Carrying Home: Desert Echoes Across Continents (Travel Log: West US Part 4)

Red and white dust in the Grand Canyon. Photo: Guy Podjarny

When we visited the Grand Canyon, we hiked a little below the rim (a little further than the fantastically named “Ooh-Aah point”). Getting up from a break, I noticed the white dust coating everything from our shoes to the seat of our trousers. The dry feeling in the back of my throat also transported me straight home. I grew up in a small village in the Arava desert in Israel. The white dust was a daily companion and my mum’s nemesis as she repeatedly recruited us in her attempts to keep the house clean.

As we hiked back up, my attention no longer latched on the stunning view, I noted the red, oxidised sand. That sand transported me to Netanya, where my grandparents lived when I was little. We called that sand “Hamra”, which is the Arabic word for it (the literal meaning is “red”). It also irritated my mum immensely, especially when we returned home covered with its stains.

Generally, the layers of the Grand Canyon reminded me of the geological layers our geography teachers used to drone on and on about as we hiked through the desert on class trips. Sure, the temperatures differ: I can’t remember a single hike in the desert when my fingers went numb from the cold. But from the shards of information I remember (apart from who liked whom and the invariable drama of someone getting a heat stroke), an ocean was also involved in forming the layers in my home desert. As we hiked, I assumed the ancient layers had a similar formation and moved on to the next experience.

When I returned home, I researched the geological similarities. I tried hard to find evidence that I had indeed found remnants of my home on the other side of the globe. I looked into soil types and geological structures and ages of stones. In short, I had gone down multiple rabbit holes. While the physical and chemical processes may have been similar, the connection in my mind was emotional rather than scientific.

For a lot of people, home is where you feel safe. But anxious people find it challenging to feel safe anywhere. I talked before about how complex the topic of home is for me. That is why I was so surprised to feel that connection to home halfway across the world and why I tried to find scientific evidence to validate my feelings externally. It reminds me of my dad. Seeing almost any view in the world, he would say, “It’s like the Barak (the little gully close to the village I grew up in), just with water.” I think that gully was one of his favourite places, and he carried it with him wherever he went.

I also talked before about how we come back changed from travels. Because we change, our concept of home changes with time. One problem with this is that home is a solid, stable thing for many people. It’s where their grandparents are buried and where their grandchildren are born. And I get that, I do. But I also think that change is the only certain thing in this world. Our physical home changes: we move, or renovate, or someone else buys the home and renovates it, or we live in a war zone and it is destroyed. We change: we grow, fall in love, fall out of love, become parents, become mentors, lose people we love.

But change is also scary and exhausting. It’s no wonder we keep a kernel of our home inside us, carrying it unchanged wherever we go. It gives us a little island of stability in the tumultuous ocean of life. I have found that repeatedly returning to the topic of home and identity reveals new things about what changes and what doesn’t as I navigate this ocean. It’s one of the reasons I chose to write a book about a home and what it can represent.

Throughout the journey across the American West, I found the terrain mirroring my inner landscape. I confronted my implicit assumptions, found my place in the world, and learned to accept my past. Perhaps this is what travel truly offers us: not just new sights and experiences but the chance to recognise ourselves in unfamiliar places. And maybe what I needed to learn is that my true home is always inside me rather than outside.

** Programming note: My new book, Until the Walls Come Down, is coming out July 22. It’s a bit of a coming out for me, as well, as a novelist. The next few posts will be related to the book. I will discuss the writing process and themes I have touched on in the novel. I’ll be doing events and competitions and all sorts of fun stuff. The best way to know about all these is to sign up for my newsletter here.