The Great Texas Road Trip Thank-You Tour: 6. Dominguez Canyon, Colorado

I left Grand Junction, Colorado feeling enlightened.  I bet few people ever say that.  That's like saying Odessa, Texas is a world-class travel destination.  Yet, I did feel different, and because of it, Grand Junction will never be the same.  I actually want to go back and spend an entire day walking along the railroad tracks.

I'm not sure how Marci experienced Grand Junction, but as we left, she had her book open and seemed content.  A road trip for me is simply an excuse to crank up the music and let my mind wander between the blur out the side window and the distant horizon.  (Don't worry, I do look out the windshield now and then, and keep my eyes glued to the road when it either offers the best view or a large truck is coming towards me).  Marci too navigates a world between here and a distant horizon, but instead of the view being the one outside her window, it is the one inside her book.  For long stretches of time, we say little to each other on these long drives, and yet we feel incredibly close to one another.  I love the scene from the movie Notting Hill that captures that quiet, separate, unified closeness beautifully:

To an outside viewer, we may seem lost in our own worlds, but we're not.  There is a connection greater than words, and as the words come, they come like personal thoughts, naturally arriving from something I've seen out the window or something that rises out of the pages of Marci's book.  I will draw her attention to something on the horizon, she will read a paragraph or two, and for a while our galaxies will commingle as we pass through each other, and then slowly we slide on through to our own individual thoughts again as we silently revolve around each other at a distance far enough for us to experience our own individuality but close enough that we always feel the gravitational pull of the other.  Perhaps that is why the 21 years of our marriage has been so easy, yet so necessary.  All we need to do is be near each other.  Nature takes care of everything else.  We do this nightly by something as simple as watching TV.  Why it works, I'm not sure, but it does.

. . . . .

I don't remember what song was playing or exactly what was out the window, but I think we were ten minutes out of Grand Junction when the call came.  I remember turning down the music.  I could tell by Marci's responses that something wasn't good.

"Oh, alright.  I understand.  No, we wouldn't want that."

Damn, I thought, not one day into our trip, and there goes our plans.  

I listened intently.  Our first real stop on this trek was the home of Marci's sister, Charlesia, and her husband, Jeff.  The details slowly unfolded that their daughter Maddison had been up all night vomiting.  We were still welcome to come, but the flu had gone through the whole family, and it was an intense one.  If we came, we would probably spend a couple of nights looking down into a toilet thinking Why me?  I didn't mind that so much.  Marci hardly ever gets to see her sister.  That seemed like a reasonable enough price to pay for the two of them to get one night staying up late talking until almost dawn.  What worried me is that we would be staying with and visiting other people afterward.  Influenza didn't seem like a very nice Thank-You gift to leave behind after someone opens their home to you.

After the phone call, we talked about it.  Perhaps it wasn't too late to reroute the trip.  There was no reason to go to Garden City, Kansas if we weren't going to see Jeff and Charles.  Nobody makes Garden City, Kansas a top travel destination.  That's like planning a romantic weekend of walking along the river bank and enjoying the cafes and street art in Odessa, Texas.  That's like planning a weekend of getting drunk and emptying your wallet on hot slots in Provo, Utah.  That's like planning a vertigo, adrenaline-rush alpine experience in Oklahoma.  That's like dedicating your life to Christian values and then voting for Donald Trump.  Oh, wait, people really did do that.  

In the end, we decided to not make a decision at all.  We would stay our course but simply slow down and take another day.  We wouldn't bypass Garden City.  We would just delay it.  Perhaps Maddison would get better in a day.  Perhaps by then she wouldn't infect us.

Right about then we topped a small pass and headed down a long slope on the other side.  There was a small brown sign.  I love small brown signs; they almost always point to something interesting.  It said Dominguez Canyon Road.  I braked.  We now had all the time in the world--or at least enough for a 10 minute jot down a gravel road.  If the road didn't lead to the canyon soon, I'd simply turn around and head back to the pavement.

. . . . .

The road didn't lead to the canyon soon.  By the time we returned to the pavement, we'd probably devoured at least an hour of our precious road time.  I would have never made the trip if I'd known that.  Fortunately, the road teased me forward with low bluffs and marked gouges that hinted something dramatic like Dead Horse Point could be forthcoming.

That deep canyon gulf so suggested by the rubble-rock landscape never materialized.  Instead the road dropped along a deep, slow-moving river that I wrongly assumed was the Colorado.  Instead, it was the Dominguez River, which I'd never heard of until now.  

Although the landscape was not spectacular by Utah or Colorado standards, it was significant, and the fruit orchards and farms along the river against the chalky white canyon slopes black-blobbed with boulders made it feel like  Big Bend, Texas.  I kept imagining donkeys on the other side of the border.  I wanted to take a row boat across the Rio Grande to other side and eat tacos in the shade of a small cantina.

