Rough Terrain Quotes

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An ash-gray dog with a white blaze on its forehead burst onto the rough terrain of the market on the first Sunday in December, knocked down tables of fried food, overturned Indians' stalls and lottery kiosks, and bit four people who happened to cross its path.
Gabriel García Márquez (Del amor y otros demonios)
Suicide is just a moment, Lexy told me. This is how she described it to me. For just a moment, it doesn't matter that you've got people who love you and the sun is shining and there's a movie coming out this weekend that you've been dying to see. It hits you all of a sudden that nothing is ever going to be okay, ever, and you kind of dare yourself. You pick up a knife and press it gently to your skin, you look out a nineteenth-story window and you think, I could just do it. I could just do it. And most of the time, you look at the height and you get scared, or you think about the poor people on the sidewalk below - what if there are kids coming home from school and they have to spend the rest of their lives trying to forget this terrible thing you're going to make them see? And the moment's over. You think about how sad it would've been if you never got to see that movie, and you look at your dog and wonder who would've taken care of her if you had gone. And you go back to normal. But you keep it there in your mind. Even if you never take yourself up on it, it gives you a kind of comfort to know that the day is yours to choose. You tuck it away in your brain like sour candy tucked in your cheek, and the puckering memory it leaves behind, the rough pleasure of running your tongue over its strange terrain, is exactly the same.... The day was hers to choose, and perhaps in that treetop moment when she looked down and saw the yard, the world, her life, spread out below her, perhaps she chose to plunge toward it headlong. Perhaps she saw before her a lifetime of walking on the ruined earth and chose instead a single moment in the air
Carolyn Parkhurst (The Dogs of Babel)
She’d worried, after Asterin and Vesta had left them aboard the ship they’d sailed here, that she might have made a mistake in choosing to travel with three immortal males. That she’d be trampled underfoot. But Gavriel had been kind from the start, making sure Elide ate enough and had blankets on frigid nights, teaching her to ride the horses they’d spent precious coin to purchase because Elide wouldn’t stand a chance of keeping up with them on foot, ankle or no. And for the times when they had to lead their horses over rough terrain, Gavriel had even braced her leg with his magic, his power a warm summer breeze against her skin.
Sarah J. Maas (Kingdom of Ash (Throne of Glass, #7))
& if a heart has topography, I know none of these boys know the coordinates to navigate & survive mine's rough terrain. In other words, these boys would be no distraction.
Elizabeth Acevedo (Clap When You Land)
The moon is a world of rough terrain, with an extent the size of Africa. Such a world cannot be adequately explored on foot, or by ground vehicles. To get around the moon in any serious way, we are going to have to be able to fly. The moon, of course, has no air, so airplanes are out of the question. But by taking advantage of its polar ice to produce hydrogen/ oxygen propellant, we will be able to fly all over the moon using rocket-powered ballistic flight vehicles.
Robert Zubrin (The Case for Space: How the Revolution in Spaceflight Opens Up a Future of Limitless Possibility)
With her eyes closed, Sylvie placed herself on the wide expanse of her brother-in-law’s uncertainty. It resembled one of the foggy, rambling moors she and her sisters had loved in Victorian novels. Sylvie felt at home on the rough terrain, filling her lungs with murky air. Since Charlie’s death, she’d felt like she was spilling out of her edges and messily trying to scoop herself up at the same time. Her sisters and mother were safe, with their aspirations and routines; Sylvie was her heartbreak and loss.
Ann Napolitano (Hello Beautiful)
Guys like him didn’t get happily ever afters, at least not yet. He essentially still lived at home, worked a crap job, and was struggling through school at an age when most people were graduated and on with their lives. Maybe things would be different in a few years,
Annabeth Albert (Rough Terrain (Out of Uniform, #7))
...those are the boys I switch my hips at. Not because they're cute or interesting--- they're often obnoxious & only want a taste of my gutter-slick tongue & brownness; they act as if they could elevate my life with a taste of their powder-milk-tinged pomp. No, I date those boys because they are safe. They can't dance bachata or sing Juan Luis Guerra, can't recite Salomé Ureńa or even name the forefathers; they wrap their flag around their shoulders like a safety blanket, & if a heart has topography, I know none of those boys know the coordinates to navigate & survive mine's rough terrain. In other words, these boys would be no distraction.
