Blue Highways: Texas Canyon, Arizona

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapTexas Canyon in Arizona gives us a chance to look at our sense of wonder and what it means.  We also get a musical interlude that I picked because it once made me wonder and enchanted me.  To see where Texas Canyon lines up on our William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) Blue Highways trip map, click the thumbnail at right.

Book Quote

"The highway rose slowly for miles then dropped into wacky Texas Canyon, an abrupt and peculiar piling of boulders, which looked as if hoisted into strange angles and points of balance.  Nature in a zany mood had stacked up the rounded rocks in whimsical and impossible ways, trying out new principles of design, experimenting with old laws of gravity, putting theorems of the physicists to the test.  But beyond Texas Canyon, the terrain was once more logical and mundane right angles, everything flat or straight up."

Blue Highways: Part 4, Chapter 14

Texas Canyon, Arizona at sunset. Photo by LouisSaint on Panoramio. Click photo to go to site.

Texas Canyon, Arizona

Occasionally I find something that is so odd, so extremely out of place, that it makes me pause in wonder.

The Mystery Spots, those places where gravity supposedly doesn't work correctly, are not it.  If you haven't been to a Mystery Spot, you might want to pull off the road if you happen across one.  I know of two.  There is one in Santa Cruz, California and another in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  When my wife and I were driving through "da UP," as they call it in Wisconsin, we pulled off when we saw one.  It becomes clear that the "mystery" is strangely angled floors, walls, trees and other landmarks that trick your brain.  Rather than wonder at the supposed mystery, I wondered that some enterprising and entrepreneurial people thought of such an attraction, and that people such as myself pay money to see it.  That's not a natural wonder, it's a wonder of marketing.

However, once in a while Nature pulls a complete Mystery Spot on the unwary traveler right out of the blue.  One might be traveling and see a boulder perched on the end of a needle-like upthrust of rock, and wonder just how that boulder got there and why on earth doesn't it just rolll off!  Or one might pass by rocks in the strangest shapes, or come across a stone arch bridging two large rock outcroppings, perfectly framing a setting sun just as one drives up. 

Sometimes, these wonders take on humorous, sexual or even scatological overtones.  One can often see rocks that look like male genitalia from certain observational viewpoints.  Occasionally, rock formations can take on the form of female genitalia.  When driving with our friend Ann back from a camping trip in the Gila Wilderness, we went past a hill with a strange configuration.  Almost at the same time, the thought came into all of our heads - "look, it's Asshole Mountain!"  The cracks and crevices in the side of this particular hill all converged together and from the angle we saw it, truly looked like a human nether orifice.  I don't think that seeing such things in nature is the sign of a deviant - we are earthy and sexual beings that respond to certain stimuli and sometimes I think it is much harder to ignore the imagery than it is just to admit it's there, have a laugh and move on.

The places that draw this type of amazement out of me tend to be the ones that appear when I least expect it or have no idea what to expect.  I was in awe of the Grand Canyon when I visited, but given all the information on the Grand Canyon that I knew before ever going there, and all the images that I've seen of it, I expected it to be what it was.  And it was truly amazing.  But all the pre-hype robbed me, in a way, of the wonder that I could have felt had I not known.  I am envious of the people who came to the rim of the canyon and had no idea that something that enormous, that spectacular, existed.

So for me, my travel wonders have been in the out-of-the-way places of which I had little prior knowledge.  Big Bend National Park, Canyon de Chelly, New River Gorge, Sleeping Bear Dunes, Yosemite (before I went, I really did not know much about it!), the west coast of Canada, Alaska.  Even human made travel wonders qualify.  Chaco Canyon.  The temple Wat Pho in the midst of Bangkok with its giant reclining gold Buddha, the ruins of ancient Rome, Newgrange in Ireland.  On a depressing note, but also a wonder if only in testament to the worst of human nature and cruelty: Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen.

This works for literature as well.  I have read a lot of literature.  How amazing it is when you read a piece of literature that affects you, turns you on your head, makes you amazed and gives you a similar sense of wonder.  What treat to be able to read something for the first time and feel the same rush that you might when you happen across a beautiful vista, or a natural wonder.  Lately, a number of novels have served as inspiration for popular movies.  A case in point are the very popular novels written by the Swedish novelist Stieg Larsson.  I saw all three movies - The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest - and have never read the books.  Now that I have seen the movies, I have a sense that the books will not have the same effect on me as they have had on other people who read the novels first.  I will probably read them, but I have probably ruined the opportunity to really experience them as the novelist intended.

