desert traveller

So I've shared where we went and what we did, but I have to share my observations about travelling. Or, being a traveller.

I guess I need to start out with saying that I'm a desert rat. Born and raised. I've been places, and seen things, but the desert always feels like coming home, to me. I bugs me when people say that everything is brown in the desert. So. Not. True. Sure, you can see sand. A lot of it. But there are plants: grasses and flowers, and while trees may be sporadic, there are some pretty big bushes, and - of course - cactus. Many of them are some variety of green, with appropriate application of water. But that is just the start. You can see for miles. Miles and miles. Purple mountain majesties, and bluest blue skies. Clouds and rainstorms. Dust (sometimes WAY too much of that). You can see the fences, and the washes and the dirt roads. You can see each little farm house, mobile home & rusted out car hulk.

Once we got into Oklahoma, and for most of our travels, there were trees. Many of them. Along both sides of the roads, most of the time. It's green. A LOT of it. People who live in that seem to miss it when they aren't there. Me, I feel like there are so many trees, I don't get to see the forest. I don't get to see the creatures between the trees, or that corn field just on the other side, or that falling down house/barn or is it a lovely mansion? Maybe living in the desert makes me nosey, but I want to know what is beyond the roadside. Where is the horizon? It's just trees and more walls of trees.

Now, don't get me wrong, I really love trees. I have a thing for them, really. How they build themselves fascinates me. Not only that, but I appreciate a good forest as much as the next person. We took a beautiful drive through the Blue Ridge Parkway, which I absolutely loved. I just am not sure that I consider that roadside wall of green that follows so many roads through the south to really count as "scenery."

That said, I'll still go back in a heartbeat.