Elizabeth Acevedo (Clap When You Land)
For that entire journey across the rough terrain of Afghanistan, I never stopped praying that everything of the world could be peaceful, that all lives might return to normal. I believe that wish is universal for every woman who is a mother. For all the horrible happenings that have occurred since I left Afghanistan, I can only think and feel with my mother's heart. For every child lost, a mother's heart harbors the deepest pain. None can see our sons grow to men. None can see our daughters become mothers. No longer can we see the smiles on their faces, or wipe away their tears. My mother's heart feels the pain of every loss, weeping not only for my children, but for the lost children of every mother.
Najwa bin Laden (Growing Up bin Laden: Osama's Wife and Son Take Us Inside Their Secret World)
Approaching the trail, he broke through the thicket a short distance ahead of the Empath. Causing the Empaths horse to startle as the surprised rider jerked on the reins. Cap was equally surprised to find a young girl before him instead of an older, experienced male Empath. Cap brought his horse to a quick halt. The young girl pulled a small knife from her boot and cautioned him. "I don't know where you came from, but I'm not easy prey.” Her voice shook slightly with fear as she raised the knife. Not sure how to proceed, they stared silently at each other. Cap had always believed that Empaths didn't carry weapons. This pretty, chestnut haired girl couldn't be more than 18 years old. Her long straight tresses covered the spot on her jacket where the Empathic Emblem was usually worn, causing Cap to doubt she was the one he sought. Not wanting to frighten her any more than he already had, Cap tried to explain. "I'm Commander Caplin Taylor. I’m looking for an Empath that is headed for the Western Hunting Lodge.” "My name is Kendra; I am the Empath you seek.” She answered cautiously, still holding the blade. A noise from the brush drew her attention as a small rodent pounced out, trying to evade an unseen predator. Cap was just close enough to lurch forward and snatch the dirk from her hand. Her head jerked back in alarm. "Bosen May has been mauled by a Sraeb, his shoulder is a mass of pulp." Cap spoke quickly not wanting to hesitate any longer. That was all Kendra needed to hear. She pushed her horse past him and headed quickly down the trail. "Wait!" Cap called after her, turning his horse around. Reining in the horse, she turned back to face him annoyed by the delay. "Are you a good horseman?" Cap asked, as he stuffed her dirk in his jacket. "I've been in the saddle since I was a child." She answered, abruptly. "Okay so just a few years then?" Cap's rebuke angered her. Jerking the horse back toward the trail, she ignored him. "Wait, I'm sorry!" Cap called after her. "It's just that I know a quicker way, if you can handle some rough terrain." "Let’s go then." Kendra replied, gruffly, turning back to face him. Without another word, Cap dove back into the brush and the girl followed.
Alaina Stanford (Tempest Rise (Treborel, #1))
In Galapagos, as elsewhere, things of the mind, including intellectual ramifications from evolutionary theory, and things of the spirit, like the feeling one gets from a Queen Anne’s lace of stars in the moonless Galapagean sky, struggle toward accommodation with an elementary desire for material comfort…because so many regard this archipelago as preeminently a terrain of the mind and spirit, a locus of biological thought and psychological rejuvenation. The sheer strength of Darwin’s insight into the development of biological life gently urges a visitor to be more than usually observant here- to notice, say, that while the thirteen Galapagean finches are all roughly the same hue, it is possible to separate them according to marked differences in the shapes of their bills and feeding habits.
Barry Lopez (About This Life: Journeys on the Threshold of Memory)
Young children are for the most part just and moral. They love preachy stories because they do in fact understand that actions have consequences. Yet they turn to adults for the mercy and subtlety that they themselves can’t yet summon. And who can blame them? They are still little and vulnerable, uncompromising to a fault. . . . they want an adult’s protection from their own rough justice. This, I think, is the one true story of early childhood, the yin and yang of being a small person. It’s confusing emotional terrain for children to inhabit, and we must guide them gently through it. Is it intimacy you want, or freedom? Protection or power? Childhood is a kind of enslavement, but it’s a liberation, too. Young children’s emotions are all about this basic conflict. Feed me. Hold me. Comfort me. Fix me. I hate you! I can do it myself.
Erika Christakis (The Importance of Being Little: What Preschoolers Really Need from Grownups)
The Incas’ genius— like that of the Romans—lay in their masterful organizational abilities. Amazingly, an ethnic group that probably never exceeded 100,000 individuals was able to regulate the activities of roughly ten million people. This was in spite of the fact that the empire’s citizens spoke more than seven hundred local languages and were distributed among 2,500 miles of some of the most rugged and diverse terrain on earth.
