out of a jug, or to be going #2 in a compost toilet. Now I was covering my #2 with mulch. But I reminded myself that the breathtaking Grand Canyon was only 40 minutes away from my yurt — and it was outside! And within American borders! These were things I had to think about now!

Meanwhile, I found joy in moments both great and small. When I discovered a jar marked “goat treats” in my yurt, I fed the goats. When I discovered a hammock nestled within a cluster of trees, I lay back and looked at the stars. I hadn’t seen a star since 2017.

On the second day of my trip, I planned to get up early — on purpose, this time — and see the sunrise over the Grand Canyon. In my thirty-one years of existing, I had only ever seen the sunrise by accident — after enduring a restless night of insomnia.

Unfortunately, I forgot to set my alarm and didn’t wake up until the first rooster call of the day.

With only three minutes left before sunrise, I was never going to make it to the Grand Canyon — so I parked my car on the side of the freeway, kicked off my slippers, and clambered onto the roof of my rented silver Camry. I watched the moon dip under the horizon behind me. I watched the sun peek over the barren desert before me. I watched the twinkling night sky transform into a purple-red wildness.

But I had only been looking at a tiny segment of the sky. I hadn’t considered how much sky was still waiting for the sun. I hadn’t realized that the sun was, in fact, taking its time, that it wasn’t hurtling from place to place, abandoning its ancient cycles, plunging to Earth in an Icarian fireball.

I sat there for a while, marveling at the deep pinks and purples reflected in my car’s silver hood. As a rare breeze stirred the sagebrush, I looked out across the desert and realized I never would have gotten up without that damn rooster.