There is a storm coming.

Searching for place and purpose. Trying to get a hold on this feeling. 

 We will tear our places from the fleshy side of a large and unforgiving world. Never to bask in material successes or cocktail admirations, we will flourish in the gutters, shit-eating-smiles and well-fed-souls abreast. Give us twenty years of health and we'll make two hundreds years worth of shit for people to read and look at. We'll know no fame or money in our lives, but we'll know suffering. Let future generations have the rest. We're not taking a rest. We live for this.

Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. 

Seventy years ago Freemont Ave. was the birth and center of what today’s Las Vegas mold was cast from. Thirty years after, a single hotel sprang up off to the west five-miles calling itself the Desert Inn. It was followed by other conglomerates, who, armed with decadent marketing campaigns, laundered venture capital, and pure uncut cocaine, stole the thunder and image for their own. East Freemont sits a relic from the beginning and a beacon of foreshadowing. The faded neon signs of yesteryear cast their fluorescent beams on the pimps and whores, dealers and the dealt, all who have come to call the “old strip” their new home.

            City initiatives have attempted to gentrify a small section at the foot of the now-king Las Vegas Blvd. but the result is a family-oriented hovel of shopping and self-serve festivity. Few people see this section of Las Vegas, and even fewer see what is left to the east. The hotels are shut and unsuccessfully boarded; their broken faded marquees say things like “than s for a lif time of good mem ries.” The missing letters shattered on the ground and worn smooth from years of trampling. The beggars are brash and indignant, hostile and without understanding when you don’t hand your money over gracefully. And the further you walk, the worse the show. It’s the carbon copy of any inner-city ghetto, but with the eccentricity of graying, sun-baked, neon signs and soft-core porn in the real-estate bins. And I’m walking through it all, counting up the numbers over the doorways for my hostel.

            There is a young-but-well-aged black girl who has taken towards me. She stays busy through most of the day but always seems to be around and available when I’m pounding the pavement back and forth to town. She doesn’t like to talk about herself and usually ends our exchanges with a terse, “Do you want to fuck of what?” I tell her I’m down on my luck and she replies sarcastically, “yea, well, me too.” I guess I am preaching to the choir. We have this same discussion everyday, sometimes more. While I am inundated with déjà vu, she doesn’t seem to recall our meeting. I watch her from my third-floor window and she comes and goes in old, lowered Buicks and even older, ford pick-up trucks. I considered her to be quite productive and was surprised when on the last day of my stay I saw an eighteen-ish, attempted version of Lil’John, beating and screaming motivation into her from across the street. She was around five years his senior and seemed to take the beating expectantly obedient, with even a sense of shame for having caused him the trouble. Catching her with dried streaks of tears on my way back from the store I asked if she was all right. She answered with her usual, terse, “Do you want to fuck or what? Like we had never met before.

            The Vegas hostel was a converted hotel. A genius of enterprise simply bought the shanty thing for probably five dollars, fixed it up not a dime over code, and placed in every room, three bunk-beds. Charging twenty dollars a head he makes upwards of four-fold what a hotel would, and can still be frugal and inhospitable to his guest saying, “you get what you pay for.” He’s the only one who is getting more than he paid. The hostel isn’t bad by any means, just old and showing its age with varicose veins of water damages and questionable staircases faded on the top to show their rhubarb innards. It has a large pool in the courtyard with adjacent hot tub. In its heyday it was one of the finest on the strip, because it was the only with an antebellum hot tub; a prized attraction I’m told. It’s now the only lodging left in business this far out, and huddling around it for warmth are about four businesses, dependant on income from the backpacking crowd. These shopkeepers are the most versatile and patient I’ve ever seen, able to deal with both non-English speaking Swedes and knife threatening speed freaks in any given day.

            I spent most of my time here, in the old and busted strip. A haunt for the dying and the dead--a town of monsters and a clear picture of the coming days of the rest of Las Vegas.

                        …

 

            The first night I felt it was my duty to give the city one last fair shot. When you swim hard against wide streams it is healthy to stop and consider how it is a majority gets behind something you stand in front of. And so I walked up the bowels of east Freemont to the, marginally better, section of south Las Vegas Blvd. Here people are much more interested in me as a prospective client for their drugs and such and I was much more popular here than I was back outside the hostel. I pushed through the offers and kept on towards the glitter glow of what has become, in theory and advertisement, the new and better Las Vegas.

I could have taken the bus. I probably should have.  But I am one of the cheapest bastards on the face of the earth and will, and have, walked five miles and more to scrooge a three-and-a-half-dollar fare. I walked until my feet bled. My legs were already stringy and distressed from my futile efforts on the south rim. I walked them into jelly and by the time I had gotten through the Elvis-themed flash-chapel-section to Circus Circus, I was entirely spent. I saw the hourly show, a gymnastic(ish) group of a half-dozen imported Moroccans, climbing on each other and building uneasy towers suspended with strong ebony arms. Parents cheered with their children in the bleachers and I sipped whiskey from the revolving “vortex” balcony. I watched when the scene would come around, and rubbed my socked feet on the legs of the bolted table.

I drug myself another block to the Venetian to get a glimpse of the inspiring ceiling which was one of my only positive memories from the previous trip. I collapsed in the foyer and looked around, the reality not matching up to my memory. Watching the people filing up in front of a two-story waterfall for photographs I began to get a stinking sickness deep in my heart. Why was I here again? I went out side and got on the bus.

I had to change busses in a transfer plaza and was dumped out into a bustling terminal for almost an hour waiting for the infrequent East Freemont line. It was late, past one and I was having a hard time keeping my eyelids open. In the middle of the terminal was a large, noisy, group of black kids, harmless by themselves but potentially dangerous in the large rambunctious group they were in. I leaned back against a pole and watched the people move about, trying to be inconspicuous like the other lone passengers hovering around the shadows. It wasn’t five minutes before one of the kids, doubling back from the group after doing something extravagant, came up to me and said, “Yo, Why aint you spark that one time?”

“What?”

“Lemme hit that one time. Black!” He was pointing to to cigar I had tucked in my ear that I had forgotten about, waving his finger purposely close infront of my face trying to intimidate me.

“What are you not 18 or something?” I asked, trying to stay calm and be friendly. Usually a joke can pass over pointless tension. 

“Shit. I’m twenty, Bitch. What’d I look like a fucking kid to you.” He shaped an arrow with his arms and leaned forward towards me, looking back over his shoulder to make sure his audience was adoring.

“I dunno, why do you want a “hit” off of a cigar? From a stranger?”

“Why you got that shit in your ear,” he tried to make a swipe with his fingers to knock it loose, “trying to be cool, bitch, why don’t you spark it and pass it around?”

