not ready. going anyway.

location: st. george, utah. still. for another day or two. conditions: warm, dry, the kind of march that makes you forget march is supposed to be difficult. energy level: somewhere between grateful and reluctant, which is maybe just what leaving feels like when a place has gotten under your skin.

we’re heading back north soon. idaho. the mountains. the cold that probably hasn’t finished yet even though it’s technically spring. i know this. i am packing for this. i am not entirely ready for this.

a part of me is. i miss my bike. i miss elevation and trees and the particular quiet of a mountain morning that is different from desert quiet in ways i couldn’t have explained before i knew both. i want to actually use the paddle board this year instead of staring at it from a parking lot and writing about the parking lot. i want to ride more than i worked last summer. i want to keep the promise i made to myself back in september when the equinox showed up and i had a monitor tan and a lot of regret.

but the desert.

i didn’t expect to love it here the way i do. the dry heat. the low elevation and what it does for a body that spends too much time fighting itself. the red rock. the way the light lands on everything in the late afternoon like it’s trying to make a point. the flowers that grow in places they have absolutely no business growing, stubborn and loud and completely unbothered by the conditions.

this is also where i lost them both.

sigrun, november 2024. tove, november 2025. two novembers in a row, both in the desert, both in the middle of what were supposed to be ordinary seasons. i have hiked these trails with them. i have watched them move through this light. high point trail exists in my memory now as two things at once: a quiet morning scout that didn’t know what it was, and the last easy miles we walked together.

the desert held all of that. it still does. i think that might be part of why i love it now in a way i didn’t before — it’s not just landscape anymore. it’s where things happened. it’s where i was when my heart broke twice, and also where i kept going outside anyway, which turns out to be the only thing that helps.

sally came after. our adoptee, our unexpected third act, the dog who showed up and gave the whole thing somewhere to go again. she has no idea what this place means. she just knows there are good smells and that the pavement gets warm and that i will stop and let her investigate anything she considers worth investigating. she is not wrong about any of this.

i’m reading lab girl by hope jahren right now, which is either great timing or terrible timing depending on how you feel about books that make you think about time and growth and the things that survive. jahren writes about plants the way i want to write about trails — like the landscape is a living record of everything that happened there, if you know how to read it. i’m not sure i know how to read it yet. i’m learning.

we’ll be back south next winter. i know this. st. george will still be here, warm and dry and indifferent in the best way, the red rock doing what red rock does regardless of who shows up to look at it.

but right now i’m sitting with the specific feeling of leaving a place before i’m ready, which is different from leaving a place too late. this one still has things to say. i’m just running out of days to listen.

idaho is waiting. the mountains are waiting. the bike is waiting with what i choose to interpret as patience rather than accusation.

sally is ready. she’s always ready. i’m taking notes.

field note filed: leaving the desert. not ready. going anyway. that’s probably fine.