Dominguez Canyon Road, Colorado

The road went up a hill and looked down on the railroad.  I wished a train would come along.  I could have stopped the car and easily jumped on the roof of a rail car.  Of course, I'm way too aware of my mortality to ever engage in such a senseless act, but it would have been cool to see a train from that view.  The road then dropped, crossed the tracks and followed them by the river.  Again, I wished a train would come.  The earth would have shook.  We would have been looking up at grimy steel in complete awe.  We were very near.  But a train never came.

The road eventually ended at a gate just after crossing a wash that led into the river.  I stopped and got out to look at the tracks suspended on heavy tar-injected wood ties, a rock slide behind.

Railroad truss Dominguez Dominguez Canyon Road

There was no canyon over look, no picnic table, no trail head.  There was a sign indicating Dominguez Canyon was indeed somewhere ahead.  There was just no way to get to it.

Oddly, I was okay with the deception of that little brown sign back on the highway.  The road, though long, got me down low and intimate with a grand river and a great western landscape.

At home, writing this, I would find out that there is indeed a trail to Dominguez Canyon.  Oddly the dirt road that accesses the trail is called Bridgeport Road.  Dominguez Canyon Trail absolutely cannot be accessed by Dominguez Canyon Road. 

But it doesn't matter.  We came to rest between a river and a railroad truss at exactly 38 degrees forty-nine feet and 33.54 inches north and 108 degrees 20 feet and 00.48 inches west at an elevation of 4,767 feet above sea level on a road that ended abruptly at a farm nestled between two low, rocky canyon walls.  The sun was intense.  The river glistened.  Time stopped.

All was right and we turned around.

The Great Texas Road Trip Thank-You Tour: 5. Experiencing Grand Junction, Colorado Twice Almost at Once

Union Station (left) and Grand Junction Depot (right), Grand Junction, Colorado
(Image from Google Earth)

Travel Date:  September 8, 2018

Perception is a tricky thing.  The mind is influenced by what is taken in at the eye, but the eye is also influenced by what is put out by the mind.  All my life I have been in search of what is real.  Sometimes I glimpse it.  I know it at the moment, and then there is doubt, and it fades away.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle in perceiving reality is the "I" rather than the eyes.  It's difficult to take in what's real when all we can see is ourselves.  This is true on a purely physical level.  A blind man sees the world very differently than a deaf man.  It is also true on a spiritual level.  A narcissist sees the world very differently than Mother Teresa.

Some see only the physical world, and others discount science whenever it clashes with their beliefs even while they trust those same laws and theories without a second thought every time they get in a car or walk across a bridge.  Chemistry is reality when it is applied to the plastics on an I-Phone but not when it comes to predicting global warming.

On the other hand, scientists, who spend their entire lives studying things at the molecular level, the atomic level, the subatomic level, and at the other end of the spectrum, on the astronomical level--things so small or so distant they are completely undetectable though our natural senses--many of these same people are still somehow sure that there is nothing more than the physical reality before us.  To them, those who believe in a tangible spiritual realm are simply crazy.  It is impossible for them to consider that the spiritually-minded may simply have tools they themselves do not possess or choose not to utilize.  They cannot fathom how anyone can believe in the unseen, even though they go to the lab or to the observatory and see complete universes for themselves that the rest of humanity are not privy to except second hand.

As a species, it astounds me how little we see.

My biggest problem with seeing reality is not with my eyes but with my "I".  Unfortunately, I never have a thought that doesn't include myself.  I can, at times, be quite generous, but everything I feel or do is filtered through me.  What's worse, loner though I project to be, my whole life is driven by the need for acceptance.  My entire life is built around craving connection--to get past the "I"--and I can't get there because I need that experience so much.  I want to feel.  I want to be.  I want to be loved.  It has nothing to do with you, only me.

Eeek!  I looked in the mirror last night before going to bed and that's what I saw: me, me, me!  I would have been better off staying up late and watching Psycho.  My face was this distorted, dripping flesh of "I, I, I."  The pupils of my eyes were in "reality" highways of "I,I,I.." slowly vanishing back to eternity but the I's getting obnoxiously large as semi-trucks coming forward straight at me.  I wanted to duck and hide from me.

It was surreal and not at all comforting.  It was, of course, just a moment.  That is how reality usually hits us.  In flecks and flakes of inspiration.  In this mortal state, the human mind simply isn't built to take in more than brief moments of truth.  In the end, I was able to leave it all behind, go to bed, and get a good night's sleep.

Or sort of.  I woke up with the same icky feeling of "I."  So, here I am trying to sort it all out.

Here's how it came about:

On Sunday, I got up early to work on my Sunday school lesson.  I probably hadn't given myself as much time to prepare as I should have, but I did give myself a good three hours.  The lesson was on recognizing some of the wonderful things Christ has done for us, and the book of Isaiah in the Old Testament was the scriptural base.  But as I read through the lesson, I just had this feeling:  forget the scriptural references today and have the class members write for themselves what wonderful things Christ has done for them personally.  There will not be time for you to do more than that.  I felt the spirit very strongly and found some videos of hymns to play while the class members and myself free-wrote on the topic.  Then we would share out.