This puts me in a quandary for a trip I'm planning to make. My wife and I are spending just over two weeks in Turkey in May.  Turkey is of special interest to me because it lies at the crossroads of civilization.  The oldest human settlement that resembles a municipality may have been in Turkey.  Numerous empires sprung up there, and other empires were marched across it and disappeared.  Currently, the West's relations with the East, particularly with Muslim countries, are tempered by and may be aided by friendly relations with Turkey.  Turkey's role in the current Libyan conflict is a case in point.  So do I read to add to my knowledge in preparation for the trip?  Or do I go as an open book?  I don't want to go to Turkey without some background, but I also don't want to ruin my wonderment at seeing Hagia Sophia, or the ruins of Ephesus, or seeing Sufi whirling dervishes.

I envy LHM's experience at coming across something like Texas Canyon, which for a moment startles, amazes, and causes one to think about how the universe, nature and all that we don't understand creates such fantastic things that defy explanation.  I know I will have more of those moments, and look forward to them.  I just have to strike the right balance between how much I learn, and how much I am willing to let the universe teach and touch me.

Musical Interlude

I'm not sure why I'm picking Dan Fogelberg's Nether Lands for the musical interlude.  First of all, the song is not about the country in Europe.  In fact, it is a song about acceptance or denial of life.  His message, as Fogelberg put it, is about the:

"...two forks of existence, acceptance or denial. It comes down, that's the only choice we have when you think about it. Any other choice we have is contingent on the basic: either accept the life you're given or deny it and commit suicide. It's either one. You've got to make that decision every day."

Dan Fogelberg, as quoted on Rock Around the World, a website devoted to rock and roll radio shows and interviews from the 1970s

I think that when I heard this song for the first time, I was entranced - I was literally in wonder listening to this song.  I had heard some of Fogelberg's earlier work, and some of his later work, and I'd never heard anything like this from anyone.  When I thought of this song, and found this version on YouTube (there are two others), I thought its pictures of the ordinary world in its beauty along with the song's beautiful orchestration and Fogelberg's poetry fit this post also.  I hope you get the same sense of wonder listening to it that I did.

If you want to know more about Texas Canyon

Hub Pages: Texas Canyon
The Thing in Texas Canyon
Travel Through Texas Canyon with One Girl Trucking
Wikipedia: Texas Canyon

Next up:  Tucson, Arizona

Blue Highways: Dos Cabezas and Willcox, Arizona

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapAfter an arduous journey over the Chiricahua Mountains, we pull into Dos Cabezas and Willcox with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM), and I ponder on the nature of odysseys.  Click on the thumbnail at right to see where Dos Cabezas and Willcox are located.

Book Quote

"Onion Saddle Road, after I was committed to it, narrowed to a single rutted lane affording no place to turn around....The compass swung from point to point, and within any five minutes it had touched each of the three hundred sixty degrees...

"....Finally, at eight thousand feet, I came to what must have been the summit...but the descent was no less rocky or steep.  And it went on and on.

"....I could only trust in the blue-highway maxim: 'I can't take any more' comes just before 'I don't give a damn.'  Let the caring snap, let it break all to hell.  Caring breaks before the man if he can only wait it out.

"Sure enough, the single lane became two, the dirt macadam, and Pinery Canyon led out to Arizona 186, crooked highway that dipped into arroyos rather than bridging them; but it was smooth beyond measure....As for Paradise, I never found it.

"The towns were Dos Cabezas, a clutch of houses under worn twin peaks like skulls, and Wilcox, clean and orderly."

Blue Highways: Part 4, Chapter 14

The oldest continually operating store in Arizona, located in Willcox. Photo by Dan Ouelette at city-data.com Click on photo to go to site.

