Windshield Soup

There are places I remember
All my life, though some have changed
Some forever, not for better
Some have gone and some remain

I learned of music sampling from a cousin. It is use of an uncredited riff or two of another's inspiration in an artist's creation. And so it goes. During the Artists and Repertoire era, Alan was an international promotions coordinator at Atlantic Records. In those days, A&R curators funded change in tastes - taking music in new directions. Digital distribution ended that. That ain't the way to have fun.

Recently, I sampled roads I had already travelled. This past August I looped back in time connecting with places across parts of the Southwest that I had not visited enough the first time through. Memory would flood back as I encountered a renown vista. I call that photographic memory. For example, Highway 163 near Mexican Hat with Rock Door Mesa looming in the background is featured in “Forrest Gump.” A bearded Tom Hanks says “I’m pretty tired. I think I’ll go home now.” When I paid tribute about fifty other cars and buses were also stopped along that section of highway recreating that movie image.

More profoundly to me, I might round a bend and the climb of the curve along with colors, shapes, and shade would align just as I first sampled years back. It felt nourishing to be in that moment of being back. Covering two thousand miles in seven days there was hardly a chance to dawdle. So, those moments passed. At no point did I listen to the radio. This windshield soup sufficed.

I'll be the roundabout
The words will make you out 'n' out
I spend the day your way
Call it morning driving through the sound of

In and out the valley
In and around the lake
Mountains come out of the sky and they stand there

I distill that journey into three rains.

First rain. Alone on the hill. Taos is uphill from Santa Fe which is uphill from Albuquerque. The Rio Grande River connects the three. On route to Taos on State Highway 68, near an historical marker for María Rosa Villapando, a sky-sweeping rainbow appears and welcomes me into town.

Once I reach its historical center, I am surprised as Google Maps leads me away from my destination at the Worldmark Taos and instead to Taos Plaza and then along Civic Plaza. Somehow Google knows that Dwight Yoakam and the Mavericks are setting up to play outdoors at Kit Carson Park, right next to my resort, and steers me around the arriving throng. One of Yoakam's tunes is "A Thousand Miles From Nowhere."

I'm a thousand miles from nowhere
Time don't matter to me
'Cause I'm a thousand miles from nowhere
And there's no place I want to be

Once unpacked, I grab a straw fedora. Outside I discover that the rainbow has birthed a hard high-mountain rain. Soon I am drenched head to toe. Soaked concertgoers leave the Park smiling and made innocent by baptism of the downpour. They help strangers, dance in puddles, and are utterly unaware of self. Walking toward me, in succession, three women my age, each with droplets of rain streaming down their face, stop me to celebrate our folly. I fall in love again with Taos.

People stop and stare, they don't bother me
For there's nowhere else on earth that I would rather be
Let the time go by, I won't care if I
Can be here on the street where you live

I take shelter inside at the Sabor Real Restaurant and order the enchilada plate with a limed Negra cerveza. The food is delicious. Lively patrons celebrate out front on the deck under an umbrella. In a corner a couple sit glumly. They do not speak. Alone on the hill. The storm subsides. I wade back to my hotel.

Second Rain. Remembrance of things passed. On a cloud obscuring rainy day, I head up Colorado 145 from Cortez after visiting Mesa Verde. I pass slow motor home after travel trailer. Everyone wants the view, no one wants the climb. I am determined to finally visit Telluride.

Decades back I had been to Ouray and Silverton slicing through the San Juan Mountains on jagged U.S. Route 550 and marveled at the remains of the La Garita Caldera extinct super volcano. But Telluride is on the western side and full of lore. I now arrive during monsoon season with orographic rainfall as Gulf of Mexico air masses, forced to rise over the San Juans, carry water vapor cooled into rain.

