The long way home
After California, the last place on this journey was to Arizona, where I found several fellow climbers had gone to the same place I was going.
In January, I spent several wonderful days that turned into weeks in the mountains nearby Tucson. The Tucson Gem show with all its wares and dazzling stones of precious gems was like a bazaar I walked through while it lasted, well into February.
After meeting up with the climbers, I traveled to Arkansas to climb for a few days at the Horseshoe Canyon Ranch near the Buffalo River in the Ozarks. It was sandstone and filled with wonder, a place I’d been told about, and had wandered into accidentally. Fate has its own ways.
The sunsets of New Mexico on the way were some of the most special I’d seen yet, or perhaps it was the nostalgia of going back after a long journey to things that were familiar, and yet different, changed by the ways of time. I enjoyed being in familiar places once more, and yet the journey beckoned once again.
Sarah and the Dreamworld: Ridgewood, was published in March.
In the meantime, I went skiing, hiked through the beautiful woods, and spent time living, each day passing slowly into the next, soon to be gone.
I returned to Southern Arizona, spending a week climbing and enjoying the sights. In Tucson, Steep Canyon Rangers were playing and the sounds of their songs were a wonderful way to spend an evening in March. Then, it was time to head home, wherever that is – where one is, home is never far from the heart.
Photographs below – as always, all opinions are my own.
