Do It Go

One of the more rewarding pleasures of having a wandering spirit is to lose track of the destination.  Although the idea that the journey is more important than the finish line is become something of a cliché, it is perhaps even more true now than it ever was.  Whenever there are dips in financial flows, people stat to reconsider how they do things, examining the things that were once taken for granted.

This is the kind of thinking that has lead people to look at Bisbee before.  It’s easy enough to trace the history back to when folks were coming to the historical Bisbee, when mining was lucrative enough to grow a town.  In its heyday, there were some 20,000 inhabitants, more than three times the size of today’s population.  Its smallness is still something of an attraction for more than just a few visitors, and its got certain charms that make guests wonder what it might be like to live there.

Of course, getting there is half the fun.  There’s a certain charm and danger about any kind of travel in the desert.  Although it’s nowhere near as tenuous as it used to be, there’s still something about the distance that suggests it’s not for everyone.  A little bit of knowledge of do it yourself auto repair helps, and an ability to follow some of the common sense laws of desert survival.  It’s 90 miles from Tucson, and although it’s not off the beaten path like it once was, it is far enough between things that one could get into trouble on an exceptionally hot day with some exceptionally bad luck on the road.

The appeal there lies in a combination of old and new.  There is a historical interest in the old west for people from all over the world, and living in those spaces has a tendency to make that interest only grow deeper.  At the same time, Bisbee has held a certain idealized status as an artist mecca for the residents in the more populous nearby cities (and here, this can mean Tucson, or Phoenix, or Los Angeles, and all the in-betweens).  It is an in-between place, in more ways than one.

New developments, like Brodesky’s new performance space, mean that it is continually growing and evolving, and sometimes it feels like it’s really on the edges of contemporary culture.  A steady stream of tourists helps keep the local economy going, and this means constantly investing in the things of the past.  It’s also neither too big to be considered a city, nor too small to be considered a rural outpost, but just enough of both to keep things interesting.  It’s definitely worth the drive, even if it does just prove that, once again, the destination is not as important as the journey, and here, the journey is delightful.

Photo Source=Bisbee, Arizona 1990 |Date=March 13, 2006 at 20:06 |Author=Phillip Capp)

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Tags: auto repair on the road, bisbee travel

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 10th, 2011 at 6:52 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.