Dos Cabezas and Wilcox, Arizona

In high school or college, you may have had to read The Odyssey.  This epic by Homer told the tale of Odysseus' journey from the Greek victory at Troy to his home on Ithaca.  It takes him ten years.  For three years, as he and his men sail, they experience adventure, peril, and last minute escapes.  Odysseus and his men encounter the Lotus Eaters, who drug two of his men into forgetting who they are.  His meeting with the Cyclops Polymephus, who Odysseus blinds with a stake, earns him the wrath of Polymephus' father Poseidon.  Odysseus is thus cursed to ten years of wandering.  He is given a bag of winds from Aeolus but his men open it thinking it's gold, and the escaping winds drive them back whence they came just as they were in sight of Ithaca.  He loses all of his ships to cannibals, and then encounters the witch goddess Circe, who turns his men to swine and tells Odysseus she will return them to human form in exchange for his love.  Escaping Circe after a year, they sail past the island of the Sirens, whose song will enchant men and cause their ships to crash on the rocks.  Because the men stop up their ears, and Odysseus ties himself to the mast, the ship makes it past.  Finally, as punishment for hunting the sacred cattle of the sun god, all of Odysseus' men drown in a shipwreck and Odysseus is thrown onto the nymph Calypso's island.  When he finally escapes after seven more years, he returns home to find his faithful wife Penelope beset by suitors.  In disguise, he wins a contest with bow and arrow, kills the suitors, and takes his rightful place at home.

I give you a blow by blow account, in synopsis, of the Odyssey because if you really think about it, we embark on an odyssey called life from the moment we draw first breath.  In between the time we leave our original state of nothingness and get cast naked into the world to live our life's odyssey, until the end when once again, we go back to our original state, we undertake many side odysseys.  These odysseys can involve physical travel, or they may involve journeys of emotion, spirituality, mentality, morality, or any other aspect of the human condition.

The point of an odyssey is not simply getting from the origin to the end.  Rather, the odyssey is the trials in between and how we handle them.  It involves the choices we make in dealing with difficult situations.  Otherwise, it's just a trip.  If LHM had simply traveled the United States and not had any type of difficulty or hardship, no situations where he had to question his decisions and make unsettling choices, then he really would not have had anything to write about.  However, his trip is full of small odyssey's, one of which is his travel over the Chiricahua Mountains.  As he goes up the mountain on a rocky, pitted road that seems suspended over the void, and which offers no relief going down, he questions himself, wishes he had stayed in bed, wonders whether he will hit a dead end, and finally decides not to care any more.  Of course, that is when the road smoothens and he sees signs of humanity again.  He never found Paradise as he has more journey to make, but he did test his own mettle and the hardiness of Ghost Dancing, and passed through.

I think that in any odyssey, one might reach the point where the end of the journey seems really far away.  I have been in those situations both in physical travel and emotional journeys.  I remember traveling with my wife and a friend to the Gila Wilderness in New Mexico a few years ago - a place not too far from the Chiricahuas - and we drove one day from our campsite over dirt roads to Mogollon.  We had a little car, an Infiniti, and we were sure we were going to puncture the oil pan on the rocky dirt roads.  My wife drove, and clutched the steering wheel with white knuckles.  When we finally reached Mogollon, we had literally been through a wringer worrying about whether we had made the right turn or if we were going to be lost in the Gila.

My life has also been filled with emotional journeys.  My dissertation was a journey that tested me, involved lots of obstacles, made me question myself and my abilities, asked me to take on difficult situations, face down potential debunkers, and ultimately gain my goal of a PhD.  Similarly, my relationships, whether good or difficult, are often journeys where I've made choices both brave and cowardly, avoided or fell into traps and entanglements, fought pitched battles, made wrong turns, encountered perils, resisted or fell for temptations, endured long bouts of captivity (to anger, sadness, depression, despair) and experienced moments of joy and victory.  After I've argued with a friend or loved one, it can feel like I have fought the Cyclops.  Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose.  There are always Sirens and Circe's to tempt and capture me if I am not careful.  My recent entanglement, which I spoke of generally in my last post, was a very difficult odyssey full of trials and temptations and ultimately, sadness and anger.

Add up all our odysseys, and they all combine into our life's journey.  Some of us seem to brave the perils, skirt the difficulties, and reach home in one piece.  Others of us bear many scars, emotional and physical, that are in themselves a road map of our lives' journeys.  Some of us get captured and held in captivity to dysfunction, despair and sorrow, while some of us meet those trials head on and prove ourselves to be heroes and heroines.  Regardless, as we journey on our odysseys, we encounter each other, walk along each other's paths, sometimes help each other and sometimes sabotage each other.  Without these experiences, our lives would be just a trip, a smooth movement from point A to B.  Ultimately, a smooth trip would make life boring and not allow us to learn about ourselves and our strengths and weaknesses.  We need trials and tests to become ourselves to the fullest.  When we recount our odysseys, at the end of the day or at the end of life, we can say that we've truly lived.

