There’s truly something special about feeling like you click with weirdos whose oddness matches your own. The most magic places and experiences are definitely not for everyone, but you don’t get something truly special without turning some people off.

As this trip comes to a close, I’m thinking about how I want to write about it in some larger way. What are you interested in hearing about from my 2+ months around the USA?

I took my friends out to the Western Slope of Colorado, returning to the area I last left behind in December 2020 after resigning from the job that I’d moved out there for just before the pandemic hit in a globally massive way.

It’s going to take me a while to untangle and peruse through all the feelings this brought up.

Love to these ladies

They helped me through COVID times

That drew us all close

I’m here in Denver for a few days to surprise a friend who is about to have both a birthday of her own and a birth day of a new baby. Haven’t mentioned the details, because it’s been a surprise months-long in the planning, and I didn’t want to risk word getting out.

After Capitol Reef today and Kanab before that, and the glorious afternoon hike along Calf Creek in Escalante, I’ve been soaking up the awe-inspiring geology for a while now. I’ll be sad to leave it behind, but there’s part of me that’s looking forward to heading home to see how the next phase goes.

A very satisfying sensory day, indeed. Not least of which was the shower and moisturizing lotion I applied back at my little Kanab studio on my last night here.

Between this and Monument Valley, the Navajo Tribal Parks are where it’s at: best managed, best crowd control, clearest visitor policies, and best decision making that puts the preserved land first.

“You’re allowed to go out and be you rather than something fixed. The world is changing, and we’re all part of remaking it… and we don’t have to follow the paths and patterns that we once had to follow.”

Words won’t adequately capture the breathlessness of hiking down and up Bryce Canyon in the thin mountain air, with snow flurries drifting out of the gray clouds in the bright blue sky, with the warm sun and cold wind that I remember fondly from my time living in Colorado