Spring Deprogramming

To a Portlander in March, the sun is a schedule 1 narcotic. I never hear mention of this: but all of the Northwest is not created equal on the rain/gloom spectrum — Portland’s the legit gloomiest. Leaden clouds hanging over the Willamette River Valley 110% of the time. Many days you can hop on the highway and a few exits east skies are wide open and the sun abides … I digress.

This spring my aura was the color of dirty dishwater and it really needed work. I blame the darkness of the desk jockey life, aka work from home, aka work with zero boundaries.

March came around and I headed off on my annual spring deprograming. This year I went to the desert — not quite local but not quite exotic either. Let’s just say, within the limits of the CDC’s guidelines for not losing your shit in 2021. 

Newsflash: Out in the desert, there are no Douglas Firs. It hit me, I’ve always been in trees. Never not brushing by branches, slouching under forest fronds. But these wild and free landscapes? Sprinkled with pokies catching the sunlight just right? The desert’s like a float tank for my brain. I can breathe.  

In Tuscon, I paid a visit to an old timey friend from — shit, it’s impossible to say the last time I saw her. Probably at a bar that doesn’t exist anymore, the Laurelthurst or Hungry Tiger. Probably surrounded with crinkled tall cans. Anyway, pretty Emily now lives in a pink desert house that she’s slowly renovating in between feeding feral cats and singing Lucinda Williams. It put me in a candescent mood to talk shit for a couple hours, remembering the old days and looking forward to new ones. Straight outta the Guatemalan streets, her pup Abuela simply stole my heart.

In Northern Arizona, the best life decision I ever made was booking an accommodation with a window near the bed, so me and my baby could kick back, drink red wine, and watch the snow fall on fluted red rock. I’m glad I’m finally at the age where I make those kind of decisions for myself.