Because it Doesn't Take Much to Get Off Track

Other than the obvious and stated reason, I don't know why he went.  According to the Gospel of Mark, After Jesus had spent a little time casting out bad spirits and healing the ill he got up, "early in the morning, while it was still very dark...and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed" (1:35). 

It could, of course, be that Mark was simply setting Jesus up as a model for spiritual disciplines.  "Start the day off with prayer."  Perhaps; but Mark never otherwise seems to shy away from inserting explanatory notes when he senses a reasonable chance that his audience could miss the point.  If he was telling the story merely to encourage a habit, he likely would have said so -- "this was done in order to encourage his disciples to do the same"or some such clarification.

I am rather inclined to suspect that something else was going on -- like the possibility that Jesus needed to go out to this deserted place because Jesus needed what he suspected he could find there.  He had been there, after all, just a short time before.  Only a handful of verses earlier Jesus had been driven into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit.  There he had faced into his own demons, so to speak; clarifying and purifying his motives and distilling his guiding principles.  There, one might say, he went about the sacred physics of establishing his center of gravity.  And now here he is, back there again. 

Which reminds me that it doesn't take much to get off track.  A pebble can send the wheel into a ditch.  One potato chip tends to lead to another, and another...  Have a few successes and, if you aren't careful, you start believing your own publicity.  Never mind that his story, according to Mark, has barely begun; Jesus has already generated a tornado of intrigue and acclaim.  "The whole city," according to the story, "gathered around the door" of the house where he was staying.  Heady.  Giddy.  "They have sought me ought!" he must have thought for a moment.  "I must really be something!"  I can't help but think that during the night Jesus realized that he could benefit from a remedial trip to the wilderness -- a little gyroscopic realignment of the soul; reassessing which end is up.

And the wilderness seems to be the place where that most commonly happens -- away from the clamor; away from the seductive acclaim; out where it isn't the adoring crowds catering to your whims, but the very angels themselves attending to your deepest needs.

Because even Jesus had need to get his head together.  Twice, apparently, in the very first chapter.

I take some encouragement from that; and whether or not Mark actually intended it, some compelling example.