It comes down to the basics. We don't always remember that when the basics are taken care of.
Several years ago, I went on a solo motorcycle trip from Berkeley to LA to Joshua Tree to Mono Lake and back to Berkeley. It took me 5 days. It was my first taste of the desert and traveling alone. I got my bike stuck in the desert pea gravel and somehow managed to get it back on pavement with all my gear still packed on it.
The day I remember was when I awoke in Joshua Tree after a sleepless night. Dreaming of shamans while coyotes ran though my camp. I drove through Amboy, I drank in the desert heat. It was over 120 most of the day. I ran out of gas outside of Barstow on my way to the 395. I was almost blown down as I skimmed the pavement east of the Sierras. The only things on my mind: gas for my horse, water for my body, food for energy and shelter against the elements.
I arrived at Yosemite at dusk. Determined to push on, I started to enter the pack and was greeted with black sleets of rain soaking through my desert gear and slick pavement peppered with fallen rocks. I was exhausted from 12 hours of desert riding. I spied a light on the road and pulled into Tioga Pass Lodge. It was packed. I looked like a drowned rat. I prepared to beg to sleep on the store floor, but there was still a room.
When I went back to my corporate job after that trip, certain things just didn't seem important. Compared to what I had just experienced, I couldn't get worked up over due dates and product features. My worldview was reset.
It's exactly this reset I go to get in the desert. Most of the time, I visit my desert - the empty, barren mojave. I don't go with huge groups of people. I prefer to go alone or with one companion. You see more things that way.
In the desert, you can't remember you name, cause there ain't no worldview to give you no pain.
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