After leaving the Long Canyon trailhead, I head on over to the town of Clarkdale to find my accomodations for the night.
As am I driving, I reflect back to the year 2003 when I moved for the first time to Arizona. I just started a new job six months earlier, and the weekly travel to Arizona from Utah was becoming too much, and so I relocated to Cottonwood as a centralized location for the work I needed to do.
At the time, the town was trash, full of tweekers and people just barely making ends meet.
I’ve always related to Clarice Starling in the movie Silence of the Lambs when she is talking about her childhood to Doctor Hannibal Lecter. I too am only one generation away from poor white trash, hard working folks that never saw the world past their own small town view. I was always haunted by the screaming of the lambs in the night.
I pull up to the Blue Heron House. The town has come along way since 2003.
I find that I was close to the Birthing Cave as I was hiking along the trail earlier in the day, and feel extremely confident that I’ll be able to get there in the morning.
I continue to think about my past as I rest in the tiny house, letting the stars spin and twinkle above me. I find myself feeling divergent, a part of me still feels like a child stuck in poor rural Utah, another part of me relishes in my new found wings that allow me to fly and explore.
Morning comes, and with it I head back on out to the Vortex.
