I am on a journey. I have taken this route many times before, but this time is a bit different: it is likely to be the last time I come to this place. This is not a melancholy thought: I don’t like it here, and my grandmother, the only reason I come here, is moving closer.

It isn’t a crisis. Thank goodness, one of those at a time is quite enough. It is a kind of business trip. Get things packed up and arranged for movers.

As I drove along the 1250 miles between my house and here I thought about all the stops and side trips that I was going to make someday. But I didn’t stop at any of them. The only stops I made were at places I knew. Not in a reminiscing way, but because I knew where to turn and what to expect.

It was a beautiful drive and, at several points, I thought that I wanted to take a picture, but there was no where convenient to pull off at the moment. I did not take a single picture all the way down. No record of this last trip.

After coming here for 44 years I expected to feel more. I recently scanned some photographs that my dad took on the first trip we ever made down here. The desert has changed, the route itself has changed, and so have I.

I wonder what is next?

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Journey.”

 

Desert