We may not find Paradise at the end of our journeys, but after a long and arduous path, a clutch of houses at a Dos Cabezas or a clean and orderly Willcox at the end of the road at least offer comfort and peace of mind, and a well-needed rest before our next odyssey.

Musical Interlude

If we are all making our own odysseys, it's easy to forget that there are those who are affected by our journeys, and making their own choices based on ours.  Sometimes all ends well, sometimes not.  I think of Penelope, waiting for ten years, not knowing if her husband was dead, but choosing to hold out against her suitors in the hope that he would return.  (Too bad he was giving it up to nymphs and sorceresses, but she either doesn't know that or lets it go)  Suzanne Vega, an amazing singer-songwriter, touches on the sometimes tragic aspects of mutual odysseys, when it is "not the man, but it's the marriage that was drowned."  The woman she sings of in Widow's Walk continues her journey after her faithfulness has been betrayed, but she has learned from the pain and waits for a better day.  Isn't that what we all hope for at the end of the journey?

If you want to know more about Dos Cabezas

Dos Cabezas is considered a ghost town.  Willcox, which LHM misspells, is not.  Here's what I have gathered for each of them.

Arizona Range News (newspaper)
Associated Content: Dos Cabezas
City of Willcox: About Willcox
Dos Cabezas - Arizona Ghost Town
Ghosttowngallery.com: Dos Cabezas
Wikipedia: Willcox

Next up: Texas Canyon, Arizona

Blue Highways: Somewhere on Cave Creek, Arizona

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapSelf-esteem, self-sabotage...it's all here by Cave Creek where William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) stops to camp and meets the Boss - who has a wealth of self-criticism to direct at himself.  I will relate some of my own struggles lately that coincide with this very topic.  Don't worry.  I don't go into a litany of my complaints, and it's all hopeful and positive!  Click on the thumbnail of the map at right to see where our camp is located.

Book Quote

"...my point was that what you've done becomes the judge of what you're going to do - especially in other people's minds. When you're traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don't have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.

"....I wanted to slap him around, wake him up. He had the capacity to see but not the guts; he mucked in the drivel of his life, afraid to go into the subterranean currents that dragged him about. A man concealed in his own life, scared to move, holding himself too close, petting himself too much."

Blue Highways: Part 4, Chapter 13

Cave Creek, in Cave Creek Canyon, Arizona. This is the creek along which William Least Heat-Moon camped in Blue Highways. Photo on "gatespassbear's" photo stream at Flickr. Click on photo to go to site.

Somewhere on Cave Creek, Arizona

I will warn you now, Littourati, that this post will be very personal.  Let me set up the context of the quotes above for you.  LHM, after finding what seems to be an impossible pass into the Chiricahua Mountains, and then passing through Portal which appeared to be completely empty, pulls in by Cave Creek to camp for the evening.  He is looking forward to quiet time and going over his notes.  He makes a campfire and begins to review his trip when he hears a noise.  It is a guy, who LHM nicknames "the Boss," camped nearby who is attracted to his campfire.  LHM offers the Boss some coffee and bourbon, and the Boss opens up about his life story full of "mistakes," mostly around his marital issues.  LHM gets annoyed and bored with the Boss' seemingly endless litany of complaints, and tries to close the conversation by yawning and saying he's tired, at which point the Boss gives a brief history of another person who camped in that spot while hiding from federal officials for offenses against American citizens.  Though this man was eventually captured and ended up in Oklahoma, the Boss claims that Goyathlay, better known as Geronimo, settled in his new life, took up gardening, became Christian, and wrote an autobiography.  If Geronimo, the lesson seems to say, can die successful and of old age after a life as a desperado, there is hope for us all.  One might take issue with whether Geronimo was successful as a prisoner and in exile from his people, but it's how the Boss expresses his lesson.

