Lost in the Desert

Yesterday I got sun burnt for the second time in my life. I went for a walk at 6:30am. The sun had barely come up. It hadn't even burnt off the clouds yet, but after a walk and a swim, I came home to discover I was peeling. Gross! While I am usually a sun person, I am kind of missing the rain and the lush green of Seattle. Moreover in addition to missing my friends, I miss the familiarity of my city. I've been visiting Tempe several times a year since my mom moved here 3 years ago, but still everyday here is a scavenger hunt.

My mom is recovering well, and she is walking for short periods of time as well as enduring intensive physical therapy that requires her to be in a leg moving machine for at least 6 hours daily, which means she is not able to really leave the house yet. So if we need groceries or if errands need to be run, I have to drive.

I have discovered several things about this area. 1: It's totally flat here and there are no real landmarks to orient me, so at any given moment I have no idea what direction I'm headed in. 2:Everything looks the same. Drive 6 blocks in any direction and I guarantee you will find an intersection with a CVS and a Walgreen's on the corner unless you are in a residential neighborhood which is nothing more than a hive of white walled houses with pink rock lawns. Throw in a few cacti and some citrus fruit bearing trees and that describes the monotonous beauty of Tempe, Phoenix, Mesa, and Chandler, all of which have no discernible boundaries to my knowledge. 3: In order to alleviate any light pollution there are very few street lights, which means night here is actually really dark and very good for obscuring street signs. So when I'm not at home hanging out with my mom, I am probably lost trying not piss everybody off with my ultra slow granny driving.

Each time I go out there trying to find my way, I am reminded that I am not the first, nor the last to come to the desert and get a little disoriented. Kathianne always says Jesus should be the great example, not the great exception and as I think about his 40 days and 40 nights, I am grateful for air conditioning and that finding the Red Robin to get my mom a hamburger has thus far been my most difficult challenge. It could be worse. Maybe it takes getting a little lost to really bring clarity to exactly what it is you're trying to find. That's the hope anyway...