Desert Time

Between one course and the next,

just before the heat became unbearable, I took a short trip to the desert.

It was a trail I had wanted to walk for a long time -

a path leading to a hidden spring in the heart of the desert.

Early in the morning,

while the wind was still cool,

we set out.

After only a few steps,

the car had already disappeared, and with it, humanity.

High mountains. Endless stone surfaces.

Rocks, cliffs, blocks of stone on which time seemed to have stopped.

The first thing that happens to time in the desert is that it comes to a halt.

Nothing exists around you.

A silence that awakens respect for time standing still.

And then time begins to walk slowly,

as if drained by the heat.

A huge rock in the middle of a wide wadi- a dry desert riverbed,

seems to ask me how I got here,

how a process of thousands of years was gathered into one single moment of falling from a cliff.

And the silence around it gives no hint of the noise that must have filled that moment.

The sun clock moves across the desert, and it shows no mercy.

From one moment to the next, the temperature rises.

My shirt is wet. My fingers swell slightly in the heat.

And then, between one bend and another,

between one ridge and the next,

in a place that cannot be seen until the very last moment,

the spring appears.

Its name is "Ein Namer"- Tiger eye.

The height of the water in the pool hints at the floodsthat passed through the stream during the winter.

The water is cold.

A dive in, and time stands still again.

So many small coincidences created this spring:

rocks rolling into place to form shelter,

water emerging from nowhere,

soft earth sinking into a pool.

The wind blows.

The water murmurs.

Ripples flicker on the rock above.

Time stands still.

Dragonflies dance above the surface of the water

like fighter jets with impossible speed and maneuverability,

commanding the airspace over the pool.

Tiny creatures dig into the floor beneath.

And in the face of all this movement,

time stops.

Or perhaps time does not stop the world outside.

Perhaps it stops the world within.

The intrusive thoughts of everyday life.The constant urgency.The pressure.

The importance we attach to things.

It gives new meaning to what feels necessary,

what feels urgent,

what feels important.

One last dip before the way back.

The return path follows the streambed itself.

The dry river will carry us out,

wash us outward,

spit us back beyond the desert.

Narrow passages.

Cliffs.

An unmarked path.

They ask me to concentrate,

to find the route that the water before me had already traced.

The heat begins to weigh heavily.

Sweat drips.

Thoughts of the end of the trail, and of the air conditioning waiting in the car,begin to appear.

And then the desert stops everything again.

It brings me face to face with a family of ibexes,

watching me.

We are both looking for shelter from the heavy noon heat.

They turn to their path.

I turn to mine.

When I reach the car, the clock signals the truth:

only seven hours have passed.

Reception returns to my phone.

Messages begin to beep,alerting me that life had continued while I was away.

I take a deep breath.

I still have the drive home.

And I hope that desert time will find its way back inside me, even after I return.

Time may be the most familiar narrative frame we share.We all live inside it.It orders our days, gathers our memories, and quietly shapes the stories we tell about ourselves.

But sometimes, time loosens its grip.In the desert, as in reading, writing, or therapy, time can slow down, fold back on itself, or stop just long enough for us to hear something differently.

Perhaps this is one of the deepest movements of bibliotherapy:not only to tell our story, but to discover how time lives inside it.To reshape what was urgent, what was painful, what was waiting, and what may still become possible.

To find, again, the path that is ours.