Life, with the garden
Location: Phoenix, Arizona, USA • • • Visit: July 2012
Sunset over Grand Canyon.
There is something so extremely non-human with it. Just to imagine how a small river has managed to dig such a deep scar into the bedrock – the time it has required – that all the other landscape-altering processes has allowed the fluvial processes to do their job, without interrupting with earth-quakes and glaciers – it makes my head spin.
The utter force.
It makes it so clear just how tiny we are, in perspective, that the Earth was here long before us and will prevail long after we are gone. It gives me hope.
But, most of all, it is beautiful. So breath-takingly beautiful.
One of the impressive things that Phoenix has to offer is the Desert Botanical Garden. It is something really special. It fed into my fascination with deserts. I just love succulents. However, when trying to reach it, mom and I realized it is really hard to access through public transport – but I guess that’s nothing unique in the US. Once there, though, mom and I got a really enjoyable afternoon strolling around among the cacti and dryland trees.
They told me Phoenix would be hot in July. They were not kidding.
We made it down all the way through Big Sur to Santa Barbara and then up across the mountains and the valley and up some more mountains to Sequoia and King’s Canyon National Parks. Then, the day before yesterday, we flew from Fresno to Phoenix and here we are, just back at mom’s friend Vladimiro’s apartment after a two-day road trip up to Grand Canyon.
The closest thing to a holy place a geographer with a weakness for geology can come.
What we’re doing tomorrow, I don’t know. On Tuesday, we start the journey back home. On Wednesday morning, I’ll be landing in Stockholm. Back to reality. It feels surreal.
Later: It’s raining in Phoenix. The day was hot, and now the rain fills the air with smells. It’s amazing, how one part of the sky is a deep blueish purple from the storm clouds, at the same time as the horizon shifts from a sinister yellow to bright pink and bloody red from the setting sun. The mountains are only shadows.
Phoenix is a strange place. I don’t know how else to put it.
Even later: My last night in North America. I’m sitting on Vladimiro’s top floor balcony, watching the non-existing skyline of Phoenix. The desert breeze feels amazing against my skin. I’m just wearing panties and a tank top. And this is an uncommonly cool night. That’s how hot it is in Phoenix. In seven hours, we’re going to be picked up for the airport. If everything goes according to schedule, I will be landing in Stockholm in about 24 hours.
And for some reason, I feel terrified.
North America has been so much more than I thought it would be. I never expected to fall. I have learned so much. I’ve also lost small pieces of myself along the way.
I don’t want to leave.
I want to go home.
I’m sitting on the sixth-floor balcony, letting the desert breeze run through my hair, listening to the crickets and the hum from a broken air conditioner across the street. The moon is shaped like an egg.
The palm trees sound like falling rain. The air is like a warm caress.
The life of a traveler is heart-breaking. That’s just the way it has to be.
Epilogue
October 2012
Feels kind of odd, really, writing this now, considering that I’ve been home for more than two months. But I made a decision, I wanted to finish the story – and now I have. 330 chapters of North America travels.
I guess traveling always leaves a strange feeling. Like I never went away and like I’ve been away far too long at the same time. Things happened that I don’t really know what to do about yet.
I had planned for this blog to contain texts that saw beyond the actual events of my travels, musings about home and belonging and connecting. But. I’m not really sure what I learned about belonging yet. It’s all still a huge mess in my head. That I moved to a new city, to Uppsala to study, only one month after returning to Sweden might not have helped. So I guess I’ll have to continue writing…
Katja Malmborg 