The desert is in my blood. Maybe that’s why I keep finding my way back.
As a kid, I watched Death Valley Days flicker to life on our tiny, bulbous black-and-white TV, the crackling theme music setting the stage for sun-scorched landscapes where the iconic 20-mule team hauled borax across the Mojave Desert. That endless rugged expanse felt as familiar to me as my own backyard. Well, because it was my backyard in Barstow, California, the place where I picked up a horned toad and let it rest in my tiny preschool palm, its spiked head turning and tilting inquisitively to look into my eyes, unafraid.
Although we moved to Ohio when I was five, the desert left its mark, wiring me for vast, open spaces. Most summers, we drove cross-country in the Vista Cruiser station wagon to California to visit family. With every mile, the landscape unfolded—flat plains giving way to the sunbaked vastness I knew in my bones.
The desert is alive in ways that most people back East never notice. But since there’s nowhere to hide—no lush distractions, no easy comforts—you have to be resourceful and observant to see it. Is that why people who love deserts often love clarity, or long for it? Maybe that’s why the myths of the desert—stories of lost gold mines, ghost towns, and things that go bump in the night—resonate.
Over the next week I’ll motorcycle through more than 1,500 miles of desert between my home in North Carolina and Arizona, tracing my way back to my parents, the desert lovers who found their way back to their preferred landscape twenty-odd years ago.
In our last desert adventure, back in 2013, my parents and I explored unmarked roads in Death Valley National Park and almost ran out of gas before making it back to the tarmac. When we got to the gas station—on fumes and after midnight—we laughed, not just because we’d survived, but because travel is invigorating. We never panicked, even after the sun went down, drawing instead on familial strength to get us through another misadventure. One that has since become family lore. If you don’t mind the small screen, this video is from that night…it was like navigating a lunar landscape.
This year, when I planned my route west, I tried coaxing Mom and Dad to meet me in southeastern Arizona to tour some of the ghost towns, mining exhibits, and history museums we’d long discussed: Tombstone, Bisbee, Gleeson. I wasn’t prepared for their answer.
“We’re done road-tripping, sweetheart,” Dad said. “It’s just more comfortable for us to stay here where we have everything we need.”
Knowing this day would eventually arrive didn’t make it easier to accept. The gut punch of Dad’s declaration wasn’t about missing the ghost towns—it was about realizing something fundamental had changed. My parents, who once reveled in the open road, had chosen to stay put. And if it could happen to them, it could happen to me. The horizon that always seemed so distant was suddenly close. Right there, too manifest to ignore.
I guess that’s why, as I plotted my route west, I found myself drawn to a place I’ve never visited, a place where certainty frays at the edges: Roswell, New Mexico. There, in 1947, something crashed in the desert. What it was depends on who you ask: a weather balloon, a classified military project, or a craft from another world. In the decades since, Roswell has transformed from an ordinary town into a modern myth, a place where belief and doubt walk hand in hand.
Roswell thrives on distortion. It’s a funhouse mirror held up to reality, a town where nothing is settled, where conflicting stories coexist and no one seems in a hurry to untangle them. In that way, it’s the opposite of the desert I know—the one that strips things down to their essence. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe I need to stand in front of that funhouse mirror and see myself, my life, my parents—everything—shift, even if just for a moment.
Before pulling into The Alien Capital of the World, I’ll have spent days with my own thoughts. Any motorcyclist will tell you the road doesn’t just offer escape; it demands reflection. And motorcycling has always provided me with clarity, especially in times of personal uncertainty.
Silence holds a story. Even the most open landscapes have their mysteries.
And maybe, after Roswell, I’ll be ready to face the ones waiting for me in Arizona—and back home in North Carolina.
I’ll leave you with one of my favorite pictures from my desert adventures, this one from Oatman, Arizona. Once the sun starts to set, the burros take over!
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