The clouds rolled in on New Year’s Day. Tiny drops falling as we crossed the Laguna Sierras— again. Maybe for the final time. More droplets. The pungent smell of creosote shrubs brings me back to Arizona and an old favorite book. The writings of Gary Nabhan accompanied me as I fell in love with the desert. The Desert Smells Like Rain. It really does. There is nothing quite like it. My desert rat days seem like a lifetime ago. But that rich, musky, damp smell is as familiar as yesterday.

It’s amazing how quickly a vibrancy in the landscape takes hold after a rain. Flowers grow and open overnight. How long have they been waiting for this moment? The tips of ocotillo flash scarlet red like little flames. Tiny green leaves have emerged, glistening on the stalk. Puddles form. Birds sing. Roads are slick.

The sky is ominous and beautiful.

Tidy mounds of silver-leaved asters line the roadside. Long slender stems of bright yellow disks wave as we fly by.

Down the road a group of vultures binges on roadkill. Seemingly unaware and unmoving as we barrel down. Reluctant to look up, much less give up their feast. Nearly upon them, I cringe. Just in time, dark wings scatter and fly. We are an inconvenience. In their way. They will circle back. Carrying on long after we are gone.

Barrel cacti dot the landscape like beacons- some small like pincushions, some as tall as a person. Bright magenta spines curved and interlaced across the tops. Like woven basketry. Beautiful. Intricate. Beckoning and sharply protective.

We pass arroyos edged with palms. It feels tropical even when the arroyo is dry. Somewhere there is a source. Ephemeral streams maybe. Or an underground aquifer. There are always mysteries just beneath the surface. Palms mean water. Water means people. Sometimes just a scrapwood shack under the shade of a lonely tree. Large oases will grow a town. These mysterious little pockets of desert feel different. And they are few and far between.

Dylan continues his search for yucca stalks. For hours we see none. And then hundreds. They grow on slopes and in the shallow draws. A patchwork among the baobabs and saguaro. Some with flower stalks thicker than my arm and taller than my head. Some with buds nearly bursting. Some already with multiple branching, unfurling yellow flowers. All stages of blooming candelabras. Some are shriveled and dying. Splintered stalks and withered seed pods- split open. Empty shells on the sandy soil.

Already becoming something new.

My parents met us for a week in Todos Santos. They got to cruise around the bumpy roads with us in the campervan and taste a bit of nomadic life. We rented a house and it was luxury even without WiFi and losing electricity for 2 days. It had a cold water pool and real beds. A refrigerator and rooftop palapa with a peek of the pacific. We spent Christmas together feasting on local foods from the farmers market down the road. We poked around the shops and spent a day at the beach. Dylan beat my dad at backgammon and my dad beat him at chess. We spent dad’s birthday at Cerritos beach. A great meal and toast to a new year as the sun disappeared in the water. The sky smoldering with lingering pinks and oranges.

And then we said goodbye. We dropped them at the airport in Cabo, setting out on the long road north.

The return is always bittersweet.

I had anticipated that we would take the slow route home, revisiting our favorite spots and discovering new ones on our way.

Continue meandering as we have.

It started out that way. Bahía Concepcion called us back. We spent New Year’s Eve by a campfire at a quiet spot on a rocky edge of the bay. Falling asleep to the soft sound of guitar as our neighbor played under the stars. We woke to the year 2023 with morning sun- a rosy tangerine glow emerging from the grey blue waters of the gulf. The pelicans went about their morning business. Bobbing. Fishing. Flying. Fishing. Bobbing. Oblivious to the concept that this particular sunrise should hold any special promise.

On the pacific coast we found large and very bold coyotes on the salt flats outside Guerrero Negro. But we were too early for the whales. In late winter this protected bay will be filled with thousands of birthing grey whales and calves. Someday I want to see that.

The air is colder now and our pace has quickened.

With home on the horizon it has become hard to savor the slowness. A magnet pulls us north. Dylan called toward his friends and the snowy slopes before heading back to school. Jon toward a pileup of work projects and post storm cleanup. I am teetering on the edge. The homeward pull is real. There is work to be done. And it is a place I love. And yet the road north feels weighted with a gentle melancholy. This big, open, bright-sky, dust-coated, prickly, mountainous desert landscape by the sea feels familiar now. It has taken a while but my tender bare feet are hardened. The grittiness almost unnoticeable. This place has caught my attention. And my imagination. The pace of life is slow. Nothing here is slick or straightforward. It’s rough around the edges and I like it that way.

Life on the road means living in the moment is a given, not a New Year’s resolution. I will try to bring that home with me.

Home…

Despite my contentment in this place, the tug is real. The call of winter. Back to the  tall mossy trees. The smell of cedar. Huckleberry shrubs and ferns and wood fires. Homemade soup. The cleanse of a sauna and rain gently filtering through fir needles. The sound of a ferry foghorn and mist in the forest. Crabs and mussels. Roasting coffee. Bundled up beach walks with much missed friends. Shifting energy back to my roots. I will lament the loss of sunshine. But there is also deep comfort to be found in the darkness.

I will move into this new year filled with gratitude for our adventures in the world.

Slowing down, taking this time together as a family has been a gift. In a few years Dylan will be living his own life. Choosing his own adventures. I hope that he will remember some of the things we have learned along the way together. From Nepal to Mexico and all of the beautiful and sometimes difficult trails and winding roads along the way.

That it’s okay to not always have a plan. That life can be as hard and as it is beautiful. That it’s okay to change directions halfway down the road. That people can be kind despite their circumstances. And we can be generous with strangers. That our differences are interesting and beautiful. We always have something to share and something to learn. I hope that this journey and that all of our travels have showed him that there is freedom in living with less. That we are all just human beings doing our best to make our way through life. Not one of us better or more important than any other. That we can make mistakes, forgive each other and try harder. That this earth is fragile and beautiful and magical and precious. Treasures and insights can be found in unexpected places. And that our love for each other and our connections to our friends and family are timeless and weightless, not bound to place but carried with us where ever we are.

And so much more…

So many things that cannot be taught through screens or books or even stories. We learn as we go. We move on and keep the memories.

Onward north.

Someday we will return.

“Trying to remember the Gulf is like trying to re-create a dream…There is always in the back of our minds the positive drive to go back again. If it were lush and rich, one could understand the pull, but it is fierce and hostile and sullen. The stone mountains pile up to the sky and there is little fresh water. But we must go back if we live, and we don’t know why.”

-John Steinbeck, The Log from the sea of Cortez