He was puffing up and making a big show in front of his friends. I know how dangerous this can be and decided to keep the upper hand. I saw in his actions, and begging of his friend’s attention, an insecurity. He was looking for the same in me, but I was tired and didn’t give a shit. I was over Las Vegas and a bus stop fistfight would just confirm everything I already decided of the place. I leaned forward meeting his face and lowered my tone so as not to make it a show, and invitation, for the others, “This isn’t a fucking bowl,” I took it out of my ear, waved it in his face, and stuck it in my pocket, “and this isn’t a puff-puff-pass circle, so fuck off.” He leaned back and a rising murmer came from the circle of friends behind. He looked me up and down, sizing me up with his eyes, and I kept mine burrowed into his.  It was my turn to puff up and act like a bad ass. After a moment, he turned and made a “pssht” noise and went back to his group saying something like he aint worth it. Coward.

I leaned back on the post and remained looking tough. The toughest approach is the New York style, pretending to be asleep in public. Like you’re so much of a hard ass you invite the unsuspecting blow. I did just that, while being very much afraid. I had stepped on his ego in front  of his peers and I knew his humiliation and shame was growing. I decided myself in high-school the shame of stepping back to the shadows from a shoving bully hurt more than any scrape a child’s bus stop brawl can give. I knew he was festering and if we had enough time he would come flying in with some blind courage he was working on. I looked over at an old black couple sitting on the bench adjacent who had been watching. They had a mix of shame and disgust in their expression that told me that, while they felt for me, their wasn’t a damn thing they could do to help when I began to get my ass beat by a pack of young impassioned kids. They had formed a beat-box circle and were kicking rhymes back and forth about the pussy rockstar cracker who hogs up all the smoke, like a white man do. That sort of stuff. Building tension. I have been on the other side of the equation in my day and I lay my head back, closed my eyes, and waited.

            A bus pulled up behind me and I heard the chiding stop and the group filing in front of me. I thought of keeping my eyes closed but couldn’t. I opened them just in time to catch the kid making a shoving motion, he quickly turned it into a “what’s up” gesture as he walked past. I glared into him as he filed in front, large en-crazed grin on my face. I knew I was only feeding into a cycle of violence. It was dumb and childish, and only made that kid and the ones he preyed on dumb and childish. But as I got on my bus and headed back to the broken streets of ghetto Las Vegas, home. I smiled a little on the inside. One day I’ll be an old, wrinkled, green-and-grey man; and I won’t be able to scare off little big-headed children in seedy bus stops.

 …

 

I came in the night before to two new roommates. Sergio, a kind-hearted, but classic-stereotype Italian playboy. Somewhere in life he had traded in the two-piece tracksuit and slicked-back hair for skate shoes and a travelers lifestyle, but it was still reminiscent in everything he said and did. His friend, and cultural liaison, was a furry chef named Rudy. Rudy had not an ounce of hostility in him though it looked like he wished for it. Everything he did was generous and you could see the concern of a caring mother in his eyes. His nature served him well, and especially Sergio. During conversations he would subtly throw in a translation for some idiom that had come across previously in their own interactions. I would say I “passed out” after being tired and Rudy would whisper “collapse” and Sergio would understand. They were an efficient machine and a good team.

I couldn’t tell how long, but they had been traveling together for a while. They moved and spoke in unison, and played off each other’s character. Sergio was from a restaurant family in the north and was helping Rudy find and buy a Volkswagen bus to drive back to West Palm Beach, Florida, where Rudy planned on opening another restaurant. I assumed Sergio would help with traditional Mediterranean recipes. Rudy wasn’t Italian at all, but claimed Brazilian. He was as white as myself but was proud of being born and raised for a little while overseas.He had come to the states young and been in Massachusetts long enough to pick up and accent before coming to Florida. Somehow he had worked his way up in an Italian restaurant and decided that was what he was made out for.

I hung out with them and was glad to third-wheel their conversations. They told grand stories of their finding a car to drive the country and staying with weird Russians in Hollywood. In the morning we went down for a swim since they had throw us out the night before for being too loud.

            The hostel’s capacity gave it unique character because of the diversity of it’s people. Both the front counter and pool had permanent residents.  And I threw my card in with the latter. We floated the entire day. An international chorus of drunkards, drinking warm, pool temperature, Busch beer from a communal glass vase. The vase had been brought by a wild-eyed, long-haired, sun-deprived Scottish man. He had picked it up somewhere in his travels and at painstaking burden had been carting it around the world, and passing it about. He claimed hundreds of people had drunken a plethora of substances out of it over the last year. The large bulb in the bottom allowed it to float without tipping in the pool as it was passed around from risking lips to lips.

            For the rest of my time there I loafed around the never-ending party. Meeting people you couldn’t remember ten minutes later and exchanging stories and lustful glances around the pool. Stories would get lost in translation. Games of volleyball would stop and start through the day. No one left because it sucked outside on the street. They were a pizza joint attached to the hostel that provided nourishment and a 7-11 that provided communal relations. We lay around and got great tans. We were the true rock stars of Las Vegas. 

Thank you for reading this. 

            I said goodbye to Flagstaff over three cups of Dirty Ron’s coffee. Recently discovering McDonalds will do free refills, I have been unhealthily vamping my intake more and more each day. I left for the canyon jittery with caffeine-inspired expectations. They sank and I grew weary coming in the entrance road, when it opened to five lanes; pass holders instructed to use lanes one and five. The only thing missing was a large overhead marquee like that at the Magic Kingdom.  

I headed right towards park information with my two big questions; where do the destitute sleep? and, where are the showers? To the first question the ranger said, “It’s not called being destitute or sleeping in your car. It’s called “dispersed camping,” he held up his fingers in the parenthesis marks. “Hey Bill, where’s that form for dispersed camping?” He made the gesture again to bill, winking and gesturing towards me. I pursed my lips into a frown. He thought he was a really funny guy. The kind that looks up jokes on the internet to bring to the water cooler as his own. Bill went digging through a large filing bin he had retrieved from the back room and gathered out a pink carbon-print out. He gave it to the first guy who laid it out between us and educated me on the finer points of sleeping in our National Forest.

Filing into the river of cattle at the parking lot I came upon the south rim of the Canyon by way of a wide pedestrian paved path, shouldered on both sides by gargantuan beasts in sturdy, new and unused, hiking boots. It could have been the people that soiled my first impression. But, it seems to me with the other places I’ve been, that you commonly take something in, in relief to its surroundings saying, that is amazing in contrast to all this other shit. The Grand Canyon offers no relief, and seems to overload your senses. You can’t really capture its depth in one glance or pinpoint any single part of its majesty. The forms and shapes are ever-receding and become nothing more than a painted horizon. It is just too much to take in.