In the past, I had given several writing workshops to teachers in the public school system, and at almost every workshop, the activities hit some nerve, and someone ended up crying as they accessed a part of themselves that was previously closed.  That was not my intention.  It just usually happened.  We as human beings bury a lot of pain and writing gives us an avenue back into ourselves and back out, renewed, so that, over time, we come to some sort of semblance.  Because I felt the spirit so strongly as I prepared my Sunday school lesson, I expected a similar, only stronger experience.

I didn't get it.  While I sat there, the music playing, not even I, who spends all his extra time rambling out his entire life on paper to some unknown audience, knew what to write.  All I got down were the exact same things the lesson would have presented anyway and in the exact same fashion.  Nothing personal was willing to come out and be presented on the page, let alone to the class.

When I asked if anyone wanted to share out, there was this enormous silence until finally someone who has always been a good and generous friend to the family, took as much time as he could to spare me embarrassment.

And here's the thing.  It didn't bother me.  I felt that I had delivered the lesson my Savior had wanted me to give on that particular day.  I even had some tangible worldly confirmations of that along the way.  The talks in church aligned with my intent perfectly, and church had gone way over time, leaving me with little time for my lesson.  There was just time for that 10 minutes I'd set aside for writing and a few extra extra minutes to share out and wrap things up.

And so I felt good leaving the church.  I didn't get the response that I'd expected, but I was fine with that.  I believed I'd came and done my little part in the grand scheme of things.  Someone in the audience, even if it was only one, must have needed to journal their thoughts that day.

That feeling lasted several hours, but by bedtime I was standing in front of the mirror disgusted with myself.  Why?  Some absolutely ineffective part of me craved attention so badly that I couldn't stand thirty or forty people thinking, "That lesson was sure a flop; what was he thinking?"

Why do we need the acceptance of others so badly that we can't fully engage in life out of fear of rejection?  Why is our sense of self so immense that we are never fully open to the world around us?

This, in part, is what a road trip is for:  to leave the self behind and focus on the sights ahead.  To see and be something more than "I," to be the "transparent eyeball" Emerson describes so well in Nature and feel the euphoria created by temporarily shattering the ego and experiencing reality first hand.

But those intense moments of purity are so brief.  Most of our lives are experienced through our ego.  The life we live is not necessarily the real life, just the felt life filtered through our over-protective ego.

How I experienced Grand Junction, Colorado was a perfect example of this.  I didn't experience one Grand Junction.  I experienced two very different Grand Junctions based on my mood.

Going into Walker State Wildlife Area, Grand Junction had seemed to be a very ugly place.  We had to go through an industrial area before reaching the river bottoms, where we intended to have lunch.  I was hungry, wanted breakfast, and the little narrow road ran along the railroad tracks with electrical wires, corrugated tin, cinder block, steel, all abundant.  It frustrated me.  It kept me from reaching some dream rest area where we could pull up to a picnic table, pull out the ice chest, and eat while watching waterfowl rise from a glimmering, slow moving river.

But then once we got there, although there was no picnic table, that need was met.  By the time we finished breakfast, our stomach was full, and we had a walk along the reeds as we  looked out over an amazing run of cottonwood along the river backed by the cliffs of Colorado National Monument.  This opened up the possibility of seeing Grand Junction in a new light.  The Grand Junction I saw leaving Walker State Wildlife Area was not the one I saw going in.

Instead of being an ugly industrial sprawl, it was now a quaint, historic railroad town.  I especially loved the two old train stations, Grand Junction Depot and Union Station.

Unfortunately, we were pressed for time.  The stop at Walmart had eaten up a good bit of time as stops at Walmart always do, and so I didn't even stop to take pictures.  The one for this post was provided by Google Earth.

However, since I've been home, I've learned that Grand Junction Depot opened on September 18, 1906, which you may also know as the day of the great San Francisco earthquake, although I didn't.  In fact, the station was first used as a camp for refugees fleeing the devastated city on the bay.  I doubt the refugees were in any state to appreciate the beauty of the building in this small city at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, but extraordinary it was.   "Designed by famed Chicago architect Henry J. Schlacks in the Italian Renaissance style," Grand Junction Depot "was considered to be the finest depot of its size in the west" (Colorado Preservation, Incorporated). 

The clearly older Union Station just down the street is just as attractive as Grand Junction Depot, if not more so, but I was not able to find out more about it.   It is an amazing structure, and the lack of easily available information on both of these buildings given their grandeur reinforces my perception that probably most people who travel through Grand Junction see it as I first did:  a mass of industrial and commercial sprawl in what once was a beautiful river valley.

