This week Anne challenges us with photographing, What’s Around the Corner. Join her for a photo walk around Old Rosedale, California. Join me for a weekend in Kofa, Arizona.

Overlanding Pin Drop: A random place, in the middle of nowhere, that feels like the right spot to call home for the night.  

It is where we let the sun decide when day meets night, and night meets day. It is where we embrace the wisdom of the desert, and it’s ability to strip away illusions of a stark nothingness.  

I woke at dawn. I always do. A peek from around the trailer towards the east is the reason. I could gather redundancy and  tell you of it’s profound, delicate beauty and it would be true.

But dang it, this desert… it beats with a most fascinating sense of purpose. This powerful quietude at dawn encourages introspection, and a fresh perspective on the light of day.   

With the quiet I feel the need to tiptoe into the wash.  It is what nudges plant life, encourages wildlife and feeds the thirsty desert. By now, the morning light dances through the landscape as if a magic wand reminds the desert to begin again.  And I wonder if the power of light even signifies day, or maybe that introspection I spoke of tells us to pay attention. The backlit saguaro answers like a champ.

A walk around the bend, and I can’t help but to stop at the saguaro framed in the distance.

The nearby, abandoned Rob Roy Mine seems to be expecting us. The door to the cabin is open, welcoming us into a twilight zone moment, if you will.

The blacksmith shop seems to be ready to start the day and the tidy spaces let me believe people walked away, thinking they would return in the morning, and never did.

The exit at the rear of the blacksmith shop is the entrance to the mine. The rock walls pulsate with the conversation of lives that came before us, and we meander through stories of hope, vision, disappointment, and hope…again.

And I can’t help but wonder, if a hundred years from now, someone will walk in my steps, carefully. The teddy bear cholla balls are relentless, and yet…so is the desert that grows with a bloom where you are planted mentality.


The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes,

but in having new eyes. – Marcel Proust .     

Wind Kisses, Donna