My original plans to hike through the canyon were shattered by the ranger who told me not only was the trail twenty-four miles, instead of the twelve I had sworn I read (not sure how I miscalculated,) but the low level temperatures at the river were above 120 degrees most of the day. And since he was the one who issues the permits, he wasn’t issuing me one. My hastily-made backup plan was to try out the south rim trail to the end the first day, and go down halfway on the Kaibob trail the second. Being at the starting point of the rim already, the safety-railed area constipated with people, right next to the parking lot, I started away from that point quickly. The next two miles were exactly the same, flanked by parking lots and concession stands that stayed as busy as the edge’s designated viewing points. Most of my hike’s difficulty was navigating the fat asses and spittles of gum until about mile four, where the trail petered off into gravel and seclusion, sort of..

About 60% of the trail all the way to the Hermit’s Rest stop was flanked by the shuttle service road. The road carried large-windowed busses every five-minutes or so, offered free of charge to park visitors, who filled the windows and gawked out at the canyon sights. Just in front, a lone person walked the trail in between their view. Most of the shuttlers were flabby skinned, pasty American and British adventurers, with the occasional camera faced Asian;  firing little strobes into the glass in front of their faces. I began to recognize the same faces while I walked because many of them would stay on and loop for the afternoon, beginning to wave at me around the fifth time. I started making up names and fictional lives for them. I wasn't even paying attention to the hole on my right anymore. Bob Flannery, with his unfaithful wife who serviced a plumber every tuesday, from Des Moines became more interesting. I could see in his eyes he knew. 

I hiked the entire twelve-mile trail that day. Even running the last two miles to avoid getting caught in the perilous approaching storm with my camera equipment. At the end, flustered and exhausted, I saw the infamous “Hermit’s Rest” sign--the outpost marking the end of the line. Underneath the sign were two Chinese women, a mother and daughter, holding up the ever present asian-peace-sign for the photo the father was taking. Waiting patiently in turn, breaking their first sweat of the day, were fifty other people hoping to get their shot at the photo opportunity.

It turned out hermit’s rest was the end of the line for the shuttle and it wasn’t much of a "rest" anymore, but a thriving snack shop. People took the opportunity to purchase ice cream for their bratty kids that would shovel it in their mouths and offer the parents a relief from their constant talking. People loafed everywhere, just like at the trailhead. It was as if I had walked twelve miles too the food court of the local mall. Defeated, I got in line for the over-crowded bus and sat sandwiched between a round kid with soda dried on his neck and arms, and a woman standing in the aisles, enormous ass. It formed around the pole divider and encroached very much in my “bubble zone.” I went to the concessionaire to shower my discontent.

Afterward, I stopped at the general store outside the park and bought sliced Monterey-jack cheese, a half-pint of whiskey, a liter of coke, and a small box of ginger snaps. I drove out on a rural forest service road, pulled off into pitch-silent blackness, flicked on the LED light on my battery pack, and had myself a wonderful feast of a pick-nick, all by myself. 

The following morning I found myself hunched over a over-priced McCafe coffee, Pro-and-Conning whether or not to go back into the park for a second day of hiking. After a gallon of so of coffee I decided I was too edgy to even attempt it, lest I hauled off and beat some pigtailed, mouth-braced girl to death for not ceasing her whining on a trail. I had seen the trail from the rim the day before and looking down it looked like a line or marching ants to the "vista point." Most of the little dots were larger indicating they were donkeys people had hired so they wouldn't have to walk. My feet were sore from breaking in my new hiking shoes and I didn’t want to see these people anymore. So I headed west for Las Vegas, where the rest of them would surely would be.

 

Thank you for reading this.

 

Flagshaft

I met my nine o’clock, waking up ass early and driving in an hour and a half from the neighboring town of Cortez’s Wal-Mart. The tour guide wasn’t as friendly, but the group was smallish and committed and we got on well together. The ruins were intriguing and we were able to clamber up and down and in and out of the ancient pueblos under the ranger’s guarding eye. Along the tour one in our group, a genealogy historian of some kind, would ask questions about hereditary patterns and inbreeding that the guide wasn’t able to answer. He seemed to already know the answers anyway, but it was good fun to hear the guide choke up and try to remain pleasant. Most of the group including myself took to eavesdropping into the conversations between him and his small young boy, while he bestowed trinkets of knowledge I could barely grasp. The young boy would listen to his father and consider his words, nodding; storing it all away for the day he would be a genius too.

            After the tour I left the park west for the Arizona border and Flagstaff. Everything became flat and desolate at the border. It was a vicious wasteland, nothing but tumbleweeds, some attached, and some rolling in the breeze. Unfenced yards began to litter up on the left and right, centered with rotten dilapidated trailers pouring the excesses of their junk into the surrounding yards. Some seemed to be held together with stacks of trash piled on either end. Cars sat hallowed everywhere, bathing in rust. Every sixty miles there would be a clustering of businesses claiming a township. They were uniformly made up of one gas station, a various fast food joint, a grocery store, a video store, and one run down restaurant. The restaurants’ genre would be different with each town and I stopped at one boasting Chinese.

            I stepped through the doors and heads turned, like the villain’s arrival in a Wild West flick. I got some terrible food and sat out side to watch the chino/native men stand around by the newspaper boxes, staring silently into the hazing of heated earth. The entire experience was depressing. There seemed to be no effort for life anywhere. No one seemed the least bit friendly. The woman who served me had even managed not to say a word. I got back to the car and started digging through the guidebook to figure out where the hell I was. The Navajo Nation Reserve, also known as the Navajo desert. I had been driving through it for hours. And the guidebook mirrored my thoughts exactly, while telling me not to stop until I hit the casinos on the other end.

            I did just that, lest the casinos. I drove westward through northern Arizona, in what can only be described as the leavings of a master race. From sea to shining sea, this was the armpit, land that couldn’t be given away to poor white males by rich white males in Pennsylvania, or wherever. So it was left to provide a solution to a problem. After being pushed west for a century to the coast they were brought back east to their new homes. Homes build under a blistering sun that kills everything and bleaches the bones a sterling white. A place where even cactus can’t grow well; let alone civilizations.

 

                        …

 

All day I drove, with the same sad sights repeating over and over. Three times I got stuck in construction. For whatever reason they would shut ten miles of road down to one way traffic and in between, close it down completely for thirty-minute intervals. Thrice I sat for close to an hour gabbing with the other drivers, who had abandoned their vehicles to wander around and curse luck and complain. It was both equally miserable and infuriating. To that point it was the worst heat I’d been in, and through the afternoon I shed clothing and preyed for air conditioning.