Actually, I doubt they even see it as that.  It's either an annoyance on the way to Rockies if you're headed east, or a let down after being about as physically and spiritually as close to God as you can get in an automobile as you descend that same glorious range headed west.

Or perhaps worst of all, Grand Junction is a convenience: a place to stop for food, take a pee, gas up, and restock the fridge of your $100,000 RV at Walmart, if you be so lucky.

We see what we need, and we never need more than what we prepare to see.

To need in a spiritual sense is a good thing.  I may never get past myself, but I'm less harmful as aware narcissist than as an oblivious one.

Yearning is a type of seeing.  I yearn for the open road.  I yearn to see more, to be more.

Perhaps spiritual death occurs when a man looks in the mirror and likes everything he sees.

Works Cited

Colorado Preservation, Incorporated. Grand Junction Depot. 2018. 18 October 2018. <http://coloradopreservation.org/programs/endangered-places/endangered-places-archives/grand-junction-depot/>.

The Great Texas Road Trip Thank-You Tour: 4. Green River, Utah to Grand Junction, Colorado

Travel Date:  Saturday, September 8, 2018
Date Composed:  Tuesday, October 9, 2018

Walter Walker State Wildlife Refuge, Grand Junction, Colorado

It has been just over a month since we set out on our great adventure.  In that time, our world here at Dry Creek has changed greatly.  When we left, our day-time highs were still reaching into the low 90's.  And it was dry--oh so dry.  Day after day of heat and smoke filled skies.  Grapes were still on the vine.  We had squash and tomatoes piled on the kitchen counter.  There were still plenty of green tomatoes in the garden, and some bright red ones too.  Even though I left my brother in charge, I worried things would dry out and die.   He had even more to water at his place; perhaps he would not be able to handle it all.   Despite past seasonal patterns and a few scattered patches of yellow aspen high on the mountain tops, all signs indicated that our long summer of drought-driven wildfires would continue.

Now the ground is soggy.  It has rained and rained and rained.  Thick white snow covers the mountains.  Friday night it is suppose to freeze.  Sunday I lit a fire, and yesterday we turned on the furnace.  Summer is over.  Two weeks ago I would have thought "At last!"  Now, it is sad to see my favorite season go.  No more crickets, no more cicadas, no more dragon flies, no more bees, no more humming birds.  True, the deer are back and the wild turkey are ever present.  Soon even our local bald eagle, Harold, will return for winter.  Still, summer is gone.

And so is our great Texas road trip.  I feel it slipping though my fingers before I really even have a grasp on it.  Those amazing long days of only worrying about getting from here to there and where to stop to eat a sandwich and have a pickle are gone.  All I have is a bunch of inadequate pictures and the yearning to keep that magic alive.  It's futile, of course.  None the less, I will try because that is what writers do:  we try to preserve the vanished and make tangible the intangible.  Ours is a profession grounded in sorrow by its very nature.  We are here to bear witness to loss.  

This is true even if it is a good journey, for every step forward leaves something meaningful behind.  This, of course, is true for everyone, but it is the writer who is keenly aware of it because it is he who has been recording his travels all along.

Still, even writers are not always aware that everything is slipping into the rear view mirror.  We too can be forward thinking, driven away from the intensity of the moment by anticipation for what's ahead on the highway.

And so, even in my tired state, I leaned slightly forward in my seat, as if the car couldn't go fast enough, and somehow my forward incline would speed us towards our destination.  Where?  Not necessarily Garden City, Kansas.  I don't think anyone is ever in a hurry to get to Garden City, Kansas, even if they know people there.  It was probably in anticipation of the Rockies.  Oh how I love to be up where the air is rare.

First, however, there would be Grand Junction.  We talked about how we had to go to Walmart.  I hated the idea.  I always do.  Yet, I knew it was true.  I certainly was not willing to spend another cold, sleepless night of tossing and turning if we didn't have to.  We needed mattress pads and we needed a sleeping bag.  We also needed to get breakfast.  We talked about stopping for fast food, but it was too early in the trip to already be breaking our budget.

We found a place to stop, and a glorious stop at that.  It wasn't right off the road.  We had to go hunt for it, but it was worth it:  Walter Walker State Wildlife Area on the Colorado River.

It wasn't a planned stop, so when I say "hunt for it," I don't mean like looking for your lost wallet, where you know exactly what you must find.  We would have stopped to eat anywhere that didn't cost us any additional money.  I was just looking for any place that might have a picnic table when I saw a brown sign that said Wildlife Area.  We turned and followed a maze of streets--I think it was only two, but it might as well have been half a dozen, the way things spaghettied about--that led us across the railroad tracks through an industrial area along Railroad Ave--bent tin, rusted metal and ugly industrial buildings sprawled all over the place.  I thought about turning around and going back, but we were too far in now.  I was too famished.  If we didn't find our destination soon, I'd gladly find a smoldering dump of tires and set up the breakfast table on an old rusted Kenmore washer with dirty diaper hanging off of the cycle dial.  But, we didn't have to.  Just when it looked pointless, the road turned left, and I could see a gravel parking lot.  Behind it was a glorious line of cottonwood in front of a pinkish sandstone cliff that is part of Colorado National Monument.

