Through the desert

Day one. I am working my way through the deserts of southern Utah; a road trip home to San Diego before my flight leaves for Panama. The desert has a healing power to it that can only be understood by experiencing it in person. It is the silence, the vast emptiness and the sculpted red rock…a perfect place to begin the journey and allow space to process the decision I have made. I am spending the night on the Navajo reservation in Monument Valley…contemplating setting my sleeping bag down on to top of a nearby cliff if the moon ever comes up. Tomorrow, another 10 hours to the deserts of eastern California where I will have eaten my 5th peanut butter and jelly bagel, and will be looking forward to some Panamanian rice and beans.

Hindsight for the day: If you finally leave a place where you grew up in for 10 years, you will be wanting a drink that first night away. Just note that if you spend that first night on a Navajo reservation you may have to drive 62 miles back in the direction you just came, in order to find the only  liquor store perched just outside the Res. It’s against the law to sell liwuor on these lands.