As my time in Santa Fe was drawing to a close, I was surprised to find I was feeling nostalgic about the desert. I grew up on the East Coast and love the greenery. While I have enjoyed hiking the desert sections of the Continental Divide Trail, the PCT and the Arizona Trail, I never thought of the desert as a possible home for me. I always felt there was a harshness there. Because I was hiking through it looking for water, it seemed I was constantly engaged in a life or death dance with these dry environs. Today I realized that by spending a lengthy amount of time in the desert when I wasn’t having to search for water, I’ve grown to appreciate it, even if I still can’t envision living there full-time. I am grateful that the time I’ve spent in this arid land has given me an understanding of some of its seasons and moods.

This of course got me thinking about the value of spending time getting to know someone or some particular area. It is so easy to see some beautiful sight, snap a picture and move on without ever really ingesting the full essence of the place. Shorty after I encountered the many miles of Ponderosa pine plateau on the AZT, I felt bored by its sameness. It was only by spending time there and getting to know it as the spring progressed that I came to appreciate the protection those pines provided for the delicate, ephemeral spring flowers.

To fully appreciate the beauty of a place such as the Grand Canyon, I believe it helps to experience a storm there. Seeing raging water pouring through the rock gives one a fuller sense that in order for the beauty to exist, it required years of enduring the harsher elements of nature necessary to erode the rock.

I want to spend more time with people I don’t necessarily have a natural attraction to. I hope by doing so I can learn to really see beyond what is not attractive to me to the beauty underneath. I suspect that most of the time when I’m put off by someone, it’s more about something inside of me than it is about the other person.

That last thought left me thinking about how easy it is to poo poo the value of gratitude and appreciation without realizing the benefit these things provide. It is certainly important to sit in places of anger, pain, frustration, hurt and loss and I don’t think it is helpful to deny those feelings in order to be grateful. But I do know that reaching the point of gratitude has been immensely helpful for me. Appreciating people as they are helps me increase appreciation for myself.

By reframing some of my life’s experiences from the lens of gratitude, I have been able to feel less traumatized. As an example, since first starting to walk as a toddler, I’ve had to relearn how to walk three more times. The first was in my 20’s after I had back surgery and was told I had to give up hiking; in my late 30’s I was seriously burnt and bedridden for over a month before many months of learning to really walk again; and in my 50’s I injured both knees and was in a wheelchair before progressing to using a walker for a while. Each of these experiences was traumatizing for me and I’m still processing some of that. But rather than focusing on how unlucky I was to have had all those experiences, I’m finding that by changing my perspective, I can realize how amazing it is that I’ve regained my physical strength so many times. Looking at it from that perspective helps me appreciate my tenacity and resilience. It is a miracle that I’m still walking and carrying a backpack.

And now that I’ve had a chance to look more in-depth at the desert and to appreciate it, I’m finding that I will miss it when I say goodbye. I know this sense of loss when saying goodbye comes in part from having had the experience of caring and loving about someone or someplace, so I’m grateful for that sense of loss which lets me know that I’ve come to appreciate the desert.

I also know that without saying goodbye to the desert, I won’t be able to experience the new things that await me, including the Pacific coast, rainforest and mountains of the northwest.