Kim MacQuarrie (The Last Days of the Incas)
I’d like you to come to Kauai with me,” I say. “And Scottie. I think it would be good to get her away from the hospital for a day. We can leave in the morning, find him, and be home tomorrow night. If it takes us a day longer, that’s fine, but we won’t stay more than two nights. That’s our deadline. If we don’t find him, then at least we know we tried.” “And this will make you feel better somehow?” “It’s for her,” I say. “Not for him or me.” “What if he’s a wreck? What if he loses his shit?” “Then I’ll take care of him.” I imagine Brian Speer wailing on my shoulder. I imagine him and my daughters by Joanie’s bed, her lover and his loud sobs shaming us. “Just so you know, I am angry. I’m not this pure and noble guy. I want to do this for her, but I also want to see who he is. I want to ask him a few things.” “Just call him. Tell his office it’s an emergency. They’ll have him call you.” “I want to tell him in person. I haven’t told anyone over the phone, and I don’t want to start now.” “You told Troy.” “Troy doesn’t count. I just need to do this. On the phone he can escape. If I see him in person, he’ll have nowhere to go.” We both look away when our eyes meet. She hasn’t crossed the border into my room. She never does during her nighttime doorway chats. “Were you guys having trouble?” Alex asks. “Is that why she cheated?” “I didn’t think we were having trouble,” I say. “I mean, it was the same as always.” This was the problem, that our marriage was the same as always. Joanie needed bumps. She needed rough terrain. It’s funny that I can get lost in thoughts about her, but when she was right in front of me, I didn’t think much about her at all. “I wasn’t the best husband,” I say. Alex looks out the window to avoid my confession. “If we go on this trip, what will we tell Scottie?” “She’ll think we’re going on a trip of some sort. I want to get her away from here.
Kaui Hart Hemmings (The Descendants)
One find in Western Australia turned up zircon crystals dated to 4.4 billion years ago, just a couple of hundred million years after the earth and the solar system formed. By analyzing their detailed composition, researchers have suggested that ancient conditions may have been far more agreeable than previously thought. Early earth may have been a relatively calm water world, with small landmasses dotting a surface mostly covered by ocean.15 That’s not to say that earth’s history didn’t have its moments of flaming drama. Roughly fifty to one hundred million years after its birth, earth likely collided with a Mars-sized planet called Theia, which would have vaporized the earth’s crust, obliterated Theia, and blown a cloud of dust and gas thousands of kilometers into space. In time, that cloud would have clumped up gravitationally to form the moon, one of the larger planetary satellites in the solar system and a nightly reminder of that violent encounter. Another reminder is provided by the seasons. We experience hot summers and cold winters because earth’s tilted axis affects the angle of incoming sunlight, with summer being a period of direct rays and winter being a period of oblique ones. The smashup with Theia is the likely cause of earth’s cant. And though less sensational than a planetary collision, both the earth and the moon endured periods of significant pummelings by smaller meteors. The moon’s lack of eroding winds and its static crust have preserved the scars but earth’s thrashing, less visible now, was just as severe. Some early impacts may have partially or even fully vaporized all water on earth’s surface. Despite that, the zircon archives provide evidence that within a few hundred million years of its formation, earth may have cooled sufficiently for atmospheric steam to rain down, fill the oceans, and yield a terrain not all that dissimilar from the earth we now know. At least, that’s one conclusion reached by reading the crystals.
Brian Greene (Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe)
Flowers aren't forever. Neither is the pain. The wilted stem from ashes, and blossom in the rain. Star lit, moon bit skies above a rough terrain where the shadows of their beings find ways to remain.