I say this will be personal because this entire set of passages seems to speak to where I am in my life right now.  The symbolism of Cave Creek is important because when I get down or emotionally fragile I go into what my wife calls "the Cave," a kind of mental and emotional shutdown that she can't penetrate.  Usually this comes about during a time when I feel like the Boss - that my life has slapped me around and that there is nothing I can do about it.  In a sense, I've temporarily given up fighting those forces on the outside that annoy or pain me, and on the inside that tell me that I have no business fighting.

I have been the Boss, endlessly mired in my own, negative inner conversation.  As I look back through the past year or so, everything that happened seemed to feed my own narrative about who and what I was, continuing my cycle of self-abuse.  It is a difficult spiral to break.  When I am in such a cycle, I seem to attract others who are mired in their own self-abusive cycles, but I don't recognize it.  About the time I was beginning to beat myself up for not being able to find a job in my field, for not having built an extensive circle of friends, and for not living up to my own expectations, I met a person who I thought might become a good friend.  I was drawn into this person's story of being a victim of others.  Little did I know that this person's interest in me was self-serving, the mask deceiving, and the heart uncaring.  I allowed myself to care about what happened to this person, got my ego wounded and I was emotionally hurt.  I also hurt people I care about during this period.  I now know that this is most likely a pattern in this person's life that has been repeated over and over in relationships, but when the illusion shattered it was like a smack in the face, and it fed my feelings of worthlessness, shame and guilt.  I enjoyed being someone worth this person's interest and I was hurt because I didn't understand that I was simply a tool to feed that person's need for attention, and nothing more.  I became mired in trying to fix the unfixable, against the advice of friends and people who care for me.  I wanted to at least try to put a decent closure to that relationship, but one cannot put closure on something that was illusionary only.  In the end, I became the Boss - constantly dwelling in my experience and reliving the pain over and over.   The experience wasn't all negative - I have been able to reflect on how I deny my true nature, and employ masks, smoke and mirrors by trying to be what I think people want from me rather than what I truly am.  What a huge letdown it must be to others when my masks drop and the charade is revealed!  If I present myself more truly, others will accept (or reject) me on my own merits and relationships that develop would be more authentic and much longer lasting, and ultimately, more meaningful.

But I have been like LHM also.  His trip was a way to leave his own past, mired in his breakup with his longtime companion, and get a fresh start and a fresh view of himself.  When we in better places in our lives, it is easy to want to literally "smack" people around for being mired in their problems.  LHM catches himself, commenting that he sounds like a "bioenergized group leader."  How many times have I felt sanctimonious enough to hand out advice to others about being positive and about being easy on themselves?  How many times have I advocated to people about getting rid of the physical and emotional trash in their lives and separating themselves from the things that cause them pain?  Yet, I cannot give myself the same advice - or at least I don't listen to it.  LHM shows that he is healing - he refuses to be drawn in by the Boss' attempts to gain pity and sympathy by relating all his problems.  I wish, in retrospect, that I might always have such clarity to see red flags and the strength to walk away from what I know is trouble.  I also hope that I may not be sanctimonious, but humble, because I know we all can be drawn into those spirals that cause us to be "mucked in the drivel" of our lives.

Littourati, this experiment in writing has been wonderful therapy for me.  It has been a creative outlet - the thing that brings me out of my cave and allows me to poke around in my "subterranean currents."  I hope you don't take offense when I say that I write these posts more for me than you.  I hope that occasionally someone finds something worth forwarding, tweeting, and liking or sharing on Facebook.  However, the act of putting my thoughts on these posts based on what I've read in these literary journeys, and putting into words my own feelings and experiences on various matters, helps me break cycles of self-destructive thoughts that have been ingrained since childhood.  I have done much that is admirable and good and have had wonderful experiences in life that rival the bad.  That realization has been the gift of my little idea and its expression in Littourati.

In the past week, I've started a class on creativity based on a system developed by John Dillon, who is leading the class, called the 20-20 Creativity Solution.  The premise is that everyone can be creative, but we don't allow ourselves.  Through creativity we can be happier people and live happier lives.  Dillon developed his formula through extensive familiarity with psychology and religious traditions, as well as his own history of creative work.  His practice involves 20 minutes in the morning, part of which consists of free-association writing, and 20 minutes in the evening where one reviews the day mentally in reverse.  One then chooses 3-5 things that happened for which one is grateful, and then a few things that one wishes had been different.  One gives thanks for the good things, and forgives oneself for the others.  The process is supposed to help keep the mind uncluttered with negativity and open it to the positives that then lead to creativity.

