We found ourselves in the City of the Crosses as the result of a hasty, tear-stained journey. Our dear friend had lost his only son.
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| Never again will I think of a soft drink in the same way |
A small crowd of people gathered at a park, passed around Kleenex and shared stories of Jackson's life. We drank Dr. Pepper, the boy's favorite drink. In my mind, a fuzzy picture of the deceased began to emerge from the miasma of grief and confusion that had enveloped so many people in the days following his death. A razor-sharp image began to crystallize as I listened to the stories: Jackson was a kind, funny, conscientious boy with a lust for books and an unquenchable curiosity.
I had told his father that the thing about Jackson that always struck me was his "serenity." It's hard to explain, but other kids his age have a noisiness and a discord that seems to put them a little out of phase with the rest of the world. Not Jackson. Whenever I saw him, he seemed to glide around almost subliminally, as if his flow matched the flow of the rest of the world. He had a harmony about him, I guess. It was a rare thing to see in someone his age.
And perhaps it was just as rare as seeing a kid hanging around libraries and used book stores—haunting them like a wraith bent on conjuring up all the wisdom stored inside. I had always wondered why this kid that I barely knew felt like a kindred spirit or even like kin. I chocked it up to my very long friendship with his father. But after hearing people recount their memories of him, I realize now that Jackson, like me I suppose, was a philosopher in the true sense of the word—a lover of wisdom and a seeker of knowledge. We shared common ground without even knowing it, which in many ways makes his untimely passage even sadder to me. I never had the chance to really know him.
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| A few drops of rain can do marvelous things to the desert |
Without dwelling on the melancholy, it struck me that the road of life has so many sights to stop and see along the way. We often cavalierly pass by things that strike our fancy without pausing to take a gander, promising ourselves that we will stop and visit another time, "when we have the time." How often have we used that bogus little phrase to rationalize our unadventurous behavior?
We feign busyness to feign importance, and unfortunately, as life shows us time and time again, while we are off doing other "important" things, the landscape changes, the wrecking ball finds its mark, highways are rerouted, or things just inexplicably disappear from the face of the Earth. In the blink of an eye, we lose the opportunity to indulge ourselves with a fascinating side trip to a little-known roadside attraction.
Sadly, it is often those unexpected side trips that make life so rich and rewarding.
Desert communion
The desert in Las Cruces was green from a summer of rains. Temperatures hovered just below 100 degrees—wildly hot for mountain people such as ourselves. We rose at dawn the day after the memorial to try out our bikes on the fine desert trails north of town. A mottling of clouds obscured the rising sun as we readied our gear at the trailhead. As we made our way toward the foothills ahead, the merciless sun burned away our cloud cover. At a cairn we noticed a plastic figure from a kid's Cowboys and Indians play set peering out of a rock crevasse, his bow drawn and ready to unleash an assault upon us. Maybe he already had—our skin was turning red with sun bite and it felt as if we had suffered a thousand tiny stings. We hurried on our way before another arrow found its mark.
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| A trip wouldn't be a trip without a bicycle |
Such a thing makes good sense, unless you happen to be a bean counter someplace who never has to deal with the heat and only obsesses over productivity and the abstract potential of the Bottom Line. Numbers Men with soft hands and white skin whispered greedy promises into the ears of Captains of Industry, once and for all sealing the fate of the siesta. Air conditioning became less expensive than the opportunity costs that were wracked up while people snoozed happily in the middle of the day. Soon, siesta became a memory, a luxury to be enjoyed only by those with great wealth or power—or by vacationers with time on their hands.
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| A little man shoots arrows from the rock |
We greeted the late afternoon following our siesta with a cool dip in the swimming pool. We watched the sun sink into the desert sands at the edge of town, igniting the horizon with a blaze of orange. Later we had dinner with our grieving friends, intending to talk about anything other than the recent sad events. But there's really no escaping the heat, even after sunset.
As we drove away from the restaurant, I wondered how my friends could even ponder waking up each day from now on when such a ragged hole had been torn into the fabric of their lives? But they have faced each day since with warm smiles and generous spirits. They are stronger people than we are, which is probably why we love and admire them so.
I know there are some people out there who say time allows people to forget. But such a thing seems so heartless. Why would anyone want to forget? We hoard and cherish our memories. Even the bad ones. Our experiences are the only things we truly own. God forbid anyone or anything should steal them from us.
Artwork of the ancients
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| Some things get lost in translation |
For years I had promised my companion that I would show her these drawings under the condition that she would show no one else. A terrible thing about humans is their seemingly unending need to destroy or steal the works of those who came before them. Fortunately, this area remains unmolested. No modern men have crudely carved their names or obscenities into these rocks with the wanton strokes of pocketknife blades. There is no vandalism here of any kind, and if I could have one simple wish, it would be that this place remain unadulterated for at least another half millenium.