Calvin W. Allison
Brain function is largely an uncharted territory. But just to get a glimpse of the terrain, however foggy, consider some numbers. The human retina, a thin slab of 100 million neurons that's smaller than a dime and about as thick as a few sheets of paper, is one of the best-studied neuronal clusters. The robotics researcher Hans Moravec has estimated that for a computer-based retinal system to be on a par with that of humans, it would need to execute about a billion operations each second. To scale up from the retina's volume to that of the entire brain requires a factor of roughly 100,000; Moravec suggests that effectively simulating a brain would require a comparable increase in processing power, for a total of about 100 million million (10^14) operations per second. Independent estimates based on the number of synapses in the brain and their typical firing rates yield processing speeds within a few orders of magnitude of this result, about 10^17 operations per second. Although it's difficult to be more precise, this gives a sense of the numbers that come into play. The computer I'm now using has a speed that's about a billion operations per second; today's fastest supercomputers have a peak speed of about 10^15 operations per second ( a statistic that no doubt will quickly date this book). If we use the faster estimate for brain speed, we find that a hundred million laptops, or a hundred supercomputers, approach the processing power of a human brain. Such comparisons are likely naive: the mysteries of the human brain are manifold, and speed is only one gross measure of function.
Brian Greene (The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos)
When I initially heard a description of the search area and the scenario, I was certain this would be a wasted effort. I suspected there was very little we could do, given the huge size of the search area, rough terrain, terrible weather, age of the track (around 52 hours old), and the lack of resources. Clearly, I was wrong. I underestimated the ability of a trained SAR dog. – Deb Tirmenstein
Susan Bulanda (Ready to Serve, Ready to Save: Strategies of Real-Life Search and Rescue Missions)
My idea is to look back from the brink of sixty and tell my story. The brink of sixty, it’s rough terrain for anybody, time to take stock of your life even if you didn’t have Miriam Marx as a mother.
Stephanie Gangi (Carry the Dog)
One bird was free; the other bird was bound. One is trapped, only able to see freedom in the distance; the other is free, flying in a world that works in its favor. In its weakness, the caged bird opens up his throat still. It gathers courage, strength, power, the will. The bird must sing in a world that has him bound. He must open up his throat, flap his tender and broken wings, and gather itself to travel far beyond the cage, the rough terrain, the terrible pain of its losses.
Danté Stewart (Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle)
It’s one thing to set your mind on recovery, to conjure the vision, but the journey towards it is beleaguered with obstacles, frightening encounters that might make you lose your nerve and turn back, and it will help immeasurably to find a guide to help you down that path, to bolster your spirit and give you courage when the terrain gets especially rough.
Evanna Lynch (The Opposite of Butterfly Hunting: The Tragedy and the Glory of Growing Up)
But above all, I promise to choose you, unapologetically, through rough or smooth terrain, in sunshine, and rain, from sunrise to sunset, when we’re happy and when we’re mad, and everything in between, I will choose you. You know I am obsessed with love stories, but ours is my favorite forever and ever until wherever we end up.
Ambar Cordova (The Truth Never Spoken (Baker Oaks 1))
The United States military officially began using canines in World War I and by World War II more than four hundred scout dogs were taking part in combat patrols, finding and hunting the enemy. After Pearl Harbor, a group of dog breeders formed “Dogs for Defense,” with the goal of building a well-trained canine force in the event America went to war. Come Korea, roughly 1,500 canines performed guard duty with the Army while others joined patrols. During Vietnam, with its close-quarters combat in treacherous terrain and tropical climes, dogs were once again called into action: around four thousand joined patrols to hunt for weapons and enemies, and served duty on army bases, especially at night when soldiers were most vulnerable to attack. But many of the dogs that served alongside U.S. soldiers never made it home; some were euthanized and others abandoned in
Gayle Tzemach Lemmon (Ashley's War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield)
November 8 MORNING LEARN TO APPRECIATE difficult days. Be stimulated by the challenges you encounter along your way. As you journey through rough terrain with Me, gain confidence from your knowledge that together we can handle anything. This knowledge is comprised of three parts: your relationship with Me, promises in the Bible, and past experiences of coping successfully during hard times. Look back on your life, and see how I have helped you through difficult days. If you are tempted to think, “Yes, but that was then, and this is now,” remember who I AM! Although you and your circumstances may change dramatically, I remain the same throughout time and eternity. This is the basis of your confidence. In My Presence you live and move and have your being. ISAIAH 41:10; PSALM 102:27; ACTS 17:27–28
Sarah Young (Jesus Calling Morning and Evening, with Scripture References: Yearlong Guide to Inner Peace and Spiritual Growth (A 365-Day Devotional) (Jesus Calling®))
The ambush mentality generates other secondary light infantry characteristics. One is the speed with which light infantry adapts to the terrain. Far from resisting adverse environmental conditions, light infantry exploits them by turning rough terrain to its advantage, using the terrain as a shield, a weapon, and a source of supplies. As a result, light infantry has an incomparable superiority in those terrains that restrict most regular infantry operations (especially mechanized forces), usually allowing the light infantry to face and defeat larger and better-equipped enemy forces whenever it encounters them.