            And then it ended, as abruptly as it had begun, with a turn onto 64 south. Barren nothingness turned to rolling, duney, sand hills the color and luminosity of fine granite. The hills glistened and were abstractly patterned with circling and curving ATV and 4x4 tracks. I stormed through the endless off-road-playgrounds that cast off into a grey haze to the feet of the distant blue peaks, housing the city of Flagstaff, a promise land of bed and shower. Dark storm clouds were sledding down the slopes and spilling out over the dunes to meet me. As we collided, the temperature began plummeting on the breast of a powerfully frigid mountain wind. The road began to climb, for 18miles it climbed up 8,000ft through the fleeing storms. The gusts were hard and frightening. A large one would take the car from 65MPH to 50MPh instantly. When the road would wind perpendicular to the breeze I worried of being shoved clear off the road.

            The dropping temperatures had me reevaluating my outfit, which had consisted of nothing but running shorts since about the second traffic-back-up. I noticed for the first time that I had, very thoroughly, burnt the left half of my body. It cast an almost perfect line right down the center of my chest. The worst spot was my left thigh, now swollen, and the color, temperature, and consistency of a house steak ordered up medium rare.

                        …

            The hostel was full. They directed me to another. That one was full. They said a hotel might be affordable. It was seventy dollars--I had a serious situation. Top of the list of problems was the shower. I hadn’t had one since Santa Fe. The second place problem was the throbbing, very sun-poisoned looking, reddening on my thigh. I sat outside on the sidewalk, with my map and guidebooks spread out on the curb and in the gutter, whining to no one.

            I had no choice; I was sleeping in the car again. But then what? I needed a place to rest and recoup before heading to the Grand Canyon. I needed a shower, and  I didn’t need this. I was also depressed that I wouldn’t get to stay in Flagstaff. Driving in the city had gotten me very excited with its laid-back atmosphere in the downtown area. Looking at my options, I saw two: backtrack south to Phoenix and lose at least two days just for a shower, or, head straight for the Grand Canyon, no rest, no shower, and push on for the next available hostel, Las Vegas. I fucking hate Las Vegas. I went a couple years ago with a girlfriend when I was twenty. We spent our days walking the seedy streets and splitting Quiznos subs in our hotel room. We cultivated a fine distaste for its ‘glitter on shit’ approach to family fun and at the end of three nights and four days I can proudly recount that we, together, spent $74. People were sobbing on the flight home.

            I decided to sit on the decision, and, since I was saving twenty dollars by not showering and having a roof over my head, decided to drink twenty dollars worth of alcohol. I later discovered, however, I wasn’t able to drink twenty dollars worth of alcohol. The reason being, the bartender at the second bar explained in slow deliberate tones, was that the high altitude severely affects a persons’ alcohol tolerance. I could only agree. I was holding the bar and running in place on the stool to keep the room steady. The bartender and I agreed I should eat, and I was out in search of something to fill my stomach on the downtown streets.

            I found a Chipolte-style burrito place and clumsily ordered a massive burrito to take out to the patio and shovel in, and around, my mouth. While eating I shivered in the cold and watched the hip, UNA students, living their fashionably interesting lives in a fashionably interesting, progressive southwest city. Had I gotten into the hostel I could have gathered a group together to enjoy the city as part of something. Instead, I found myself, alone, hovering over a burrito trying to sober up in a elusive city that I didn’t feel at all a part of. Loneliness began to creep in, and my spirits sank over the mountains with the sun. 

            I wandered the streets looking in festive windows and through the cold steel bars of courtyard gates, at students in large crowded tables smiling, drinking beers, and conversing. I stopped along my way to kneel down and pet and talk with every isolated dog that had been left tied to the gate to slumber on the cold cobble brick-stones. I felt a brotherhood between us, and would have loved to curl up and lay my face down on my hands to watch the people’s ankles bounce past. I became self-conscious, I wasn’t really sure where I was standing mentally at that point and was afraid I was coming off as the neighborhood drunk. The one in every town, who wanders the street having conversations with dogs, walls, or air, and smells like he’s been hiking a national park for days without showering. I suppose it wasn’t far from the truth, at least for that particular evening. I shouldn’t have cared, should have been above it and had my own grand party with my new friends, and all the people could have looked longingly through the iron bars at our festivities--but I pushed on anyways. 
            I came to a large courtyard filled with people. They were all gathered around a small teenage girl who was pouring Janis Joplin songs into a PA system. I took a seat among some people on a concrete wall and listened. Her voice was lovely and she played the guitar very well. She must have been sixteen and between songs she would say silly, immature, nervous thanks you’s and filler comments, then break into another professionally sounding song. I noticed the flag was at half-mast in the courtyard and during an intermission asked the couple next to me why. The wife answered, “I think Arizona sets it at down every time they lose a soldier, it’s down a lot.” 

            I stayed to the end of the set and applauded with a dozen or so who had stayed. I was feeling better, so I drove too the outskirts of town, to find my place between the asphalt and halogen SuperCenter sign. To my surprise, it was packed with other poverty-campers. A group I belonged to, overflowing the back section of the parking. I took in my lot with the rest of my flock. And we all slept together, separately in our little shanties. The couple in the Alabama-plated camper next to my car was loudly engaged in a volatile domestic scuffle for most of the evening. My people. 

Thank you for reading this.

Living in the present moment means having to stop to recollect along the way. Living in the present moment is really just being unproductive.

 

            I got into Santa Fe late, and while driving in on the main drag, pulled off at a sign I saw for a hostel. I had looked online before arriving and saw there was only one in Santa Fe so I assumed this would be the it. I went in and spoke to the clerk. He was a young, slightly inattentive, veteran--who spend his entire shifts crouched over a copy of War and Peace. He was for all purposes, useless, and I had to basically get the jest of the hostel’s policies from hand written memo-cards taped of everything.

            It was a work-share hostel, where every morning each guest is subscribed a chore in which he has to complete before he leaves. In theory, this is a good idea to save and lower rates as well as a community building exercise. In practice however, it only lowers the general standard of living for everyone. Just like the criticisms of public works programs in the Soviet Union, people will generally only take effortive care in things they own personally. The evidence of this was in the grime smeared walls and dusty cobwebbed ceilings. 

            The place was overall dingy, and far from the center of town. I asked the clerk in between Russian prose if this was the one I saw online and he said it was doubtful. Later, getting on the Internet, I would learn I had accidentally looked up a hostel in Sante Fe, Argentina. However, for all intents it served its purpose well. I was hoping to relax for a few days and write, which I had found was becoming increasingly more difficult to do under such sporadic living conditions. Worse than actually writing is the showy production that goes into setting up in community rooms or McDonalds. The appearance seems to cause people to gravitate towards you to interrupt your thoughts while they introduce queries. “Oooh, Are you a writer?” they’ll ask.

            “No, just a asshole of sorts.”

            “Haha. All writers say that, you must be a funny kind of writer.”

            “Not so much, I concentrate mostly on male BDSM erotic fantasy, unless you find that sort of thing funny, would you like a card?”

