Street Signs

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Here’s an idea that I like.  Regardless of your particular religious affiliation or lack thereof, the notion the we all need to ask forgiveness and we all need to be nice is a good street sign.  I first saw this sign at 25 or 30 miles per hour as I was headed out of town and I thought it simply said “Forgive” and “Be Nice” and I liked it then.  Today I stopped to take a picture of it and realized it isn’t so much a command or suggestion, as it is a plea and a question.  In small letters next to “Forgive” is the word “me,” and just above “Be Nice” in equally small letters are the words “can you.”

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Wandering Back

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Well it has been a while since I wandered to the keyboard for a few notes on things.  Sorry.  I recently got to take a road trip with my daughter.  We drove from home to college in her car and moved her in to her sophomore dorm.  Lessons from the trip include: the danger of poorly prepared fast food burgers (a night of unpleasantness and rapid weight loss in my case); the importance of elevators (equal access and all that, but mostly heavy shit and summer heat should make them required in EVERY college dorm); and it is not the size of the living space it is the size of the living in the space.  Oh, and, daughters that are sophomores in college are about the coolest thing out there when it comes to just tackling the world at large and showing what it means to wear your confidence on your sleeve.  At least mine is.

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Your Papers Please

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It’s a far cry from the edge of the Grand Canyon to the department of motor vehicles license renewal line.  The scenery and grandeur of one of the world’s most amazing structures gives way to a room full of government chairs filled with the variously dressed, marked, and pierced forms spanning the spectrum of body shape and type from waif to I need two chairs and an oxygen tank.  Life is like that.  It teases us with grace and beauty and then slaps us with a trip to the DMV.

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A Balancing Act

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After wrapping up day six in Canyonlands Island in the Sky district, we spent the night in Moab to escape the heat and have a pizza. It was a good choice. The hotel bed was welcome and the pizza was first rate. We woke rested and headed out for Arches at 7:00 am to beat the crowds and catch some good light. If you are ever in Moab, Utah, stop at Wicked Brew and have the best cup of straight Americano ever made. It got us to the park with the motor running.

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A Multi-Layered Life

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We started our fifth day in the town of Escalante and drove via Utah 12 to Capitol Reef National Park. The road passes through the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument and basically rides the bannister all the way to the top of the Waterpocket Fold which constitutes Capitol Reef National Park. It is a very cool ride and it proves that the American worker can lay a ribbon of asphalt anywhere someone pays him to lay it. At one point there is nothing on either side of the road except air. In the battle of nature’s impenetrable geology and man, man won here. The irony is that more people see Grand Staircase Escalante than otherwise would because he did.

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Around Every Bend

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It is probably telling that, having indicated in a previous post my inability to deal with the scale of the landscape in our journey, my second national park stop was the Grand Canyon North Rim. I won’t waste your time trying to put words to what so many before me have written about. I will, however, tell you that you must go – to the north rim at least. It is the shock that makes it special, more so than the scale. You are in one minute at 9,000 or so feet amidst thick pine and Aspen and then, in a blink, are confronted with nature’s largest and deepest storybook of what once was, but is no more. You can read it in the canyon walls if you know how, or you can stand agape and stutter about your own inabilities. Which is what I did. We hiked around and out to several points, but then left the park proper and drove 25 miles through Kaibab National Forest so that we could pitch camp literally on the rim of he canyon. We went to sleep to the sun setting and awoke to it rising over the Grand by-God Canyon. As I said earlier, you really should do this. Period.

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Let There Be Light

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Day three had us on the road from Tucumcari, New Mexico to Holbrook, Arizona. The absolute scale of the landscape tests the limits of my mind. As we travelled and viewed vista after vista of changing colors, rising rock formations and seemingly endless juniper flats I was challenged to establish any sort of perspective. I could look at one thing or a few things, but when I tried to look at the entire view, it left me exasperated. The scale is beyond my experience and the subject matter too foreign.

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Day Two Getting Our Kicks

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Day two in our journey finds us overnighting in Tucumcari, NM after another grind west on I-40. The final 30 miles or so we jumped over to the old Route 66 and followed it into town. We are staying in an old Route 66 Hotel. I want to wax nostalgic about the old road and the towns it passed through, and I may yet after a bit more time on it tomorrow, but right now it just seems old. The town is essentially a ghost town save the touristy Route 66 stuff. Downtown is vacant, Main street is a slum where there is any residential population at all. I don’t think the interstate did that – it is only a few blocks away. I think people left for the same reason many of their predecessors came here – they wanted a better life. Whether they found it or not, or if it is even findable, is another blog entirely. At its best, however, there wasn’t much in Tucumcari to stick around for.

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Day One Chasing the Sun

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We left Atlanta this morning on day one of our road trip out to and through the canyon lands area of Utah, as well as a couple of stops in Colorado. We hope. Today was a day to cover as much ground as possible. Not sight-seeing, old town gawking, or scenic driving – just grip the wheel at 10 and 2, find I-40 and grind out the miles. We made it to the Arkansas/Oklahoma border and gained an appreciation for all those who pioneered the move from east to west.

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Home

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Though the blog post mentioning Nicaragua did make it up into the blogosphere, it was hardly a memorable one.  Sorry.  We were having the time of our lives and the internet connectivity was present only insofar as it showed a little skin every once in a while, but never the full frontal way that we all need to get anything done.  As a result, I would blog, try to post, fail, get angry, try again with smaller post, etc. etc.  Getting pissed off about internet connectivity seemed hardly the point of sharing a casita with my family on an island amidst active volcanoes and howler monkeys and green parrots, so I quit trying.

I am home now and found the garden improved in my absence.  A message, I am certain, about my needless fiddling, but one I choose to ignore in favor of morning picking and pruning and messing about.  It’s been raining for two days.  A slow, steady wetting down and soaking through that always seems to come at just the right time for my lucky little vegetable patch.  The squash is blooming in the shade of its great prickly leaves and the okra is as well.  It is rooted and well fed and happy.

That’s what it feels like to be home.  With no reflection whatsoever on the pleasure, even awe, of our travels, there is something about having a home and being at home.  I can’t write it, but the cool shade of the squash leaves sheltering that beautiful blossom which will become a nice fat fruit and then replenish us at the table helps me know it.  Home I mean.