Years ago, when I was a child, crossing the Arkansas River and then the Mississippi River generated a wanderlust that made my feet itch and my soul long to see what was up river as well as down river and I wanted to see both at the same time. The joy, the longing, the yearning to see what mysteries were here and there that I had heading east I now have when I am going west. I cross the Arkansas a couple times when I go west, once in Fort Smith and once again in Oklahoma. The thing is, the river no longer holds the lure that it once did. Now my longings and wishes are for mesas and snow capped mountains and cacti (even when they aren’t in bloom), for miles and miles of miles and miles with nothing but scrub brush, dirt and rocks, for sunsets that are beautifully painful to watch, for stars that are so close they are touchable, sigh, for the southwest. My travel compass has switched poles, from east to west and my joy is traveling anywhere west of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas…So, if this were blogger, I would favorite New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Washington, Oregon and California.
