I dug out an old sketchbook/journal I started seven years ago on the precipice of becoming a nomad.
After browsing through it, this deceptively little notepad morphed into a heavy brick weighed down from a time of uncertainty and loss of a soulmate kind of love back then.
I started this nomadic journey to explore unbounded freedom in nature and experience a deepening of soul. But after looking back at words and sketches from that turbulent beginning I realize maybe I was really running from my love-haunted self.
I still love and at times pine for that lost soulmate but there’s a certain kind of wisdom and acceptance belying it. And there’s deep appreciation for having experienced a once-in-a-lifetime kind of love.
It feels I am starting anew every few years with different perspectives shorn from old skins whose layers of pain carved their wisdom into me.
The journey endures — it never ends because the moment I stop shedding old skins growth ends and a soul withers.
Here I am sitting in the sand of the Sonoran desert not far from Lake Havasu City in Arizona. Camped nearby is a dear long-time camping buddy of mine, Doug. We each are fun loving silly heads who’ve tossed away remnants of normal life to live more freely as wondering nomads.
The day is razor clear and the wind stiller than usual — just enough of a cool breeze to shave some warmth from the sun. I’m surrounded by mountains - the Mohave, Whipple, and Chemehuevi. And the Colorado river meanders through down the hill from me.
I’ve got a lukewarm coffee sitting near, propping up an e-reader where I’m simultaneously reading “Desert Notebooks” and “A Joseph Campbell Companion.” Quite appropos for the world I’m living in at the moment.
I see a speck of a solitary car-camper perched up on a small cliff overlooking all. She appears each day before nightfall and leaves before the sun rises. Apparently this desert is her temporary home too. Hello there fellow nomad.
Speaking of nomads my camping buddy - a former chef in another life - is going to grill up a campfire version of his pot roast and he’s invited me over for dinner. I’ll bring over a couple sweet potatoes to top it off. “That’ll bump it up, Emeril style!” he says.
I ran into him six years ago camped on the shores of Lake Mohave at Telephone Cove near Laughin, Nevada. It was an instant friendship that’s evolved into “brothers from another mother” kind. We keep each other young and joyful with bouts of pranks and silliness that transports back to those carefree days of childhood yore.
That’s the beauty of this nomadic life — kindred spirits who collide across wandering paths and part as forever friends.
Meeting fellow souls on this solitary adventure has been one of the most fulfilling and least expected things to come out of this journey.
I’m not a people person. I’m what some might call an extreme introvert - a lone wolf - who thrives in aloneness.
And yet. These delicious souls I keep meeting along the way bring deeper dimensions of light and crack my soul a bit wider across the at-times-insane world we live in.
It’s revealing how these brief interludes with initial strangers result in profound relationships more enriching than the hurry-ness of acquaintancing in conventional brick and mortar life.
Perhaps it’s because out here in the wild ordinary life fades away and busy-ness ceases to exist and we begin to see and feel our true selves in communion with nature?
