December 20, 2025, Clarendon, TX- I spent last night at the marvelous SouthWest Motel, in Grants, NM and am this evening at the equally lovely Western Skies Motel, in this northern anchor of the Northwest Passage. In both places, the reception has been warm and I sense little way stations are already being established, as they were in southern California, western Nevada and across the U.S. and Canada, over the past fourteen years.

I mused, whilst driving, about the awesome ambiance that encompasses the entirety of Arizona and New Mexico, as well as significant parts of California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Texas and a fair swath of northern Mexico. The commonality of these areas as that they lie within a Platinum Circle, of great natural majesty-the interplay of desert, mountains (Sky Islands, as well as the Rocky, Wasatch and Sierra Nevada ranges).

I have been greatly blessed to have spent so much of my adult life within this Circle and to have enjoyed so many of its wonders. So many visits: To the Grand Canyon, both North and South, as well as to the bottom of the Canyon, at Boat Beach and Supai; to the summit of Mount Humphreys, Arizona’s highest peak and up so many of the state’s other mountains- Camelback, Piestewa Peak, Mount Baldy, Harquehala Peak, Kendrick Peak, A1 Mountain, Mount Elden, Mount Union, Mingus, and Granite Mountain; to have been welcomed at Hopi, Navajo(Dineh) and Zuni ceremonies; to have floated out into Baia Cholla and made it back safely, to the raucous laughter, and inward relief, of onlooking Mexican fishermen; to have enjoyed so much heritage, mixed with natural beauty: Mesa Verde, Wupatki, Joshua Tree, Valley of Fire, Carlsbad Caverns, Aztec Ruins, Chimney Rock (both of them), virtually all of Sedona, Organ Pipe Cactus, Palo Duro Canyon, Black Canyon of the Gunnison (CO), Black Canyon National Recreation Trail (AZ), Santa Fe, Taos, San Diego Old Town, Tucson Old Pueblo, Pioche (NV), Ruby Mountains, Lake Lahontan, Great Salt Lake, Bryce Canyon, Arches, Capitol Reef, Natural Bridges, Lake Tahoe, Mono Lake, the beaches from San Diego to Santa Barbara. I have only scratched the surface with this list. There are easily two dozen others.

Prescott, though, has been amazing, both as a jumping-off place for so much, but also as a comfortable, welcoming Home Base. I have left there twice and returned, this last time for fourteen beautiful years. I recovered my equilibrium there, and because of that, feel confident in this next, unfolding chapter of my life.

As the Prairie becomes my new Home Base, let it be a Circle in its own right. I can already see that there is much to admire here-as there is in the Southwest-and in the Northeast, my original Home Base.