Self-forgiveness and being easy on oneself has been a common theme through the years that I have undergone therapy as a way to come to new understandings about myself, the difficulties I have faced in life, and the strength that I have had to draw on to overcome my obstacles.  So as I write this, I am grateful that I have this forum to be creative and reflective, and I am hopeful that some of you find something valuable in my musings.  In this case, I have no wishes for anything to be different except, maybe, to not give into my darker sides but instead accept myself as I am, and learn more of what I can be.

Musical Interlude

The Youngblood Brass Band was a happy discovery for me.  I love the brass band sound of New Orleans, and one day someone introduced me to Youngblood, which is not from New Orleans but has a good brass band sound.  This song, Something, really captures in musical form what I've written above.  I hope you like it.

If you want to know more about Cave Creek

There's not much, though it appears that the area is a real gathering place for Mexican birds which draw the birdwatching enthusiasts.  In terms of where William Least Heat-Moon camped, I have made my best guess on the Blue Highways Google Map and the Blue Highways Google Earth kml journey, based on the distance LHM says he traveled from Portal and that he forded the creek before pulling in to camp.

Road Scholar: Cave Creek Canyon Birding
usbackroads: Cave Creek

Next up:  Dos Cabezas and Wilcox, Arizona

Blue Highways: Portal, Arizona

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapAs we cross into another state, Arizona, we peruse on portals, gateways and doorways and where they may lead us.  William Least Heat-Moon hopes it might be Paradise, but we'll see.  Click on the thumbnail of the map at right to see where Portal, Arizona is located.

Book Quote

"I crossed into Arizona and followed a numberless, broken road.  A small wooden sign with an arrow pointing west:

PORTAL

PARADISE

"The pavement made yet another right-angle turn, and a deep rift in the vertical face of the Chiricahuas opened, hidden until the last moment.  How could this place be?  The desert always seems to hold something aside....

"...Portal consisted of a few rock buildings, and not a human anywhere."

Blue Highways: Part 4, Chapter 12

Portal Store, Portal, New Mexico. Photo by Al & Kelly Bossence at the Travel with the Bayfield Bunch blog. Click on photo to go to site.

Portal, Arizona

In an earlier post along another journey, when we were traveling through St. Louis with Jack Kerouac, I wrote about a gateway.  America is full of gateways.  In that post, I spoke of gateways being portals to someplace different.  In this quote, I like how LHM enhances the directional sign to Portal and Paradise with a passage about how the place he is entering is so different than anything he's ever experienced.  You wonder if he'll find Paradise.  Instead, he first doubts he'll find anything, then he sees an opening in the mountains, and finally encounters Portal as a small empty settlement.

Have you ever had that kind of "oh my God!" moment when you're traveling?  A moment when you turn a corner, travel through a mountain pass, or emerge from a forest or fog and experience a sense of wonder at what lies in front of you?  I have had those types of moments every so often in my journeys around the U.S. and abroad and when they come, they have stayed with me.  When I was 15, my family made our only really big family trip.  We took a cruise from Vancouver, British Columbia to Alaska.  The ship was a Soviet cruise ship, hammer and sickle proudly emblazoned on the smokestack, called the MV Odessa.  It had screws on the sides of the ship, so it could turn around in one place.  That meant that we could go into narrow fjords, right up to the sides of glaciers, and then turn around and go out.  Just being able to go between those high cliffs through still fjord waters was an amazing experience, and the wildlife - bear, eagles, orcas, seals were just the lagniappe.

My first and only trip to Yosemite National Park was also amazingly breathtaking.  I drove through a gap in the Sierras, a true portal, into the most magnificent landscape that I've ever seen.  El Capitan, Half Dome, all the landmarks made famous by Ansel Adams in black and white were there in front of me, towering over a gorgeous valley in full color.

I once drove through West Virginia.  I didn't know much about the state, but I had decided to take blue highways of my own.  Coming around a turn, I suddenly found myself at an impressive overlook.  It was the New River Gorge providing me with another magnificent travel portal.  I was inspired deeply, and wrote a poem for my girlfriend based on the fall colors of the vegetation around the gorge.