William S. Lind (4th Generation Warfare Handbook)
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I’m certain the whole machine is going to slide out from under us, but my wolf is in complete control. We turn and head upward into the forest. It's a barely formed track, and the off-road bike makes easy work of the rough terrain. We climb and weave our way deeper
Elliott Rose (Vengeful Gods)
I am as old as the mountains, And as ugly as the rough terrain...
Avijeet Das
I am as old as the mountains Abd as ugly as the rough terrain
Avijeet Das
The time of incremental changes has passed. We have already entered into a radical phase of evolution. In this fast and furious phase, we need a resilient mindset and endurance to travel the rough and steep terrains of the evolution curve.
Sukant Ratnakar (Quantraz)
Hey!” Ignoring my indignant protest, the prince proceeds up the incline, his steps sure and steady despite the rough terrain and my added weight. “Put me down.” I squirm, my new upside-down view of the ground less than inspiring. “I can walk.” "And I can sing,” says Tavias. “That doesn't mean that I should.
Alex Lidell (Dragons' Mate (Her Royal Dragon Pack #3))
In turn, the Hadza have become so used to visiting scientists that hosting the researchers who observe them has become a way to supplement their income. Sadly, visiting scientists who want to emphasize how much they are studying bona fide hunter-gatherers sometimes turn a blind eye to the degree to which the Hadza’s way of life is changing as a result of contact with the outside world. These papers rarely mention how many Hadza children now go to government schools, and how the Hadza’s territory is almost entirely shared with neighboring tribes of farmers and pastoralists, with whom they trade and whose cows tramp all over the region. As I write this, the Hadza don’t yet have cell phones, but they are not isolated as they once were. Despite these limitations, there is still much to learn from the Hadza, and I am fortunate to have visited them on a couple of occasions. But to get to the Hadza is not easy. They live in a ring of inhospitable hills surrounding a seasonal, salty lake in northwestern Tanzania—a hot, arid, sunbaked region that is almost impossible to farm.13 The area has some of the worst roads on the planet. Of the roughly twelve hundred Hadza, only about four hundred still predominantly hunt and gather, and to find these few, more traditional Hadza, you need sturdy jeeps, an experienced guide, and a lot of skill to travel over treacherous terrain. After a rainstorm, driving twenty miles can take most of the day. Many things surprised me when I first walked into a Hadza camp mid-morning on a torrid, sunny day in 2013, but I remember being especially struck by how everyone was apparently doing nothing. Hadza camps consist of a few temporary grass huts that blend in with the surrounding bushes. I didn’t realize I had walked into a camp until I found myself amid about fifteen Hadza men, women, and children who were sitting on the ground as shown in figure 2. The women and children were relaxing on one side, and the men on another. One fellow was straightening some arrows, and a few children were toddling about, but no one was engaged in any hard work. To be sure, the Hadza weren’t lounging on sofas, watching TV, munching potato chips, and sipping soda, but they were doing what so many health experts warn us to avoid: sitting.
Daniel E. Lieberman (Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding)
During times when the terrain is rough, ugly is pretty.
Ronald Duren Jr. (The Art of Forging Mettle: A Blueprint for the Evolution of Mental Toughness and Leadership for a Shifting World)
Faith is when you refuse to be terrified, even when passing through rough terrain, because you know you are sheltered by the Most High.
Gift Gugu Mona (The Essence of Faith: Daily Inspirational Quotes)
It wasn’t something I was looking forward to, (…), because the amount of paperwork involved would be more of a ballache than galloping on a bony horse over rough terrain. So it kept getting put to one side.
Nick Pettigrew (Anti-Social: The Secret Diary of an Anti-Social Behaviour Officer)
This is—the moment,” I said. “This is the moment we’ve been waiting for. Our moment. No more selling someone else’s brand. No more working for someone else. Onitsuka has been holding us down for years. Their late deliveries, their mixed-up orders, their refusal to hear and implement our design ideas—who among us isn’t sick of dealing with all that? It’s time we faced facts: If we’re going to succeed, or fail, we should do so on our own terms, with our own ideas—our own brand. We posted two million in sales last year… none of which had anything to do with Onitsuka. That number was a testament to our ingenuity and hard work. Let’s not look at this as a crisis. Let’s look at this as our liberation. Our Independence Day. “Yes, it’s going to be rough. I won’t lie to you. We’re definitely going to war, people. But we know the terrain. We know our way around Japan now. And that’s one reason I feel in my heart this is a war we can win. And if we win it, when we win it, I see great things for us on the other side of victory. We are still alive, people. We are still. Alive.
