“To the desert go prophets and hermits; through desert go pilgrims and exiles. Here the leaders of the great religions have sought the therapeutic and spiritual values of retreat, not to escape but to find reality.”  

― Paul Shepard, Man in the Landscape: A Historic View of the Esthetics of Nature

I doubt that every snowbird that heads south to Arizona or California would be considered a prophet, hermit, pilgrim or exile. But we can probably all agree that most of the chilled-to-the-bone Canucks that seek the American desert are, at the very least, longing for something as simply therapeutic as heat. It’s as basic as a cat looking for the sunny patch on the floor.

Yet as much as I wanted to leave on this little sojourn, a large part of me wanted to stay. After so many months of going back and forth to Sechelt because of the situation with Kathleen, I was finally able to be home for a little while. As a result, I had just started a very tenuous routine. So I was afraid to leave on this trip and lose the little bit of structure that I had begun to create.

And although Kathleen was still alive, I felt that my grief was eroding me more and more. Everything was starting to feel like it was too much. I made a plan to treat myself very carefully, only handling the smallest of tasks each day. I was doing my exercise again, but more importantly, I had established my writing practise. The words were beginning to build on the page and most of the days too, I was painting and collaging. In between I swear I did almost nothing. Yet it somehow felt like a lot.

But I knew too, that this reluctance to leave was one of my classic moves.  It seems that every time I’ve been about to go anywhere, I always seem to come up with very good reasons not to go at all. Do you remember Dr. Doolittle’s pushmi-pullyu animal that didn’t know which way to go? Exactly.

I knew I had to fight my inclination to remain.

Now that we’ve been gone for one week and have another week left, I remember anew why it is so important to leave.  John Steinbeck said,“People don’t take trips, trips take people.”  And this trip has already taken me far from my previous version of myself. I feel rested, reinvigorated and stronger, more able somehow.

We’ve gone through the Tucson Art Museum and various galleries in Tubac, inspiring me with tons of new ideas for more mixed media pieces. In Tubac we also made the happy discovery of the delightful Poston House Inn with their free-to-use bicycles, lovely owners (Mary & Don) and interesting guests.

In Phoenix stayed with Kevin’s sister Linda and her husband Lou. We went on lots of sweaty desert hikes, had drinks while floating in their aquarmarine pool and kayaked on a little lake. I rode a bike under the blazing Phoenix sun with Linda while Lou and Kevin golfed. Since then, Kevin has wheeled our rental car through miles of cacti forest, sandstorms and tumbleweeds, as we now head to our final destination of Palm Springs. 

I’m writing this from a motel room in Borrego Springs California, a place neither of us had ever heard of, and would never have found, if the aforementioned owners in Tubac hadn’t told us about it. One more happy and completely unplanned discovery.

Travel clears the mind. Travel shifts perspective. Travel creates new encounters and forces you out of complacency. Perhaps, in the end, travel makes pilgrims of us all.

It doesn’t matter where you go really…it just matters that you do.