This week I drove about 1200 miles from the Calgary, Alberta Canada area to beautiful Kanab, Utah, USA. It was going to be a leisurely trip down Interstate 15 with a couple of winter camping nights at beautiful spots in Montana and on the Great Salt Lake. Mother Nature had another idea of course and sent a winter storm of the decade hot on my tail and it became a choice between a 12 hour drive on day two or possibly getting stranded for multiple days in the snow. Not a hard choice. So the playlist was cranked and I drove like I haven’t since I was in my 20s. It was so much more relaxing to wake up here after a long sleep then to be worrying about what was going to be hard about the day.
So the next stage of my story will find its way out here, in a desert valley which couldn’t be different than the watery west coast of Scotland. I’ve only been here a couple of days and yet some of the rhythms from my life in Argyll are so easily accessed here.
The house is made for hot desert summers and only heated by the wood stove over night. So you wake up far too cozy in bed and wanting to delay reaching for your robe and slippers to make your way for coffee. After breakfast the dog and I leave the house without a leash or a plan and disappear for an hour or two just wandering down the dirt roads into the desert. We pass a barbed wire fence that represents the border with the state of Arizona and keep going. There is juniper and sage and cactus and tumbleweeds and all sorts of birds and little creatures I don’t know yet. The earth is wet still and deep mud can steal your shoes when you don’t pay attention. The snakes are still asleep in the cold, but should be out soon.
I have missed this.
Not the desert per se, I’ve never lived there, but the roaming without agenda besides building a simple intimacy between my feet and eyes and a landscape. The light in Utah against the hills is as dramatic as that in Scotland and that feels familiar too. There are remnants of ancient people all around this place too. Pottery shards which wash up in the arroyos after the rains. Unknown petroglyphs decorate rock walls here too. It all seems so similarly human.
I am excited to have brought my story on a road trip here to keep writing it. I have made an “office in a box” that protects the books that I have brought along with me for learning, inspiration, or just talismans to reconnect me to the place and times of our story.
I’ll keep you posted.
I love Utah! Enjoy your time there with Alfred Susie! And if you have time, get in a visit to Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. You won't regret it! :) xxoo Jan