i went for a trip with my trusty bff, deb, for thanksgiving to the northeast part of new mexico. there’s not a whole lot there. it’s a lot of ranch land, barbed wire fences, tumbleweed, cholla cactus and the occasional cow. deb, my dog, did not particularly care for the trip - not enough stuff to smell. but i loved it for the same reason i have grown to the desert - it’s chock full of solitude.

we stopped often to refresh ourselves, or at least attempt to (deb isn’t much of a fan of going to the bathroom outside of her typical pottie spaces) followed by hydrating a bit to offset the dry, high-desert in which we were driving. on one of those stops i noticed some grasses next to the road, and an interesting fencepost. the combination of the shapes, lines, the color contrasts and the textural contrasts was fascinating to me. it symbolized everything that this trip was - a journey of solitude that only deb and i experienced.