Phil Knight (Shoe Dog)
Though only in his mid-thirties, Bolívar’s face was already lined and his skin jaundiced, but his eyes radiated a piercing intensity and his voice had the power to rally his soldiers. During the previous years Bolívar had lost his plantations and been exiled from his country several times. He was relentless with his men but also with himself. He often slept, just wrapped in a cape, on the bare floor or spent all day driving his horse across rough terrain but retained enough energy to read French philosophers in the evening.
Andrea Wulf (The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World)
Shea! The call was loud, a flood of fear and confusion, an impression of strangling, of darkness and pain. I’m here, Jacques. She sent her answer back so easily it startled her. To reassure him, she tried to fill her mind with every beautiful thing she saw. Come back to me. I need you. She smiled at the demand in his voice; her heart somersaulted at the raw truth in his voice. He never tried to hide anything from her, not even his elemental fear of her leaving him to face the darkness alone. Spoiled brat. She sent it tenderly. There’s no need to sound like the lord of the manor. I’ll be right in. There was no reasonable explanation for the joy flooding her at the touch of his mind lingering possessively in hers. She shied away from looking at that one too closely, too. Just come to me. He was more relaxed now, beating back his fear of isolation. I do not want to wake alone. I do need an occasional break. How was I supposed to know you would wake at this precise moment? She was teasing him. Warmth curled in the pit of his stomach. He had no memory of such a thing before Shea. There was no life before Shea. There had been only ugliness. His world had been torment and hell. He found himself smiling. Of course you should know when I wake. It is your duty. I should have known you would think that way. Shea laughed aloud as she raced across the rough terrain back to the cabin, reveling in her ability to do so, at the sudden surge of strength she had never before experienced. For just a brief moment a heavy weight seemed lifted from her shoulders, and she knew carefree happiness. Jacques found he couldn’t take her eyes from her. She looked so beautiful, her red hair tangled and wild, just begging for a man’s fingers to straighten it. Her eyes were sparkling as she came across the room to his side.
Christine Feehan (Dark Desire (Dark, #2))
Faith is when you refuse to be terrified, even when passing through rough terrains, because you know you are sheltered by the Most High.
Gift Gugu Mona (The Essence of Faith: Daily Inspirational Quotes)
Ultimately, we would buy some 27,000 MRAPs, including thousands of a new all-terrain version for Afghanistan, at a total cost of nearly $40 billion. The investment saved countless lives and limbs. Over time, casualty rates in MRAPs were roughly 75 percent lower than they were in Humvees, and less than half those in Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting
Robert M. Gates (Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War)
He watched the ghostly army on the march. Headlights swept the immigrants. The concrete gleamed wet and black beneath their boots and gym shoes. His countrymen covered their heads with hoods, baseball caps, newspapers, plastic bags. Or they simply hunched their shoulders, impervious to the rain, the fatigue, the roar and hiss of metal monsters rushing by a few feet away. The immigrants knew the freeway median was a reasonably safe limbo in some ways: no bandits, no Border Patrol, no rough terrain. Just put one foot in front of the other. Pray the cars stay in their lanes. Try not to think about the moment when you'll have to sprint across this cement deathscape hauling your wife, your kids, your worldly possessions. Maybe the moment can be postponed indefinitely. Maybe you can just keep walking north and the freeway median will take you where you want to go.
Sebastian Rotella (Triple Crossing (Valentine Pescatore #1))
And now your jug is getting hot—your drinking water is starting to get as hot as coffee. The desert’s air, like you, is thirsty. It’s sucking up your sweat as fast as you can pump it, so fast that you don’t even know you’re sweating. But you’ve been walking across rough terrain for a couple of miles now, and you are breathing hard. The air comes to your lips and pulls water from you. Every breath dries out your nose, your sinuses, your mouth, your throat. Your tongue: you drink more hot water; your tongue, you take just one more gulp of hot water; your tongue. Desolation drinks you first in small sips, then in deep gulps.
Luis Alberto Urrea (The Devil's Highway: A True Story)