            “----“

            That usually gets rid of them, especially if they’re with small children or family. Then I can go back to my fruitless pursuits--which, in retrospect, are on some lower rung than erotic fantasy, homosexual, sadist, or otherwise. But we’ve all got to start somewhere to work our way up.

            Anyways, I parked myself at the bench in the lobby sucking up wireless internet and trying to be educative and entertaining. I went for long runs through Adobe neighborhoods with large malicious and unchained dogs that tried their might to get over the thick chest high clay walls separating us. I did my chores every morning with increased initiative in hopes it would rub off into the collective. My sinks glistened and people would have been glad to wash their faces or eat from them. Unfortunately, the guy who cleaned my sink didn’t feel the same about socialism. For three days I did the lesser part of nothing. I saved a bit of money eating light meals and didn’t go into downtown once the entire time I was there until I drove through it on the way north to Colorado.

            …

 

            Driving north the landscape began changing, in the course of a hundred miles lush piney trees began to rise out of the red clay mountains. The bitter ruddy stones turned to smooth, cool, grey boulders, and I began to see the snowy bristles of Aspen’s just before the ‘Welcome to Colorado’ sign. I’ve begun to notice that state limits seem to be drawn up largely on typographical changes in ecology, save for the boring cubist renditions of the Midwest that seem allotted by means of Tetris. Small quaint towns appeared, all with big log structured outfitter stores that stayed busy with streams of mountain bike and kayak toting SUV’s. I stopped at a few towns in search of a cheap pair of hiking shoes I had been half-assidly searching for since Texas.  I got a good pair that I hope will serve me well in New Zealand.

            Excited to try out my new shoes I headed straight for Mesa Verde National Park. The park is host to thirteenth-century Navaho and Mori tribe cliff dwellings that are more or less well preserved. For a history buff like me, the park was a pilgrimage, and striking proof positive of the truly advanced civilizations that we considered “primitive” at the time of their displacement (though these specific people were actually self-relocated to the present-day Las Vegas area by a decade long drought in the early 1300’s.)

            As I approached the park from the east I began to see an enormous bluff rising up over the plains of southwest Colorado. The spire approached closer and closer and when I finally came alongside it, with it filling the entire driver-side view, I saw the sign for the turnoff of the park entrance. The rise was actually the corner of a long plateau that went off south into New Mexico. The road went in and began to climb the eight thousand feet to the top. It was a tricky drive, a tight winding road of cutbacks and blackened tunnels and the first time I drove it was intimidated. At the top you can pull off and look North clear across the flat plains for hundreds mile, which is why tribes used these Mesas (tables) as their homes. 

            I got to the ranger station about thirty minutes before closing and found behind the desk a cute little dirty blonde with nerdy glasses and a inviting smile. I started asking about itineraries and when I found out she was from Sanford and glad to be out I asked,
“So, how much is the midnight private tour with wine?”

            “Hmm.” She leaned forward and whispered, “It’s pretty expensive.”

            “Well, I have about..” I dug out a handful of metal and singles from my pocket, “ $7.27. And I’m assuming chivalry will require I purchase the wine, so I guess I might be out of luck.”

            “Pretty smooth talker”

            “Yea, but too much integrity. I’d never make it in politics; so I’m just a homeless wanderer.” She laughed and then pursed her lips into a frown, leaning forward into my ear.

            “I really would like to. I have a flight to catch in an hour. Why didn’t you come in yesterday?”

            She booked my for the best tour and made me arrive at 9am for what she called the “best light.” She said it was a busy tour and she had to overbook it for me, waiving the three-dollar fee out of pity. She gave me a list of things to see before sunset, writing them on the back of my hand and when I left she whispered in my ear, “Shame, you really are too cute.”

            I drove around the park throughout the evening seeing all the pretty things and running a short hike with my new shoes. At dark I turned back and made the scary drive down in second gear with the brights on and felt like I was getting a hang of it all.     

 

Looking for something to kill the time I found a family-owned dig that had a sign advertising micro-brew specials on Wednesdays. It being Wednesday, I pulled in and bellied up to the bar. The beer was excellent, and the owner was proud to hear I found it second only to Belgium’s finest. He mistook me for some grand specialist and went on for a hour about his process “Easy on the hops in the darker lagers, I prefer it the best. Yada yada ”

            Sitting next to me was a quiet pleasant man, not the brightest, but a good bar companion. He was a Chinese-Native descended concrete mason, his hands shredded and stony with a life of it. He travels the entire southwest, pouring concrete slabs for cell-phone-towers wherever he is needed. He was in town for over a week in the highest peak of the park’s mesas sculpting a 3’ foot deep slab for some company he didn’t even know. After that, he would be in Aspen, then Boise. I asked him if he enjoyed it and he seemed mixed, I don’t think he found that aspect of constant travel as appealing as he might have at my age. His English wasn’t very good, and I got the feeling he didn’t have a first language to fall back on. During our talk I reference to a byline on the CNN broadcast and he stared blankly at if before asking what it said. He didn’t talk much about himself and the most I could gather was that he was from Flagstaff and had been pouring concrete for a long time.

            He was very interested in giving me travel tips though. The best of which was telling me that it was Pow Wow season and most nations would be having grand celebrations that I could go see. He said the best were in Idaho and kept repeating into his beer, “ You should go see! Too see!”  I was trying to gather if he himself was an Indian but he seemed to dodge or misinterpret the conversation when I would hint. He grew solemn in his guidance, saying, “ When you go in reservation you see many Indians, they drunk, Don’t give them no money! They come and they ask, make you feel bad. But you give them money they just drink it up. Don’t give them nothing. Just go. Just see.”

            I was writing it all down in the notebook and when he mentioned a city to go to I asked him to spell it. He fumbled through a few letters before waving his hands and saying, “ It’s like you say it, you know.” We talked for a while about Native Americans

and when I told him I had only met two before, from Montreal, he asked about the Seminoles and I told him I’d never seen any, that I wasn’t sure they were even around in any strong numbers. He got really depressed and went home to his trailer saying he had to work in the morning.

 

 

Thank you for reading this.

 

Wisdom

I made it back over the border without hassle and back to my car, thankfully still there and full of my belongings, and was out of town. I made it over the border and half way through to Santa Fe before pulling off for the night. The early morning air was biting and for the first time during my trip I woke having wrapped myself in my comforter. I stopped off in Albuquerque in the morning and saw some museums and the ‘Old Town’ shopping district. The shopping district was appalling. How it is people are driven to purchase third-rate Chinese imported “poncho’s” from year-round art markets claiming to be authenticly native, while never being an actual shade darker than smoker’s teeth, is beyond me. Ablequrque’s Old Town is a tourist trap of the finest caliber. The best part of the city were it’s parks and the rattlesnake museum, where I spent the afternoon after I was done painting the bathrooms with various comments on the effects of consumerism in its exploits of native peoples’ culture.