Long as I remember
The rain been coming down
Clouds of mystery falling
Confusion on the ground
Good men through the ages
Trying to find a sun
And I wonder, still I wonder
Who'll stop the rain

I do not see the old mining operations dotting the hillsides or remnants of the Rio Grande Southern Railroad. Nor do I turn out at the Sunshine Mountain Scenic Overview, or the Lizard Head Peak Vista Overlook, or stop to look for a Galloping Goose railcar. In fact, by the time I reach the 145 Spur, about two miles from Telluride, I realize I would not see its box canyon nor enjoy any view of Bridal Veil Falls. Instead, I drive west, away from the San Juans, circle the San Miguels, and drive out of the monsoon to unexpected joy.

Here, for a hundred miles, a salt anticline adjacent to the Uncompahgre Uplift creates a remarkable valley. The anticline is ancient Mesozoic sedimentary rocks arched over a thick core of buoyant salt. Deposited over it is Morrison Formation, a distinctive sequence of sturdy Upper Jurassic sedimentary rock composed of mudstone, sandstone, siltstone, and limestone. It is a valley of unparalleled beauty with colors of light grays, greenish grays, and rusted pink reds. I stop several times to take photos. None will match the images now burnished within me. There is satisfaction in understanding that algorithms will never recreate this experience.

The route takes me through the town of Bedrock and then just past Paradox, a short ten miles from Utah, the asphalt turns sharply south and then sweeps up and along a towering ridge of the La Sal Mountains and on into Moab. I will never regret not entering Telluride.

I love driving. My thoughts process road rules; strategy such as route choice, tactics of anticipating road conditions or adapting to other drivers, and finally executing the continual choices of driving. It leaves me free to think about nothing. I just drive and enjoy the views. A self-driving car would deprive me of that low level involvement leaving me to worry and wonder. My little runaway brain.

Third Rain. Marketplace of ideas. Unknown to me, there is much lore to southwest New Mexico. Geronimo. Billy the Kid. The Aldo Leopold Wilderness. I’m there for my need to drive State Road 9, which abuts the border with Mexico from Columbus to El Paso, to see the conditions there that now capture our politics. My version of fact checking.

I circle the west side of the Gila National Forest on Highway 180, where the continental divide passes through, to support bike packers on the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route riding from Banff to Antelope Wells. Every so often I stop and offer bottled water and listen to their stories. I hope to see the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument the next day. The charming owner of the Palace Hotel in Silver City lets me know it would be two rugged hours up to the Cliff Dwellings and then a few hours to walk to see everything. Six hours I do not have.

A late afternoon rain hits as I walk to the Jalisco Cafe for some fine Mexican food. Mountain towns have raised sidewalks and crowned streets but no gutters. Rainwater washes down both sides of streets. It is not as easy for me to leap across the gully as it once was.

 
I rise early and walk over to Tranquilbuzz for coffee. It self boasts, “Yes, it’s unique. Yes, there are tree branches inside when you look up, and a painted sky too.... It’s got that ole mercantile feeling.... Our Buzz community emits a whole lot of vibrancy.... Our horizon goes beyond a coffee house into growing a model of community kinship....The conscious building blocks of The Buzz .... seed dreams of possibility." 

A marketplace of ideas.

I seen so many things I ain't never seen before
Don't know what it is, I don't wanna see no more

State Road 9 crosses the Chihuahuan Desert. I spot cacti, yucca, creosote bushes and mesquite trees. They are there but I don’t see mule deer, coyotes or jackrabbits. I also don’t see any humans crossing the border. There is a wide dirt road adjacent to the state road for border patrol vehicles. Next to that a wire fence. Occasional plastic water bottles are hook on the fence. I stop and hook my remaining bottles to the wire. Off in the near distance is the border wall. It is tall and constructed with steel-bollard barriers. You can see through it.

As I near the Santa Teresa Border Patrol Station there is an unexpected stadium with an oval dirt track. Then I reach the Pete V. Domenici International Highway with the Puerto Fronterizo Jeronimo Santa Teresa border crossing to the right and a large Union Pacific Railway Facility to the left. Soon I am in El Paso. I am no closer to any truth about the border.

Late last night the rain was knocking on my window
I moved across the darkened room and in the lampglow
I thought I saw down in the street the spirit of the century
Telling us that we're all standing on the border

















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