The road home

CORTEZ,Colo.—After a couple weeks on the road, you start to miss your home and you long to get back. Maybe that's why all those ancient Indian cultures have stories about an eventual return to our place of origin.

It's great to look upon an unfamiliar landscape with wonderment and think about what it must have been like for the first inhabitants to view such things for the first time. Were they awestruck? Terrified? Inspired? Did they move on, or did they feel like they had found a place to put down roots and begin a new life?

At Mesa Verde National Monument, the ancient people migrated away from their pit houses on the mesa tops and built marvelous civilizations in the sides of cliffs. These ancient people were masterful weavers, but as time went on, as their civilization aged and matured, the things they were once good at suffered in quality. Like many of the ancient people—like their contemporaries, the Fremont, to the north—their civilizations mysteriously disappeared around 1300 A.D.

When we started our journey a couple weeks back, I was sick and weak, and my creativity was suffering badly at the hands of the same old routine. Despite the difficulties of getting on the road at the tail end of the Crippling Mystery Illness, we decided to forge ahead, because, we reckoned, we'd be better off in the long run for having abandoned our familiar place for a while and heading out to parts unknown.

As much as mankind has changed and "evolved" over the years, we have retained our faiths and superstitions. The ancients had their Kivas and boogeymen; we have our churches and demons. Here in the White West, our modern-day shaman are telling us of a time when some mysterious occurrence will come and pluck the righteous from this world and transport us to a new one where we will never know tears or shame.

Perhaps the Ancient Ones already went through such an experience 700 years ago. And perhaps they will return with wisdom to teach us, or to simply look around their old homes and realize that what they left behind was inimitable.

It only takes a little while away before we begin to realize that our homes contain the most valuable of human possessions. In these places, no matter how humble or ornate, we store our hearts, hopes and dreams. And these are things that are always worth coming back to. Dreams are always best in your own bed, and food always tastes best when eaten with your own spoon.

For the time being I'm content to stick around the hearth, but just as sure as the sun rises, we'll see you on down the road again sometime soon.