Tuesday, May 10
10:29 p.m. It seems like an awfully long time ago we were pulling out of the motel carpark sometime in the six o’clock hour this morning. At six in the morning, after a Howard Johnson’s breakfast of grey coffee and plasticky jams, we are very, very punchy.
When you have three girls in the car crossing border patrol early in the morning, certain things are bound to be said as we wind up the windows and drive away. Like: “That officer sure was cute.” Like: “Oh, officer, are you sure you don’t want to hold us back?” Like: “Officer, search me. Now.”
The Beatles and the Commitments and Lou Reed and Les Rita Mitsouko took us northward on I-25 out of El Paso and into New Mexico, through sierra and mountains, everything a dusty beautiful. A desert bunny hopped about among the scruffy grass and tufted cactii while the sun rose in the east.
By the time we reached Gallup for petrol and a pee break, the wind had picked up somethin’ crazy. And truly, the wind today has been a force to contend with—either I was fighting with it for control of the car, or I was busy trying to hold down my billowing dress and take pictures at the same time. But I don’t mean to talk about the wind. We have traveled much and seen much today, and I am writing around the fact that I cannot write about the desert. The desert is massive, surrounding, so very there, and it is all of it some kind of amazing. There are plateaus and cliffs and mesas and buttes. And the land seems, as we drive, to swirl toward us, away from us, in any case moving all the while. Sometimes the desert is the color of sand. Sometimes it is the color of a curry. Sometimes it is the color of desire. Sometimes there are trains. Sometimes there are cows. Sometimes there are sheep and donkeys and wild horses. We don’t actually know that they were wild horses, but there they were, the two of them, I think one was brown and the other speckled, and they were grazing by the side of the road. It was clear to me then that they were wild horses like wildflowers, maybe wildflowers who’d grown up to be wild horses. But later as I stared into the neverending desert and thought about it some more, I figured maybe I’d gotten it the other way around, because it’s really the wild horses who turn into wildflowers eventually...
Through Navajo Nation land—Window Rock and Tsaile and Chinle and Mexican Water. At the Canyon de Chelly, where Navajo once fought against all manner of intruders, the wind beat through the trees, up through the canyon, and whipped about all around us. In the Valley of the Gods, the winds of the ages have carved sculptures into stretches of paprika-colored stone. We took the lonely, winding circuit amid monuments and massive fallen rocks, and it was reddybrown and brownyred all round like we were on another planet. As the sun set, the lifting mist washed the sky lilac.
Tonight we are in Mexican Hat, Utah, because it is a wondrous name for a town. We threw a stone into the San Juan River for a friend of a friend who committed suicide. And the river rushed toward the setting sun.
At the Mexican Hat Lodge Motel, a mustard-colored booth in a John Wayne bar. A Utah cowboy cooked us perfect hamburgers over an open flame, with pinto beans and grilled toast. Utah boys, they know what they’re doing, what with the hat, and the boots, and calling a girl pretty.
10:29 p.m. It seems like an awfully long time ago we were pulling out of the motel carpark sometime in the six o’clock hour this morning. At six in the morning, after a Howard Johnson’s breakfast of grey coffee and plasticky jams, we are very, very punchy.
When you have three girls in the car crossing border patrol early in the morning, certain things are bound to be said as we wind up the windows and drive away. Like: “That officer sure was cute.” Like: “Oh, officer, are you sure you don’t want to hold us back?” Like: “Officer, search me. Now.”
The Beatles and the Commitments and Lou Reed and Les Rita Mitsouko took us northward on I-25 out of El Paso and into New Mexico, through sierra and mountains, everything a dusty beautiful. A desert bunny hopped about among the scruffy grass and tufted cactii while the sun rose in the east.
By the time we reached Gallup for petrol and a pee break, the wind had picked up somethin’ crazy. And truly, the wind today has been a force to contend with—either I was fighting with it for control of the car, or I was busy trying to hold down my billowing dress and take pictures at the same time. But I don’t mean to talk about the wind. We have traveled much and seen much today, and I am writing around the fact that I cannot write about the desert. The desert is massive, surrounding, so very there, and it is all of it some kind of amazing. There are plateaus and cliffs and mesas and buttes. And the land seems, as we drive, to swirl toward us, away from us, in any case moving all the while. Sometimes the desert is the color of sand. Sometimes it is the color of a curry. Sometimes it is the color of desire. Sometimes there are trains. Sometimes there are cows. Sometimes there are sheep and donkeys and wild horses. We don’t actually know that they were wild horses, but there they were, the two of them, I think one was brown and the other speckled, and they were grazing by the side of the road. It was clear to me then that they were wild horses like wildflowers, maybe wildflowers who’d grown up to be wild horses. But later as I stared into the neverending desert and thought about it some more, I figured maybe I’d gotten it the other way around, because it’s really the wild horses who turn into wildflowers eventually...
Through Navajo Nation land—Window Rock and Tsaile and Chinle and Mexican Water. At the Canyon de Chelly, where Navajo once fought against all manner of intruders, the wind beat through the trees, up through the canyon, and whipped about all around us. In the Valley of the Gods, the winds of the ages have carved sculptures into stretches of paprika-colored stone. We took the lonely, winding circuit amid monuments and massive fallen rocks, and it was reddybrown and brownyred all round like we were on another planet. As the sun set, the lifting mist washed the sky lilac.
Tonight we are in Mexican Hat, Utah, because it is a wondrous name for a town. We threw a stone into the San Juan River for a friend of a friend who committed suicide. And the river rushed toward the setting sun.
At the Mexican Hat Lodge Motel, a mustard-colored booth in a John Wayne bar. A Utah cowboy cooked us perfect hamburgers over an open flame, with pinto beans and grilled toast. Utah boys, they know what they’re doing, what with the hat, and the boots, and calling a girl pretty.
Labels: Travel: Road trip USA
posted by stellou at 12:42 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home