On the Road Solo — Why Would You Do That?
Travel is personal. Everyone has a sense most profound, a heightened sense of smell or expert hearing. Some travelers remember what they hear more than the sights. For example, she can tell you the sound the rain made on the terracotta roof tiles of the cozy villa in Tuscany last summer. The color of the outfit you wore the last day in Spain, not so much. Another traveler might tell his friends five years after a trip to Brazil about the best Coxinha he had at a food stall in Sao Paulo yet has hazy memories of the dance partner he had the night before. Travel is best remembered through our strongest senses.
Some might sneer at the thought of traveling across the Sonora desert in August. They will say, “it’s obscenely hot”. Yes, it is. Until experiencing a summer monsoon in the wide-open Arizona wilderness, heat hot, hot heat, then a massive dark gray ominous cloud tower blows in, the heat ripples on the horizon evaporate, the punishing heat dissipates, the winds kick up. Fat rain drops, plunk one two, three, then the deluge consumes, cooling the air, the surrounding desertscape for a short while. The air is static. Try touching anything metal, you might get a zap. The rain pools in low places, before the heat sears your brow again, the thirsty earth drinks the rainwater, summer in the southwest is brutal. The forces of nature, heat, torrential rain, and more heat is not…