The sought-after picnic table didn't exist, which is odd, because there were extensive concrete trails winding around along the marshes, and if you've ever paid to put in a sidewalk or a patio, you know just how expensive concrete is.  There were thousands of dollars of concrete before us but not a single picnic table.  So, we just opened up the doors and ate in the car.

It was well worth it.  Afterwards, we followed one loop of the trail to stretch out our legs for the long journey ahead.  I don't recall a lot of birds, but the light on the cottonwood even in late morning was magnificent.  Other than the ribbon of concrete, all was wild, which is always enough for me.

Had I not just driven through a rusting industrial park, I wouldn't have any idea we were anywhere near a city--and quite an ugly one at that.  Grand Junction, Colorado on first sight has all the appeal of Farmington, New Mexico.  In both places, two great river valleys that have been turned into industrial and commercial sprawl.  Ain't that like America.  

Luckily, here a small portion of the river has been preserved by the government.  Listen up Republicans!  Somebody's hard earned tax dollars made this amazing stroll along the edges of cottonwood filled river bottoms possible.  Without those taxes, and without the environmental regulations to protect the area, my envisioned picnic on a smoldering heap of burning tires would in fact have been a reality.  There is absolutely no doubt about it.  Wilds near civilization without government intervention equals a dirty diaper hanging from the tree and a shot-up pick-up in the ravine in the best of scenarios, and toxic water and oily sludge in many others.  Too many people would just rather not be bothered with the landfill fee and a trip to a designated disposal area.  Often it's the owner defecating on his own property that ruins it for everyone else.  It's obvious, but for some odd reason it needs to be stated again and again:  we need zones set aside for everybody, including the animals.  

The Great Texas Road Trip Thank-You Tour: 3. Green River, Utah

The Green River, Green River, Utah

Travel Day 2:  Saturday, September 8, 2018

Part One

I am a desert soul, a product of the Great Basin, where rivers run thin and shallow, tumbling frothy white from great snow capped peaks but all but vanishing by the time they reach the desert floor.  What we call rivers in the Great Basin--the Bear, the Humboldt, and the Reese--many places would barely classify as creeks.

This is what Mark Twain said of Nevada's great river (not counting the Colorado on its border), the Humboldt:

We tried to use the strong alkaline water of the Sink, but it would not answer.  It was like drinking lye, and not weak lye, either.  It left a taste in the mouth, bitter and execrable, and a burning in the stomach... We put molasses in it, but that helped very little; we added a pickle, yet the alkali was the prominent taste, and so it was unfit for drinking.  The coffee we made of this water was the meanest compound man has yet invented... Mr. Ballou, being the architect and builder of the beverage, felt constrained to endorse and uphold it, and so drank half a cup, by little sip, making shift to praise it faintly the while,but finally threw out the remainder, and said frankly it was 'too technical for him.'" (Morgan, 7-8)

Of the same river, once called Mary's River, a poetic Iowan wrote the following in 1850:

Meanest and muddiest, filthiest stream,
      most cordially I hate you;
Meaner and muddier still you seem
     since the first day I met you.
Your namesake better was no doubt,
     a truth, the scriptures tell,
Her seven devils were cast out,
    but yours are in you still.
What mean these graves so fresh and new
    along your banks on either side?
They've all been dug and filled by you,
    thou guilty wretch, thou homicide.  (Morgan, 4)

Still, our rivers, inadequate though they be, are part of my soul.  Perhaps it is precisely because rivers are so rare in the Great Basin that I am drawn to them so.  Around 1998, I wrote a poem that is still one of my favorites:

Rivers

There is the river that smokes on a cool Sunday morning,
steam rising between islands of water lily
behind Roaring Branch Baptist Church.

There is the river that is a knife slid through
the heart of the Tavaputs Plateau:  yellow sandstone
walls reverberating in almost still water.

There is the river that is a dump:
milk cartons bobbing black rhythm water
below Loch Raven Dam Road.

There is the river that is spit bringing life
to greasewood in "Fall Out" National Wildlife Refuge,
ghosts of antelope foraging for all that doesn't glow.

The river of their eyes is deep, wide,
smooth as obsidian, the world swept off
into the thick green whisper that could swallow us all.

The poem arose from my imagination, and the places were used as images without me ever seeing them, chosen for the sound of their names, but it was important to me that I not discriminate between good and bad rivers, for even when polluted or sucked almost dry by irrigation, a river continues to feed to the best of its ability the life around it, both literally and metaphorically. 