            The rattlesnake museum was interesting and informative. I was a little disappointed in the size of the cages, and their keeper’s indifference when I asked if I could take a picture. I wanted to respect the no flash photography signs posted everywhere and when I asked if I could cover up the flash on my Poloroid camera he basically said he didn’t give a shit. It seemed that he wasn’t the one who had written the signs.  Even through my shirt, folded over twice, the flash still ruined my picture of a hefty diamondback rattler and made everyone jump, including the poor snake.

            Leaving the city I stopped at a Route 66 diner that boasted Chiliburgers and homemade root beer. I’m a connoisseur of both, and they didn’t disappoint. The burger came topped with homemade green chili, which not only was delicious, but cleared out my sinuses, and pores, and left my forehead incessantly sweating for hours. The shop was run by a picturesque couple whom I overheard talking to a few regulars about plans and complications for relocating their business. I couldn’t decipher if the move was for good of ill, but I took it as a good opportunity to get feedback from small business owners during this recession. We started up a good conversation, which rose pleasantly, gliding like a plane on wings of western hospitality, and crashed just as abruptly as planes do--into a vicious political argument.

            It was my fault, foolishly overstepping the boundaries of polite table-etiquette rules on American politics. Commonly, Americans only allow conversation to reach a slanted version of generalities; otherwise, point in case, problems will arise. My stance throughout my travels has been usually of the silent observer, letting people freely express their minds and keeping out of the spotlight so I could inventively listen, and take notes later. I suppose I was feeling antsy from being passive for so long, and considering I was talking to an, seeming, over-the-hill hippie, began in with my usual ‘coming to realization in an age of disillusion’ and ‘fascist war-monger’ stump speeches I keep set aside for such purposes. He came back subtly, asking some questions and staying general, and eventually rose his timber to declarations of infallible knowledge. Our exchanges became a ball-kicking contest, where we lobbed back and forth facts we’d highlighted in heavy books under amber lights on late, lonely, nights. Somewhere around population density figures in respect to vehicle purchasing habits, I began to consider the philosophy readings I’d been engaging in. Considering right action includes speaking without views and only engaging in conversations of a positive pursuit. Neither of us was seeking a positive outcome, and we were already set in our courses. I began to realize it was purposeless. The conversation was already over.

He was asking, challenging, me to prove him wrong, declaring, “I’ve done the research, I know the facts. Tell me something, prove me wrong.” The way reading people do when they consider themselves good at intellectual debate.

            He knew the facts. I knew my facts. We carted our broken tablets around, thrusting them on other’s kitchen tables, as if the world’s problems could really be solved in black and white answers; surely knowing in both our hearts that everything is a muddle of grey. He didn’t want me to prove him wrong, he wanted to prove he was right. Neither of us was listening to one another; but waiting for our turns to speak. I left quickly, submitting to his ego and in my hurry out clumsily forgot to tip his wife for her wonderful presence and service (sorry.)

            In the car on the way to Santa Fe my thoughts shook me up badly. I spent the miles thinking of all the times in the past I had been right, that I had done all the research and knew all the facts. How many times I had been so infallible. In political discussions, friendships, relationships…How many times I had challenged the opponent to present his or her waverly statistics, while I ignored them and planned my next line, on per capita costs in different country’s healthcare systems, or my omnipresent knowledge of how kitchen appliances work. How many more times in the future would it be the same?  

            I pictured the man, twenty something, hot-rodding to Texas in 58’ Chevy’s to see Hendrix concerts, telling an older man a few seats down the counter to get out of the new way if you can’t lend a hand, cause the times they are a changin’.  Then I imagined that older man, telling the equivalent to his older counterpart in the Roaring Twenties. I Wondered what it would be like when it was my turn to chastise a young, impressionable and impassioned youth. I saw him coming into the café, heart a lift, with simple rhetorical ideals of peace and social equality--a young fool with young fool's dreams. Maybe this was just an example of a natural progression. Maybe wisdom is just a romanticized term for indifference.

Thank you for reading this. 

 

 

 

 

The morning after a terrible drive and an evening of wandering around a mall and a Wal-mart with nowhere to go, I went to Juarez. The plan was to go in for the morning and be off to Albuquerque by the evening. I had a hard time gathering information in El Paso and Jaurez because it was a Sunday, in a predominantly Catholic city and country, and nothing of reputable business was open. After hours of baseless searching I gathered together some money from an ATM and found a cheap place to leave the car, in a parking lot lurking with shady characters. In went through a gangway of passages and eventually over the concrete strip with a trickling Rio Grande in its center. Spray painted on the Mexican side were large portraits of Cliché Guevara’s’ and Cesar Chavez’s’, with spanish ramblings about assassinations and disappearances. I wondered how they were able to accomplish such huge pieces of graffiti on the most surveyed border in the world.  Reaching the end of the bridge I was greeted with a metal turnstile, providing security. Nothing else. Apparently anyone is allowed in Mexico, with anything. The guy next to me was carrying three very large, broken, picture frames. He cracked another one in the turnstile and it poured glass everywhere. 

            And crossing through the clanking metal all my new friends came running to greet me. All of them, locked on the white man, shoving KFC bag toting locals out of the way in a race to get to me first. They came out of the fucking woodwork for at least a mile into the city, selling anything that wasn’t chained down. The most profuse were the taxi drivers. Most of the other peddlers will retire after say, a block or so. Not the taxi-men. They will follow for what would amount to a decent cab fare, pleading at you heels offering a cornucopia of pleasures. If you’re not looking for pharmaceuticals or cheap alcohol they’ll move down the social-acceptance list, past illegal weapons and hard drugs, to the very bottom; child sex-slaves and bestiality. 

            After five blocks I had grown literally physically exhausted with projecting a barrage of “No Neccesito”s and “No, No Quiero”s. One driver was inexhaustible in his bantering. After two blocks worth of no’s he was still going on about cat houses’ and what he referred to as “good strong women” (as opposed to weak, consensual women I suppose.) I got bored with our game and decided to throw in a “No me gusta” for kicks. He looked down at his shoes for a second and, slowly bringing his eyes up to meet mine, said in a perfectly accented English mutter, “Faggot.” I smiled and said, “We’ll have to just settle it with that I guess,” and continued along down the street. About a block down I heard him yelling over my shoulder, “I TAKE YOU THERE TOO…BOY’S! WANT BOYS! FAGGOT?”

