I'm not sure how the average person deals with a bad break-up, but my idea was to head out to Death Valley for a week. I figured the solitude would do me good, and I had a week off work to kill anyway.
I'd never been before, and was blown away by just how stunning the place was. I traversed slot canyons caused by flash floods over the eons, clambered up endless sand dunes, found hidden salt springs, and stood at the lowest elevation in North America.
It was the middle of February, temperatures were low, and an unrelenting wind did not let up for the duration of my stay. I spent my nights in my tent or car, and the few hours I slept amounted to the only time I wasn't being blasted by the harsh desert sands.
For as much as I appreciated the reprieve from the sand and wind I got in my sleep, these were the loneliest moments of the trip. Nights spent alone are surely the most difficult part of any breakup. I missed feeling my partner's breath on my back, the feel of my hand caressing her warm thigh, her gentle stroking of my hair, and those special occasions when I'd wake up to the sensation of her lips tenderly sucking to my penis.
Also, the nights were frigid. I'd gotten so used to my partner's body heat, and I yet adjusted to having to generate my own warmth. By the end of my week in the desert I was longing for nothing more than a hot bath, and while a traditional bath tub wasn't an option, a friend had told me about a hot spring oasis on the outskirts of some Mojave Desert town.
After some time spent pouring over a map and trying to decipher my friend's directions, I began to make my way towards the town of Tecopa, home to some of the more accessible hot springs in the vicinity of Death Valley.
The drive out there was a trip in both a literal and figurative sense, and I was able to count on one hand the amount of other cars I saw on the road. Unfortunately one of these cars was parked on the side of the highway near Tecopa Hot Springs, which meant I wouldn't quite have the springs to myself.
From the highway to the hot springs was no more than a three minute walk on an alkali flat lined by riparian sedge. To my surprise the hot springs weren't some small pool created by a pipe and strategically stacked rocks like so many others, but rather a ten foot wide creek of steaming water that looked to be at least waist deep in the shallows.
Only one other person was bathing, so I was able to strip down and find solitude in a particularly warm bend in the creek. I soaked for hours, losing all track of time in the steamy oasis, and left only when night began to fall.
After a minimal amount of searching, I found a good camping spot about ten miles away from the springs down a seldom-traveled dirt road. Without much in the way of entertainment, I hit the hay early, and felt plenty rested when my internal alarm clock woke me prior to sunrise. Although the plan was to drive eight hours back home that day, I couldn't resist taking one last dip in the hot springs on such a frosty morning.
I got to the springs just as the sun was cresting the Nopah Range to the East, and was thrilled to see there were no cars on the side of the road. While the crowd had never ballooned to more than five people the evening prior, there hadn't been a moment when I'd had the place entirely to myself.
I made the short pilgrimage to the springs, and was surprised to see that next to the hottest and deepest part of the creek there lie a discarded pizza box, beer cans, and what appeared to be a large bundle of blankets. I lamented that a person would trash the springs like that before I grabbed a morning beer of my own, and slipped into the inviting water.
I must've been soaking for at least twenty minutes before I became aware that the pile of blankets was in fact a person. It was the occasional grunt that gave it away. While camping at the hot springs was illegal, I did respect that this person's solution to making it through the near-freezing night was to lie out in the warm mud of Tecopa Hot Springs with a blanket covering their head.
Not long after the grunting began, a person rolled out of the heap of blankets, and without bothering to even open their eyes or sit up, rolled right into the hot springs. It was hands down the best way I've ever seen a person begin their day.
Like me the person was naked, and I was more than a little excited to discover the person was a woman. She was the first nude lady I'd seen since my break-up, and she couldn't have looked any more different than my ex. While my ex was petite and pale, this woman was rather large, and had a deep desert tan.
She wasn't my type in that I'd never been with a woman that looked like her, but I definitely found myself intrigued by her body. She was very much an amazon with humongous, dangling breasts and wide hips. She appeared to be the same height as me. While she had the typical rough, sun-drenched look of a person that's lived a long life in the desert, she also had plenty of soft features. I was particularly drawn to her silken, pursed lips that looked capable of providing an incredible amount of pleasure.
As far as I could tell she looked to be in her late forties or early fifties, making her twenty years my senior. And while I didn't get a good look at her ring finger, the fact that she was sleeping by her lonesome surrounded by beer cans told me that she was most likely single.
After rolling into the springs she had managed to stand up with her large breast floating on the water's surface, but hadn't opened her eyes. She stayed in this meditative state for about five minutes while I sipped my beer and stole the occasional glance at her tremendous tits.
When she did finally snap out of her trance, she noticed me sitting across from her with a beer in hand, and said, "Now there's a man that knows how to live."
I laughed. "Shit, I was thinking the same thing about you."
We hit it off from the get-go, but not in a sexaully charged manner by any means. While I found her body fascinating, and thought she just oozed sexaultiy, I was nonetheless not so open-minded about being with a woman that was that much older than me, not to mention larger. Maybe it was this lack of sexual tension that made conversation come so easy.
It didn't take me long to discover that her body was far from the only thing that made her fascinating. She was very much into hippy-dippy topics like the healing power of crystals, but also went on a rant about the government needing to stay the fuck away from her guns. I've found this a somewhat common attitude in the Mojave Desert, and like so many other desert rats I'd met over the years, she had an extensive knowledge of the land and all its secrets.
She was impossible not to like, and as a cherry on top she had a supreme amount of confidence in her body, and no qualms about exposing it. While I more or less soaked with my privates below the water line, she would sit on the edge of the creeks with legs spread wide, or stretch so that her breasts heaved in the early morning breeze. But perhaps best of all, there were several times when she bent over gratuitously, exposing her huge, sexy ass, a sight made even sweeter by a well-defined thong bikini tan line.
It was amazing to me how confident she was in her own skin. She was far from society's ideal of "sexiness", but she carried herself as though she were a total bombshell. At one point I offered her a beer, and while I was prepared to just get it for her, she insisted on swimming across the creek to get it herself. To reach my backpack on the shore, she had to bend over, and she had zero shame about sticking her big ass in the air, mere inches from my face. Up close I noticed a heart tattoo on her left butt cheek with the words "Mistress of Desire" inscribed inside.
I grew erect under the water, and if she noticed, she didn't say anything. Knowing how open and confident she was in her body and beliefs, I had few qualms about asking her the things I wanted to know. Right after she put her provocative ass in my face, I said, "That's quite the tan line you have there."