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| While harsh, the desert can be beautiful, too |
We respectfully enjoyed the area and exited the wash below just as the rattlesnakes were waking up and making their move toward wherever it is that snakes go during the heat of the day. Sweat glistened on our flesh as we trudged out of the desert under the unrelenting gaze of the rising sun.
Dumb as a box of rocks
A few hours later, midway between Truth or Consequences and Socorro, we detoured onto New Mexico Highway 1, an anachronism from those halcyon days of "Happy Motoring" that parallels Interstate 25. For decades driving on the interstate, a small brown sign with the words "Rock House" had always captured my attention after climbing out of La Cañada Alamosa. The words conjured an image in my head and my brain would play a jukebox selection of the Ernie Freeman Trio's song of the same name in my head.
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| Rock House and the Fray Cristóbal Mountains |
While we could find no history or information about the Rock House, it appeared to be a relatively modern structure built by the Army Corps of Engineers or some similar authority shortly after completion of the dam at Elephant Butte. In the small canyons and arroyos nearby, the arid landscape was bleached by a high-water mark that ended just below the small bluff where the Rock House had been erected. Ostensibly, this was the northernmost stretch of the new lake that existed during a now-forgotten period when water was plentiful and the Rio Grande was a river, not a trickle that bares ironic contradiction to its name.
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| Personally, I think if someone took the time to dream it, then you should take the time to look at it |
A little farther north, near the village of San Antonio, we passed an imposing hunk of rusted metal rising out of the desert. I had seen the familiar arrowhead design many times previously on my trips to Las Cruces, but I could never seem to find the access road to reach it. This time, our route on NM Highway 1 passed right near the structure, so we took the opportunity to investigate.
Sculptor Greg E. Reiche created the monumental artwork, called Camino de Sueños (Road of Dreams), in 2005 to commemorate the El Camino Reál National Scenic Byway under the auspices of the Cultural Corridors Art Program.
Seeing the sculpture rising from the desert floor while whizzing by at 75 miles per hour on Interstate 25 hardly does it justice. Up close, the piece is a remarkable installation of steel and glass. A notch below the sculpture hides a strip of aluminum etched with the following:
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Immediately after discovering and reading that, I found the following carved into the rust on the backside of the strange desert colossus:
Sergio S is gay
11/05/13
The bird poop that had streaked parts of the sculpture like some kind of crazy gesso did not obscure the truths that had been so carefully recorded on this lonely hunk of steel. If this titan could be named, it might have been called Coeus. We smiled and got back on the road.
Route of the dead man
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| Desert Spider Beetle, a variety of blister beetle (and a type of natural Viagra if you know what you’re doing), in Doña Ana County, New Mexico |
While the fort was instrumental in beating the Confederacy back into Texas—where some say it remains in spirit to this day—like any military installation, it was not without its own horrors. The remaining historic site located a short distance away from San Antonio, home of the Owl Café and its legendary green chile cheeseburgers, tells hard-edged stories of negro prisoners being locked into confined spaces scarcely larger than coffins, where they were left to die of "colds or rheumatism."
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| Fort Craig National Historic Site |
But of course, there was one people who were treated even worse: The Indians. Raiding parties of, ironically, Buffalo Soldiers and other militiamen led by Kit Carson, Capt. Jack Crawford, Rafael Chacón and other notables hunted down and slaughtered countless Apache and Navajo people.
The remains of nearly 100 souls were excavated from Fort Craig, but not before looters and opportunists had defiled the graves of countless others who had been buried there. To say that such an epicenter of inhumanity might be haunted is an understatement, but on the day we visited, the temperature was way too hot and the sun way too high for even ghosts to overshadow. Whatever spirits happen to be lingering on the property had gone in search of shade for the afternoon. Fort Craig Historic Site prohibits visitations after dark or overnight camping. After visiting, it seems like sound policy.
We continued north toward home. Outside of Socorro, traffic was tied in a brief knot while emergency crews cleared the road of a motor home that had apparently burst into flames. As we drove by in a slow-moving line of rubberneckers, we saw the owners of the charred wreckage milling about the shoulder of the road, apparently trying to grasp what had just happened to them.
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| All hype aside, you really can get a fantastic green-chile cheeseburger here |
We lock ourselves behind the screens of our smart phones, where we withdraw from the world through a constant barrage of social media posts. We stick to familiar routes to and from our customary daily destinations. We favor the Starbucks where we know the barista by name, but we eschew the corner coffee shop where everyone inside might be a stranger.
Perhaps Emerson is no longer relevant to modern society.
We carry what we believe we are around in our palms or in our pockets at all times, lest we lose ourselves to the realities that exist just beyond our front doors.
See you on down the road.