            I eventually just stopped replying and acted like I was a European, not understanding either of their “Que quieres?” or “Hey buddie”s. With every rejection I would receive a scathing reference of my character in a six-inch-voice of pleasant toned  Spanish. I not fluent and I didn’t understand everything that was said, but I am aware when a four-foot-tall, mustached, Mexican-wrestling-mask vendor is calling me a fucking pussy through smiling teeth. I also picked up on the young children selling Chiclets saying they would beat my rich ass. Other things I picked up on were, bitch, murderer, pig-dog, gringo, and syphilis(?) I’ve worked on construction sites.

             I kept walking, past the mercados and exchange booths, and eventually found a part of town where no one asked me anything. People actually ignored me when I asked them things. I found a popular local’s restaurant, operating between three walls, and stumbled my way through ordering three beef tacos and a coke using my ever-important ‘no lachuga y no tomate y no ciuon’. I hadn’t thought to consider adding a ‘no carrots’ in my order so I ended up with shredded beef-and-carrot tacos, not too bad.  I had trouble getting the price and the woman had to scribble it on my hand with my sharpie, 240pesos, about $2.25. I handed over my funky, newly acquired, money and took a seat. There wasn’t a chance in the world of my fitting in. Everyone watched while I ate; as if I might grow a second head or spit fire any moment.

            As I finished eating I had a great idea to kill the time, find and buy a harmonica. I had seen a little girl with one a mile or so back and it was stuck in my mind as something I needed. What ensued was a three-hour scavenger hunt, involving about twenty shop proprietors and a half dozen municipal police. The word harmonica isn’t common in Mexico and my best attempts at describing what it was were saying ‘musica’ over and over again, holding my hands to my face and making an accordion noise.

After finding my way back to the same street corner and asking the same two cops over again I was hand walked to a music store in a back alley and left on the doorstep. They had exactly what I wanted, and it was exactly cien pesos, what I had left from my original ten-dollar exchange. Perfect.

            Heading back towards the States I came across an avenue that was receiving a security sweep from the Federali. They rode around eight deep in a converted Durrango pickup, strapped with AR15’s and full faced ski masks. Their presence is something to cause alarm. They would pull down the street with three in the cab and another five or six on the flat bed rear, stopping to let the guys in back hop off and pile into a store or restaurant. Not asking or saying anything they would sweep the store, grabbing customers and lifting the shirts or patting them down as they went. They would make their way into the backs and come out a few moments later to pat the owner down and jump back onto the truck and on to the next. As tedious and non-chalant as garbage men, no one but me seemed to be concerned. I’m not a fan of this kind of population control and winced at such oppression of personal rights, but had to realize if shit went down, these guys would be pulling me out by my backpack straps. 

 

Lounging over a long breakfast of pancakes and sausage I watched the morning congregation of sheriffs from across the room. They were giving the recent arrival a hard time over coming to work in coveralls, while they sat swilling back coffee in their uniforms of jean and flannel. The leader was adorned with a cowboy hat and a low-slung leather holster, complete with pearl embossed six-shooter.  He was either fastidiously copying the stereotype, or was indeed the reason it even existed. They sat drinking ‘joe’ and smoked while discussing banal occurrences from the night/day before and throwing half-heart compliments at Edna, our over-the-hill waitress in a tar and ketchup stained beige server’s dress. I finished my large breakfast and on my way out tipped an imaginary hat; that was returned.

 

Because of slow season closures I had to drive 22 miles to the opposite side of the park to pay my admission. Upon arrival I was gouged for eighty dollars for the annual pass. I pissed and moaned about it, and ultimately made the ranger give me eighty dollars worth of sympathy and hiking logistics before I was satisfied. I paid, telling myself I would save money in the long run; and didn’t bother allotting it into my budget. I started a new budget for things that were too large to be included.

I had to go back about 16 miles of the original 22 before turning off onto a 30-something mile road towards the Rio Grande. The person who named the park obviously had been on this road as well. Eighty or so miles later I arrived at the trailhead for my morning hike.  Except it wasn’t morning anymore. It was just five minutes past noon.

            I’ve decided that this is how I prove my manliness. I don’t find gratification in punching bags at bars or shirtless at the beach. I show my manliness where no one is around to give a shit. I find it in muddy trails, at noon, in July, in southern Texas--when the temperature is 116 degrees. It was viciously hot and I ruined my running shoes by hopping around in knee-deep clay. The hike turned out to actually be really short and I left feeling unaccomplished. Following the welcome center ranger’s advice I climbed the mountain Basin up 4,000 feet to escape the heat. Beyond the ranger outpost was a looming bluff that extended up another couple thousand feet. I went in to the outpost station and found a shapely woman behind the counter.

            “Ok mame, I have a situation,” I said, “I need you to cart me up on your shoulders and run me up that bluff out there. I need a picture for a website.” She smiled.

            “Well. Sorry. That ascent is a do-it-yourself kind of mountain. The only way you’re getting up there is on your own two feet.” She pulled out a map and motioned me over, “There isn’t even a trail that goes up there, only civilian trails. But this peak is a moderate climb, maybe 4-5 hours, you could do this today.” I was hesitant and she became persuasive, selling promises of pretty views and cooler weather. Eventually she talked me into it, and after purchasing a gallon of water, I was off to lock up the car.

            She was right. The views really were astonishing. I spent the first half of my climb taking photographs before I decided that it was beyond translation. I knew I couldn’t convey the feelings and sights with any justice in a reproduction. It made me feel unnecessary and petty. A cheeky politician in a cheap suit, toting half-assed reflections back from the things he has seen and done; Things that can’t be expressed in any arrangement of ink, lead, silver or light. I sunk into deep thoughts and wished I had something besides endless trees to play catcher to the spewage of jargon I was expelling. I thought of returning in future years with friends and climbing the taller peak, and scouted out and planned how it would be done at every step.

At the very top was a flat area with a large pile of rocks in the center, one forming a spire above everything else. I climbed it to its top and stood up into the gusting wind rolling over and through me. I looked down and could see five-thousand-feet down in every direction. I bent down, signed my name with the other couple dozen names with my sharpie, and rambled back down in the cool afternoon, full of spontaneous energy and gratification.

 

            …

 

I went down to the park exit and found a place to shower. I had driven into a smell that I couldn’t place. I went in and asked the woman for change. She handed me eight quarters and said, “There was just a busload of boy scouts just came through here after a week in the park. I can’t guarantee you nothing on what it looks like in there.”

“Boy scouts, my favorite. Is that what that smell is?”

“No. That smell is Mexico. You can smell the fuckers, they’re just over that-away. Whole nation of stink.” Her comment took me off guard and with my hesitation she went back to checking the pump meters.