As these posts are meant as a series of "Thank-You" cards, it's important for me to pause here a moment, to put one in a bottle and send it downstream.  After I graduated from college, I sent a draft of the above poem to a former professor of mine, Sam.  All the descriptions are mine except the most vital:  "the river of their eyes is deep, wide..."  I don't remember how it was before, but in the draft all the rivers remained literal.   Simply by moving four or five words around, he transformed an adequate poem into a good one.  Not long after his revision, I sent it out to a small magazine in Portland, Oregon, The Bear Deluxe, where it was accepted.  When I notified Sam to tell him that I wanted to give him credit, he would have nothing to do with it, reassuring me, "Writers do that for each other all the time".   However, as is clear from reading it, the movement in that last stanza from a literal to figurative river makes the poem.  I accepted the gift, and it's one of the half-dozen or so poems for which I found homes, although, admittedly, I haven't tried very hard to get published.

Sam and I wrote each other frequently for about a year.  He wrote many of his former students as well.  He is one of those people who loves life and goes the extra mile.

Then something happened to our friendship.  My youngest son was born, and I'd written Sam a letter and failed to mention my newborn baby.  Instead, I talked about writing.  In the next letter, I realized this oversight and said something to the effect of, "Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention in my previous letter that Marci and I have a new son."

He couldn't comprehend that.  I doubt many could.  He interpreted it as a lack of love for my newborn son.  I think most would do the same.

I didn't blame him, but I also knew that what he thought wasn't true.  I loved my son immensely then as I do now.  But, there is something unusual with my mind.  I guess it's a flaw.  Maybe it's not.  I don't know.  It's like a river in flood on a plain.  It goes where the water drives it, and where that is, I don't have much say, other than by being careful what sources I feed it with.  At the moment of composing that letter, my son Everest did not exist, but neither did I--not in that moment.  I don't remember what I was narrating in my correspondence with Sam, but I do know whatever "I" was narrating it, the letter was driven by the voice in my head, which was fueling the next word in a chain of thoughts plowing forward like a flash flood.  That's just how it is.  My family gets mad sometimes because I don't hear them.  This is true.  My mind does wander frequently and when it does, I disappear.

If I remember right, Sam lost a son.  That, of course, would magnify his dismay.  He, like only those who have lost a child, would know just how vital those moments with our children are.  This I understood.  I just didn't know what to say, so I just quit writing him, and he also never reached out to me again.

I still don't know what to say--to Sam or my son.  How do you put into words, "There are chunks of me missing?"  How do you say, "I can't be there the way others can?"  How do you say,  "I love you immensely, but there are times you will cease to exist because that bumble bee on that sun flower for that moment has become everything".  How do you say such things?

In my college years, I once was thrown out of a bar because I scared the waitress.  I was staring at her and she reasonably became nervous and had the bouncer toss me out.

I was hurt; I felt so vile, and yet I absolutely knew I would be the last man to harm her or any one else.  She just had these amazing little freckles, ever so faint, but clearly present, even in the dim light.  I was mesmerized by them and didn't stop looking.  They were so beautiful.

Clearly you can't go around staring at people until they're scared.  I don't blame her.  I've learned a bit since then.  I think I now manage to avoid moments like that.  I also work at putting boundaries around my absorbed time.  I put down a poem or an essay, not because I have found the right place to stop working on it, but because my family is important to me.  I get up at 5:00 a.m. most days so that I can write when everyone else is still asleep; that way I can still participate at home.  Still, sometimes I'm so astonished at life that I not only forget who I am, but I also forget those around me.

Sam, that's the best explanation I have.  I'm not sure it's adequate, but it's all I have.  My mind is a river.  It goes where it wants to go, and in the flood of the moment, I follow.  I don't live a single life with an overarching narrative as I believe most do.  I live in sparks--flicks and flakes of light darting off the river--that trigger who I am and what I see, moment by moment.

You, however, are not the only one to ever be dismayed.  Many a time Marci has said, "How could you not tell me that?"  I always have the same lame reply--the honest one--which is, "I didn't think about it."

Part Two

After it was light enough to see, I went over to the restroom and took a shower.  I was incredibly chilled and tired, and the water was oh so warm.  I wanted to stay in there for hours and did indeed stay longer than what is environmentally sensible, but I did eventually force myself to turn off the water and dress.  This was to be the longest day of the trip.  Without stopping, it would take 10 1/4 hours.  But, of course, we would stop plenty.  You don't take a great road trip and not take the time to both absorb and record it.  That would be stupid.  So, I was figuring it would be more like 12 hours, and given that we got very little sleep, I was somewhat worried.

When I was in college, my friend Philip and I took a trip from Dallas to Utah.  We only had so much time, but I wanted to go through the Rockies of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado because, well, they're the Rockies.  John Denver sings about them, and though critics and the artistic crowd ridicule him, I love John Denver.  Besides there are big, white mountains in Colorado.  I love big, white mountains.  I was raised on them.  When I was five, my older brother Lloyd had me memorize all the major peaks of the the Cascades.  I would sit on his lap as he flipped through a book titled The Cascade Range, and off I'd go naming them--Lassen, Shasta, Hood, St. Helens  (before she blew her top), Rainier, Washington, Shuksan, etc.  

