In the desert west of Phoenix, a couple years ago. It's been so long since a real cold front blasted through, like they do back east. Wonderful. We went out to explore the desert plain around our new boondocking site near Tonopah, AZ. The altitude was just over 1000 feet. Some of my plastic bottles were flattened by the air pressure.
I dreaded returning to the creosote bush-dominated desert of lower Arizona. Perhaps it was monotony of a desert plain dominated by one plant; or maybe it flatters the ego to live at high altitudes. But someone who has been hiking in thorn and sticker country recently can see creosote bush as a blessing, since it has no stickers or thorns! That is no small miracle. Just a few feet from this monotony you could see the lush boscage of a dry wash. Maybe they were ironwood and elephant trees. Just imagine walking across this hellish plain in June, and finally finding this shade!
This desert plain is covered with desert pavement, like at Quartzsite. But instead of sharing it with 500,000 Onan and Coleman generators, I am the only camper here. Desert pavement is a wonderful surface to camp or walk on, and it was adorned with glittering quartz rocks.
I dreaded returning to the creosote bush-dominated desert of lower Arizona. Perhaps it was monotony of a desert plain dominated by one plant; or maybe it flatters the ego to live at high altitudes. But someone who has been hiking in thorn and sticker country recently can see creosote bush as a blessing, since it has no stickers or thorns! That is no small miracle. Just a few feet from this monotony you could see the lush boscage of a dry wash. Maybe they were ironwood and elephant trees. Just imagine walking across this hellish plain in June, and finally finding this shade!
This desert plain is covered with desert pavement, like at Quartzsite. But instead of sharing it with 500,000 Onan and Coleman generators, I am the only camper here. Desert pavement is a wonderful surface to camp or walk on, and it was adorned with glittering quartz rocks.
The first day in our new boondocking location we headed for the nearest saddle at sunset. We espied what first looked like a mosque near mountains in Morocco. I started fantasizing about Gabriel Yared's soundtrack for the "English Patient." Recall the beginning of the movie: the WWI aeroplane flying above the rippled, shadowed dunes in North Africa. After getting closer I saw that it was the roof of a nuclear power plant!
During the first blast of that cold front, tumbleweeds blew across the road. How classic! Back in Colorado this past September I saw what looked like a model airplane flying about a hundred feet off the ground; its navigation seemed electrically guided. But it was going too slow to be a model airplane. Getting closer, I saw that it was a plant similar to tumbleweed, at least aerodynamically. Apparently an afternoon thermal had grabbed it and lifted it away from the pedestrian life of common plants on the hot, dry plain. It had been spirited off to a higher plane of existence.
Do full time travelers delude themselves with the notion that they have gone through a similar transformation? Do they feel legitimately superior to the sedentary and common plane of house/job existence, or is this just self-flattery?
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