Standing on top of the Chisos Mountains in Big Bend National Park, looking out over the border into the Mexican Chihuahuan Desert, I had another moment of wonder and a feeling of joy that I was alive and able to experience such a view.

There have been many others.  Standing on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.  Looking out toward a live volcano in El Salvador, and later walking on the side of one with steam coming out of small vents along the trail.  Standing on the edge of the Jamuna River, huge in width, in Bangladesh watching a rainstorm on the river in late afternoon light during the monsoon season.  Walking through the forest to stand where Hildegard von Bingen entered the convent in the early part of the last millenium.  Standing at the edge of the Roman Colosseum.  Seeing Lake Michigan for the first time and being amazed at the immensity of this inland sea that they call a "lake."  Seeing the Mackinac Bridge - the third longest suspension bridge in the world - in the middle of nowhere in northern Michigan.  Gazing on the ruins of Chaco Canyon in the twilight.  I'm sure there are others I can think of.  I know there are others who have traveled more extensively than I, and therefore have enjoyed more wonder-filled moments, but i treasure the ones I have experienced.

However, my favorite portal is always the one closest to my heart.  When I drive Highway 20 in California west from Willits and toward my hometown, and the forest opens onto the ocean, I know that I'm back to the familiar.  The gateways we travel through to get to paradise or to places of trial are also the ones that bring us back home.  As we'll see in the next couple of posts, the portal that LHM travels through, slightly hoping for paradise, will give him cause to wonder, and worry.  But he's traveling and moving through life, he will eventually find home, and that's all that matters.

Musical Interlude

I was looking through my music and found the song that perfectly fits this post.  Tish Hinojosa is a Texas singer-songwriter who I saw many times when I lived in San Antonio.  This song, Destiny's Gate, has a lyric in the refrain that reads:

You find a road and you pave it
A long lost love and you save it
So much of the past sees tomorrow at destiny's gate

Enjoy Tish, and enjoy whatever places your portals lead you!

Share Destiny's Gate by Tish Hinojosa

If you want to know more about Portal

Arizona Sky Village
Cave Creek Ranch
DowntheRoad.org
PortalArizona.com

Next up: On the Cave Creek near Portal, Arizona

Blue Highways: Animas, New Mexico

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapGhost Dancing, William Least Heat-Moon's (LHM) van, is a very appropriate name as we enter Animas, New Mexico.   LHM points out the Native American children, and then turns his attention to the mountains.  We'll explore a little more on Native Americans in New Mexico.  Click on the thumbnail at right to see where Animas is located.

Book Quote

"...and Animas, with a schoolyard of Indian children, their blue-black heads gleaming like gun barrels in the sun.  Then the road turned and went directly for an immense wall of mountain that looked impossible to drive through and improbable to drive around.  It was the Chiricahuas, named for the Apache tribe that held this land even before the conquistadors arrived."

Blue Highways: Part 4, Chapter 12

Animas Post Office. Photo on "courthouselover's" photostream at Flickr. Click on photo to go to site.Animas, New Mexico

LHM, in his quote above, highlights Native American kids in a schoolyard in Animas.  The name may mean "ghosts" or "lost souls," which is very poetic and conjures up all kinds of interesting images.  According to some, Animas may have been established on the ruins of an Indian village.

When I moved to New Mexico, I didn't fully appreciate the richness of the cultural heritage of the various native groups in the state.  Nor did I understand just how much they contribute to the cultural and economic life of New Mexico.

It sounds ignorant, but I never really gave it much thought.  Growing up in California, I don't think I ever saw or met a Native American, at least that I know of.  I remember my grandmother, who grew up in a very small town in the woods of northern California, telling me that as a young girl she saw Indians who walked down the road in front of her family's farm on their way to the ocean.  She said she was always afraid of them, because she said they were either drunk or they didn't talk to anyone.

My education about Native Americans began in Milwaukee, where my girlfriend and I began attending a Native American Catholic community called Congregation of the Great Spirit.  The pastor, who told me that his tribe was Polish, led a congregation made up Natives from a number of different tribes around the Midwest.  The celebration of the Mass was almost perfect for us - we were always late for everything but it seemed no matter how late we were, Mass never started before we got there.  It was a true community experience.  People greeted each other and talked for a long time before the Mass began.  Mass started when everyone seemed to think it was supposed to start.  The readings, as explained by the pastor, made sense to me finally, because the pastor related Israel's tribal experiences to the Natives tribal experiences and in the process made the context easier to understand.  My girlfriend and I were outsiders to the community, but we were never made to feel unwelcome.  We were also occasionally invited to participate in some community activities and to go to pow wows.

