(Probably found) Looking for novella or story

A friend is looking for a book she read and can't recall the title. Here is her description of the plot:

I could use your help! I'm trying to find the title of a book I read about 7 or 8 years ago. I've tried googling keywords from the plot (typed below) to no avail. It's a little-known post-apocalyptic novel (novella? It couldn't've been more than 150 pages - maybe even as few as 100).

It follows a man who was 'in the mountains on vacation' when the world collapsed (I can't remember what the catalyst was, now) and he comes down and finds that there's nothing for him in the cities. He runs into a child in a hogan and they travel together for awhile but they are eventually separated (I think that the boy dies?). The man continues his journey, he's heading south (maybe he was heading south the whole time?) and suddenly he's walked all the way down to a beach in southern Mexico (or maybe Central America) where the water is warm and the beach is shallow and (if I'm remembering right) the sand is super-soft and white. Time begins to pass very quickly and suddenly it's hundreds of years later and still he's 'the last man on earth' and he befriends these dolphins who have developed a symbiotic relationship with octopuses? maybe squid? I can't remember, but the symbiotic relationship consists of the dolphins carrying their symbionts over great distances in exchange for the superior brain power and love they get from their symbionts - who attach themselves to the dolphins' blowholes using their beaks. They locate 'the last woman on earth' in India and I'm pretty sure the book ends with them carrying the man to her over the ocean.

IT was purchased from a book store that closed in 2005, so it was published prior to that date. The cover was turquoise/blue bordered and I think had a black and white sketch? Have you heard of it?

Wow. I have even shocked myself this time.

I’ve figured out what this incredibly obscure book is. Don’t ask me how, it’s convoluted and confusing. There’s not much online.

The book is Harry Willson’s A World for the Meek (1987). It is published by a small New Mexico press co-founded by the author.

Here’s the synopsis from the book: “A post-blast life-affirming fantasy, in which the lone survivor finds a baby in the kiva, rears him, loses him, goes Zen-crazy walking from Duke City to the Gulf of California, where he survives a very long time, and finds love and meaning among the dolphins and the octopi. When the dolphins find our Noah, they think they've found a fossil.”

And from the only review on Goodreads:“Wondering if maybe someone somewhere might be left alive, Noah takes off for wherever, hoping to find someone. In a Native American pueblo, he does just that. A baby has survived the blast, a very young baby. He names this baby Heeto and starts to raise it himself, but this doesn’t seem to be any normal baby as, at not even a year old, the baby has reached adolescence--and like an adolescent refuses Noah’s attempts at teaching him to talk and instead chooses not to bother with verbal communication. The two finally take off from the pueblo, in search once again of people, only an accident causes Heeto’s death, and Noah, despondent, sets out again, this time in utter despair that he’ll ever see another living person anywhere… But it gets better. One day a dolphin swims up to Noah, bearing an octopus on his head, and the octopus gives Noah a plate with writing on it. See, the octopi can read and write English. And Noah tells the octopus his story and asks if they’ve seen any other people and then the octopus tells Noah of how it is they can communicate, and why it is they ride around on dolphins, which leads to telling Noah about the special adaptations these two animals have developed over millions of years; the dolphins have a special opening in their heads and the octopi have a special appendage that fits into this opening and the two animals become linked for life, sharing knowledge.”


And, if you’ve read this far, here’s the cover just as described by the OP:

Goodness. This sounds bonkers.

Think the author must have been on something!

It is possible to work out a bio of the late author by looking through his books listed on Amazon. Sounds as though he was a very interesting and unusual man.