Having touched all the bases I had to touch this trip, I decided to weasel a little time to spend in my native land out of my last week of vacation.  I’m going to spend a couple days here in California with my brother and the Garrett side of my family tree.  I simply could not get this close without crossing the border, even if it’s just to spend only two days with my brother.

Here I see Damiel Gonzales over at Box Turtle Bulleting fleeing California for the more affordable Denver, and here I am desperately wishing I could go back and spend the rest of my life in the land of my birth.  But for the same reason Daniel can’t stay, I could not go, except to visit.  I have a cute little rowhouse and the best job in the world waiting for me back in Baltimore.  (Now if only I had a boyfriend back there waiting for me too.  Ah…but he would be here with me, enjoying the western scenery…)

This trip just worked out weird, because I had so many people I had to visit along the way, plus the Open Source Developer’s Conference in Portland.  Unlike previous years, the direct route took me away from my beloved four corners, and California.  It was first to Memphis, then to Topeka, and then to Portland, and then back to Boise.  So the route took me north, away from the four corners area, and into Wyoming, which after what I saw in Laramie, I am coming to despise.  In the southwest the desolation is beautiful.  The arid landscape between Boise and Cheyenne just stares back at you vacantly.  Before long, that emptiness is staring into your soul, like Nietzsche’s abyss.  You just want to get the hell out of there.  This trip it seemed, I would have to cross it twice.  If it wasn’t for another Garrett in Boise that I promised to come visit (we Garretts are actually quite adorable while we’re still young), I wouldn’t have considered it.

But after my stopover in Boise I decided to hell with it and zigged back across Nevada into California.  I called my brother and told him I’d be there for a couple days.  Then I’ll travel back across I-40, hit the trading posts at Gallup on the way back, buy a little more Turquoise, and enjoy at least a little of Arizona and New Mexico before going back home.

But…swear…a few days in California are necessary right now.  Something deep down inside of me felt like it was starting to suffocate until I crossed the border and something deep down inside of me sighed.  I think it was Wyoming.  Wyoming just…did something to me.  Something…disturbing.  I had to go see California, had to plant my feet on its soil, had to breath in its air, run my hand through the sand along the Pacific shore.  It’s in my will that when I die I want my ashes scattered here, somewhere in or near Oceano, where the grassy hills watch the Pacific waves caress the shore.