In New Mexico, there are tribes living on reservations and on pueblos.  The tribes living on pueblos are some of the oldest inhabitants of the United States.  The Natives practice Catholicism, introduced by the Spanish, and their own native traditional and religious customs.  Their ceremonies, some of which are open to outsiders and some which aren't, reflect this mixture of Church and something much older.  They built elaborate adobe dwellings and many still live in the traditional communities.  If you travel through the northern and western parts of the state, you will see amazing communities like Taos Pueblo, with its multi-story adobe homes and kivas (religious chambers), or Acoma, situated 300 feet above the valley floor on the top of a mesa. 

My wife (the girlfriend mentioned above - we were married by the pastor of the Congregation of the Great Spirit in Milwaukee) and I always take visitors to see Acoma, and we were lucky to take a tour of Zuni Pueblo, sponsored by the pueblo, which is not very developed for tourism.  Walking through the pueblo, we saw artwork of Kachinas painted in the crumbling church, art they are desperately trying to save.  We saw women baking loaves of bread in hornos, mud-ovens introduced by the Moors to the Spanish, and then by the Spanish to the southwest Natives.  We ate a traditional Zuni meal at the house of a seventy-year old Zuni midwife who still travels to Albuquerque when called to help deliver children.

I love the creation myths of the Pueblo peoples.  The stories say that the first people crawled from the other world through a hole in the ground and settled the lands.  This creation story is represented in every kiva in every pueblo in the form of a sipapu - a small hole in ground.  It connects the past with the present.  Visit Chaco Canyon and its amazing ruins of a long ago Native civilization, or the ruins at Bandelier National Monument, and you will see sipapus in the floor of the ruins of the kivas.

We also, when possible, attend the Gathering of Nations pow-wow in Albuquerque, where representatives of tribes from all over the United States and Canada compete in dancing and strengthen the connections between tribes.  Gallup, New Mexico also has a large pow-wow.

Within the past three years, I have discovered that I have the blood of Natives running in me.  I was adopted, and did not know my heritage.  My biological mother's side has both African-American and Native-American blood (specifically Delaware) running through their veins.  I was extremely happy when I found this out.  To me, I have the best of America inside me.  The creativity and passion and talent and culture that intermingles in me in the form of African, Native and Caucasian, waiting to be tapped, is part of what has made this country what it is.

Lately, as the years have passed while we've lived in Albuquerque, the few artworks and jewelry we have collected have taken a decidedly Southwest Native flavor.  Now, instead of going to a church that is for a Native community, we attend Mass at a Church where whites, blacks, Asians and Natives mingle and worship together.  The more that I learn, the more that I am astounded at the richness and the vitality of the Native communities in this state, and I am thankful that they are here, expanding my horizons and teaching me new ways to see myself and the world.  I know that on the reservation and in the Native communities there are many problems that need to be resolved, and the past treatment of Natives by white settlers and their governments is one of the dark blots on our country's history.  However, in my experience with Native peoples, the spirit, or "ánima" of their communities is very alive, and anything but lost.

Musical interlude

At KUNM, one of Albuquerque's public radio stations, the station airs Singing Wire each Sunday afternoon.  "Singing Wire," you may recall, was the name that Natives gave to telegraph wires.  The show is programmed and hosted by Native American volunteers.  They play a lot of pow-wow music, traditional native music, rock and roll and reggae by Native artists.  (I've learned that Indians are big fans of hard driving rock and the mellow beats of reggae.)  One of our favorite songs that they air often is Indian Car, by Keith Secola.  On our way to Chaco Canyon, traveling 25 miles per hour in a rental car on a road that was so rough and washboardy I thought we'd puncture the oil pan, we were passed by an old sedan filled with young Native Americans doing about 60 miles per hour, and as I watched they swerved off the main road onto a road only they knew and headed out across the desert.  I think of them every time I hear this song.

If you want to know more about Animas

Animas, Cotton City, and Playas
Wikipedia: Animas

Next up: Portal, Arizona