I’m having those “Where am I?” moments again

Whenever I’m in a period of frequently moving from place to place I sometimes wake up slightly disoriented. “Wait, where am I?” I look out the window. “Oh, right. Okay.”

This is particularly the case when I’ve camped at several similar looking spots. Like the desert.

The past few days I’ve stayed in four places:

Off Sidewinder Road in southeast California

Off Ogilby Road, which is a few miles northwest of Sidewinder Road

In a BLM patch on the edge of Quartzsite Arizona

In a BLM patch on the edge of Ehrenburg, which is a few miles west of Quartzsite.

They are all flat areas covered in “desert pavement,” with mountains nearby. Creosote bushes, mesquite trees and ocotillos in the washes. Almost no one else around. Interchangeable Sonoran Desert locations. 

At night about the only way to determine where I am is by the size, brightness, and orientation of the nearest city’s glow. I usually park nose-north and direction find from there.

The good thing, though, is that these temporary episodes of disorientation don’t matter 99.9% of the time. In fact, a lot of things in my simplified, old man nomad life no longer matter. that has increased my happiness.