The engine shuttered and went quiet. Darkness overwhelmed the walls of the hotel, no longer illuminated by the headlights. I sighed. Without the noise of my jeep overpowering my senses, my breath sounded like shouting. I looked to my bag in the seat next to me and, as I shifted in my seat, my shirt rustled heavily. The sounds did nothing to alleviate my anxiety. Each one instead drove my heart deeper into the pit of my stomach.
With great force I motivated myself to reach across to the seats and pull the straps of the bag. With one motion I swung the door wide, flung my feet out the door, and slid from the seat. I moved quickly up the stairs, skipping every other step as I scaled them.
To my surprise, it was there, at the top of the stairs.
Under the silhouette of the mountains outlined by the moon, in the desert valley just beyond the highway, in the hotel to the left, up the stairs and straight ahead, it waited for me.
Room 209.
The chill of the air was deceptive. The day had been well above a hundred, yet it had fallen quickly without the sun. Even still, I couldn’t bring myself to open the door. Once through that door, I couldn’t come back. Up to that moment and even then, the option to turn around and go home was always possible.
Could I test my fate? Could I get closer?
I slid the key into the lock and turned the deadbolt. I heard it slide and then strike the stop as it moved beyond the edge of the wall and into the door. Below the key my other hand grasped the knob. I held my breath, closer than ever before to crossing that threshold.
What is it within man that stops him from taking the plunge? What is it that drives us to stand as close to the edge as we can? What about human nature makes us explorers, pushing the boundaries of what is previously possible, yet holds us at the edge, just long enough to contemplate the significance of it all?
This I know, each time we come to the boundary of known, overlooking the unknown, if we turn back, what once was home will never quite by the same for we will forever long to have entered that door. If we go forward into oblivion and into the future, we can never return, for home will be no more than a ghostly shell of what it once was.
This I know, under the silhouette of the mountains outlined by the moon, down in the desert valley, just beyond the highway, in the hotel to the left, up the stairs and straight ahead, at Room 209, I finally feel like I’m coming home.