Anyway, the winding roads added more time than I calculated.  We drove for 20 hours straight.  At one point, I woke up behind the steering wheel and saw the edge of the road disappearing before the hood.  I swerved, braked, and almost hit a sign.

Perhaps that's what should have worried me most on this trip, but it wasn't that.  I was worried that we'd simply be too tired to absorb the sights.  I barely remember Phil's and my drive through Colorado.  All I remember thinking is, Somebody please straighten out this highway.  Wipe out these mountains if you have to.  

I didn't want this trip to be the same.  Kansas may only be Kansas, which according to Bill Bryson, "at least has a hill," whereas Nebraska does not.  But hill or no hill, I still wanted to be present for Kansas.   What's more, I wanted to be absolutely alive for Colorado.  

When my parents bought me my first car in college, a used Plymouth Reliant with no air conditioning, I decided to head home to Texas from Utah via Rocky Mountain National Park.  I left in late August.  There were scattered thunder showers, and going over Trail Ridge Road, which tops out at 11,500 feet above sea level, that rain turned to snow.  There I was, almost 12,000 feet high, big, black clouds rolling by, and temporary squalls flinging cold sleet-like snow (not hail though, which is normal in the summer) that grayed the high tundra.  I thought, "Hot damn snow in August!" as I pulled out at each and every view area to take in the biting summer cold.

So, I didn't want to sleep through the Rockies.  I wanted to be ever present.  I knew it would most likely not be the Trail Ridge Road experience, but I wanted to get everything out of it I could and fretted about my lack of sleep being an obstacle.

. . . . .

By the time we took down camp, the sun was up, and the park ranger was making his rounds on his golf cart.  I watched, worried he might come have a talk with us.  We came in so late, and we were tired, so I decided to walk up and pay the fee in the morning.  I'd failed to do that, and while taking down camp, Marci and I talked about just not paying at all.  It was 35 bucks a night!  And if we got out of there before anyone else, it would be like we were never there at all.

He never came by, but I knew he'd seen us.  Besides, I don't think I could have just drove off.  My conscience was tugging at me terribly.  But I wanted to.  Oh I wanted to.  I don't mind paying my fair share, but 35 dollars is a lot for a tent site at a state owned campground.  Where were my tax dollars going?  Those should be covering at least some of it.

I thought there'd be an easy place to see the Green River from the state park, and I'm sure there is, but I didn't see one, and we were in a hurry to get on the road, so I just pulled off in town once we crossed the bridge.  I pulled into the parking lot by the Tamarisk Restaurant, a cool place sitting on a low bluff overlooking the river, and I ran across the street to where a sidewalk appeared to drop down near the water.  To my delight, not only did it do that, but it circled down under the bridge and came up on the side where my car was.  In the process, it briefly opened up the whole riverfront world to me.  It was stunning.  It's too bad I'm no longer much of a photographer.  My son tried to get me to bring one of his cameras, but I didn't want the responsibility, and an i-phone is so convenient.  But now I wish I'd taken photographing the journey more seriously.  The photo below simply does not capture what it was like to be under that bridge at that moment.  And it should.  These things matter.  We did not temporarily give up living alongside our creator to come to this world an not take note of it.  We are here and we should be vitally present in our journey.  That is what Sam was disgusted about.  How can you have something as amazing as a child and not be forever grounded in his being?  He was right, I am deplorable, but there is also a beautiful thing called grace.  I will accept that gift and move on.

View from a sidewalk that goes under this bridge at Green River, Utah

Works Cited

Morgan, Dale L. The Humboldt: Highroad to the West. Lincoln: Bison Book: 1985, 1970.

The Great Texas Road Trip Thank You Tour: 2. Day One, Home to Green River, Utah

Hot Spot Drive Inn, Salina, Utah, Friday, September 7, 2018

Travel Date:  Friday, September 7, 2018

A pure black sky and a white sign boasting Hot Spot Drive-In in big, bold red and blue letters.  Bright red neon announcing HOT DOGS, SUNDAES, DRINKS. An early 50s modern cantilevered concrete awning lit up with cool white fluorescent lights.  Hopperesque plate glass windows showcasing stainless steel commercial kitchen equipment.  People milling about the night.  Wouldn’t you stop?  We did.

