 |
| Red Rocks - Hwy 84 - Near Abiquiu |
Headed out of Durango early, expecting heavy weather and traffic. Sparse traffic on 160 into Pagosa Springs, "the place of bad smelling waters". Didn't bother with any waters. The further along I drove, the more I welcomed the landscape. As soon as I turned south onto 84, I had the road to myself. Dense grey thunderheads gathered in the east, but no rain. Listening, as always, to Frank Muller perform Moby Dick. Several hours of sweet driving ahead of me.
There is always a distinct change in tone of the landscape whenever I have crossed over into New Mexico. The last time when I was traveling out of Amarillo as I passed over the line, there was a subtle alteration in luminosity, as if the world had become slightly brighter. That this arbitrary line demarks not only a geographical but a psychological change of state is a mystery to me. This time it felt like a warmth of recognition, reverse nostalgia, the cessation of a chronic sorrow or ache for a home. By the time I got to Chama I was unaccountably happy. This sense of well-being only grew the further along the road I traveled.
Highway 84, from Chama to Santa Fe, is one of the finest drives in the country. Just after Tierra Amarilla, when it enters into the Piedra Lumbre, "Vally of the Shining Stone," the land becomes sublime and deeply resonant, winding deep into my own personal mythology, intersecting with the ancient Pueblo Peoples, Anasazi, Conquistadors, Cabeza de Vaca, Seven Cities of Gold, Coronado, the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, The Witch Trials of Abiquiu, Spanish Colonialism, D. H. Lawrence, the Ghost Ranch, Georgia O'Keefe, The Monastery of Christ in the Desert, the Manhattan Project, the Atomic Bomb, Trinity, Oppenheimer, Roswell, Thomas Merton, Solitude in the Desert, the Desert Fathers, Hermits, the Devil and daemons, the Traces of the Fugitive Gods, God's Bones and the Cathedral of God's Skull.
I pulled into the small rest stop just below the Red Rocks, got out and hiked up the highway to take a few photos of the vermillion finlike formation. Got there just before the approaching storm clouds shadowed the sun. Climbing high up on a cliff to the south of the formation, I had a panoramic view of the Valley, the Perdernal sitting dark in the distance to the West, a portion of the Abiquiu Reservoir below, its pacific waters covering ancient massacre, ruin and grave, the Chama winding towards it from the north, carving out the canyon residence of the Monastery, the Ghost Ranch and the surrounding colored cinematic cliffs, the highway snaking through the center into a hazy vanishing point. I've stopped here often enough that the view is iconic, an archetype of The Road. It is a perspective I never tire of, that I never "get used" to.
As always in Espanola I search for the phantom bus station where I was given shelter in the Drunkard's Room. As always, it seems a phantom of memory, shifted from a physical locale into a spiritual one.
On down past the Native American Casinos - surreal abominations / retributions of a Native American Dream. They all are cliche. To think about them is cliche, resistant as they are to any new poetry.
Driving into Santa Fe is, again, a homecoming. Feeling grounded, centered, these familiar roots. I wonder if I can finally finish what I started here so long ago.
 |
| St. Francis Cathedral - Santa Fe |
At night, I walk through the empty streets of downtown, conversing with ghosts, updating the sentimental maps of memory. A few pints of Dos XX at Del Charro, a couple of shots of tequila. Later in front of the Cathedral of St. Francis of Assisi. The keystone arch burning with the Tetragrammaton. A refulgent moon over the right tower. I breath in the sweet air, searching for pinon and juniper, not finding them, instead scenting an indescribable essence of being, as if smelling my own skin.
 |
| Skulls for Sale - Santa Fe |