We started on our great adventure hours late.  The normal stuff.  Watering plants, feeding dogs, cleaning the house.  For some reason Marci is most concerned about having a clean house when we are not there to enjoy it.  The rest of the time she cares less.  We won't get into that here because a) I love my marriage and want it to last not only through this life but into the eternities, b) although I love my marriage and want it to last into the eternities, I do not wish to experience the silent treatment for the remainder of this life, and forever on into the next, which is exactly what will happen if I don't soon shut up, especially if it's that time of month (Damn it Steve!  Learn what to leave out.); and c) most of my female readers will assume that I am a typical male and sit around watching TV while griping about the house being a mess, and anyone who knows us well, knows that simply is not true.  True, I am unorganized and make Marci's life miserable by constantly asking where's this, and where's that--especially my wallet, phone and keys--but I do my fair share of dishes, laundry and cleaning.  However, there's simply no way to convince my female readers of that fact thanks to their lazy husbands, so I won't even try.

Anyway, now that I'm in trouble, let's continue:

We ate dinner at Hot Spot in Salina, Utah, which according to the 2010 census boasted 2, 489 people, a healthy-sized town by central Utah standards .  It seemed the place to be.  Night life central. Several couples stood on the walk talking while waiting for their orders.  And quite the wait it was.  We went through the drive-though. I figured the food would make the wait worth it, but I was wrong.

Marci ordered a grilled ham and cheese and was surprised that it came with lettuce, tomato and a pickle.  What surprised her even more was that the combination was delicious.  However, the rest of the food made our drinks desirable the way a man waking up in the Sahara with sand dune forming over his head desires that one last hot drop of water in the canteen fifteen feet in front of him.  I had ordered parched sweet potato fries.  Marci ordered small cinder deep-fried mushrooms.  Our drinks were very good in deed.

Probably the food is normally tasty.  It looked like all the people enjoying the warm September evening were local.  Most of the couples were high school age, but there were some adults who appeared to be in their fifties.  So, I don’t think it was a case of this is the only thing to do in town and we’re a bunch of hormone-driven teenagers driven wild to meet under the fluorescent lights of the night no matter what the food is like.  I think we were just unlucky enough to catch the Hot Spot when the employees were too busy to manage things well.  I would go back again.  I have been there before, although it’s been a long time.  I don’t remember the food, but I do remember getting great shakes there.  I'm not yet ready to write off such a cool monument of Americana over one bad experience.

After that, we hit I-70 and headed east.  I was a little annoyed with myself over the fact that we left so late. The drive from Salina to Green River offers some of the most spectacular scenery in the country, none of which we would see on this very dark night.  But the music and company were good.  I had spent hours making just the right play list during the week leading up to launch time.  It almost came out perfectly.  Somehow, I accidentally downloaded all of Elton John’s Elton John and Don’t Shoot Me, I’m Only the Piano Player albums.   Both are great, but some of the songs just didn’t fit the feel I was going for—a Texas roadhouse honky-tonk highway vibe.  One great unplanned track, however, came from my inability to operate an I-phone properly, "No Shoestrings on Louise":

I love the repetition, syntax, and imagery, especially in the third verse:

Come on down, come on down from that ladder

Henry, get your head, get your head out of them clouds

What she wants is to go on kissing on a swineherd

You might as well kiss the boss man's cow. (John)

Elton John and Bernie Taupin were so great at capturing America.  It's a negative view, but an honest, loving view--the way the best people accept both their troubled relatives and their troubled selves, with arms wide-open, but also with eyes wide-open.  There are so many such songs by these collaborators, among my favorites, "Blues for Baby and Me" and "I've Seen That Movie Too".  America smolders jazzy-blue-smokey-gray through both the lyrics and music, a neon heart red, white and blue.  What could be better for a road trip to Texas--perhaps the simplest, most complex, backwards, forward-thinking expanse of contradiction in a nation not so unlike like it.  

Anyway, before I get too grandiose and spectacular, flinging great brushstrokes of blah blah blah across the canvas of this post, let's just say that after an hour and half of winding our way up and down through the dark, knowing full well there were unseen canyons, cliffs and buttes all around and below us, as we listened to greats like "Amarillo by Morning" by George Strait and "Ghost of a Dog" by Edie Brikell, we arrived at Green River State Park in Green River, Utah sometime around midnight and set up camp in the dark.  

All went smoothly.  It was 82 degrees when we arrived, and so I assumed our sheets and one blanket would be adequate.  Oh how wrong I was.  I’m not sure when the temperature dropped, but whenever it did, it plummeted the way temperature can only do in the desert.  By morning, it was in the low 50s.  That doesn’t sound bad, but when you’re sleeping on a cot, open screen below you, and just a sheet and light blanket on top, it’s plenty chilly.  We woke up at 2:30, at 3:00, at 4:00, and at 5:30, when I decided I had enough and got up to go to the car to write.

I sat in the car and watched the sky slowly green on the eastern horizon, the big black bulky forms of cottonwood along the Green River slowly separating themselves from the night.  Around 6:30, I gathered my essentials together and headed down to the showers.

Works Cited

John, Elton. "No Shoe Strings on Louise." Elton John. By Elton John and Bernie Taupin. 1970.