The shower was much needed. It was 5 minutes for $1.50 and I had to be quick to scrape the chucks of thick dried clay out of my leg hairs; my shoes would never come clean again. I finished and was hit with a pang of hunger. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast and It was very late to be looking for food in rural border towns. I drove through three towns, all extinct by sun fall, until I found a locals bar with a grill still open in Terilingua. The food was expensive but I didn’t dare press on, and risk ending up hungry. I had my burger in a gutted out building that used to house a dime theater. It was definitely still the local hangout, probably because it was the only place open for miles. People gathered inside the bar to order drinks if they could afford to, the others would buy or bring their own and sit on the neighboring porch of the general store. This seemed like an every night ritual.

            The town was a weird mix; collections of artist, transients, backwoodsey rednecks, drifters, golden-aged hippies, and border enforcement officers shared drinks and gossip while moving in and out from the bar to the porch and back. I had heard that some of the people out here lived completely self-sustaining, and noticed that a few jeeps and trucks in the parking lot held large 500-gallon water hulls.

I was doing my best to integrate into conversations but wasn’t having much luck. I seemed to be labeled an outsider and brushed off without much interest or care. Without any natural charisma to pull wit from, I forced opinions from people on where I should pull off for the night. The bartender was an idiot, but her boyfriend/husband was able to help. He recommended a place he referred to as the ‘three teepees’. When I asked him to clarify he said, “Yea, you know, like three big tents. You can’t miss them. They’re on the left right before the big hill.” The hill he was referring to was the reason I was so far west in the first place. I had read about a rural farmers’ road with a steep incline at a 15% grade, the steepest there is, and figured to test out the car’s performance before getting to the Rockies.

            “Now listen,” He said, getting serious, “you put the car down in low gear, low gear, and just creep your way up. There’s not much traffic on that road, but it doesn’t matter, just keep it slow. They’ll go around”

            “Yeah, I’ve been keeping the car in second. I-”

            “First! Especially going down.  Leave it in first and creep down the other side. It may not look so bad in some spots but when you get moving, you wont be able to stop.”  I agreed and there was some silence. He put his hand on my wrist as I went to bring my beer to my lips. “I don’t want to have to fish you out of the ravine, you hear? It’ll be me who has to come get you.” I scanned him up and down. There was a small golden pin in the shape of a five-pointed star attached to his belt loop. I hadn’t guessed him for a sheriff in the entire time we had spoken. He was silent for a while; sipping his Budweiser and thinking possibly of all the people he’d fished out of the ravine before. On my way out he wished me luck and I thanked him for his advice, promising he wouldn’t have to come get me in the morning, hoping he wouldn’t. 

                                    ---

            I went across the parking lot to some picnic tables and sat down to write for a while. While I was there, a jeep of guys pulled over to the far end of the parking lot. I recognized from the loud laughing and repeated manic coughs they were having their own little powwow. I finished up writing and as I was leaving the smoke circle dispersed, the jeep pulling away in a cloud of dust, leaving one guy on foot who ended up walking along side me asking for a light. I told him I had one in the car and he followed me over, not saying a word. I gave him the light, he brought it to his face setting his crumpled can of Old Milwaukee on my car, and lit his cigarette. He took a drag, looked at me and said, “Wanna see something really cool?”

            “Sure,” Why not, I thought.

            He led us off, out of town, into darkness. I asked him where we were going and he started rambling about a tunnel that goes to the setting sun. I gathered from the few words we exchanged that he was off. Not necessarily stoned or drunk, but damaged in the sort of way that I commonly treated medically. It was far past dusk, and I mentioned, “You know there’s no more sun? It’s gone.”

            “You can see it from the tunnel..” was his response. I began to beg to differ but gave up when we began climbing down into a shell pit trench. As we went, he would stomp into puddles, like my younger sisters would every April as children. He wore large working boots and tattered jeans and he was getting them filthy. Considering what I was getting myself into I began sizing him up in my mind. He was reasonably scrawny, but taller than me. Defiantly had a longer arm length, but seemed slow and would be dim in a fight. I asked, “Do you have a knife?” thinking he might mean to hold me up.

            “Umm yes.” He said, pulling out a tiny, half-inch, boy scouts knife, playing with the blade.

            “Well, you’re not going to hurt anyone with that.” I said, deciding that if anything went down, I would be able to break away safely enough.

            “Nah man. I’m peaaaaceful like.”

            We got to the base of the tunnel, an enormous eight–foot-diameter black hole plunging into the ground. I stopped at the entrance, weighting my options. I did really want to do this just for the sake of doing it, but it looked sketchy. My new buddy went clamoring in, stomping puddles on his way. I sat and listened to him tell me it was cool and that “you can see the sun halfway through. Well...maybe not, kinda dark. Should have been here sooner.”

Listening as he went on, I heard what sounded like a full-grown-man wading up to his waist in some sort of liquid. “Are you in water?” I asked.

“Well, yea, kinda. It’s the monsoon season, so it gets kinda deep,” a voice from deep in the darkness. Fuck this, I thought. No way. I’ve got to sleep in the car tonight and I don’t care how good of a story it would make.  I bailed, climbing back up out of the ravine and shouting “I’ll meet you on the other side.”

He came up behind me while I was hopelessly trying to find where we had climbed down. He was covered in dirt and shit up to his waist and seemed disheartened I hadn’t followed. Not mad but upset, like a child that’s told by their mother they can’t jump in the puddles anymore.

“Well. I can show you where it comes out.” He offered, wounded. I felt bad that I had seemed to ruin his good white trash fun and told him I’d like that. He began leading me on the shell embankment above the tunnel’s path for what felt like at least a football field. A fucking football field underground in a dark flooded tunnel! I tried to joke with him that I would have been crying halfway and he would have had to carry me out. He just shuffled along, dumpy, next to me, looking at his muddy boots and muttering about the sun looking really cool at the end of the tunnel.

We saw the end and to try and make up for it I told him I would go see something else cool when he asked. He took me further out of town to a large, vertical hole, in the ground with a industrial grate across the top. He stared stomping on his spent Milwaukee can, compressing it into a tight cylinder, before lying down on his stomach and pushing it through the grate. Nothing. He motioned for my to lie down on my chest and listen while he went off to collect an armload of flat rocks to wedge through the iron bars. We would push the rocks through and listen while they fell hundreds of feet down with a muted splash into the abandoned mining shaft.

As we lay there, chest down on this giant twenty-by-twenty-foot grate, I noticed his breathing. He was panting, his chest rising and falling sporadically against the stinking iron, staining bars of rust in his already off-white shirt. It was discerning that his breathing was so intense and his mannerisms so subdued. It made me think back to several years ago, entering a flophouse trailer where my friends lived in high school and seeing a good friend, faded on the couch, clay pipe stuffed with a Chore-Boy Brillo pad on the coffee table. He was shirtless and pouring sweat, panting like a dog, and in a lethargic daze. After a few moments he came to, asking if my girlfriend and I wanted to try, “I bet I can scrape three more hits out of here, you should try, it’s increadible.” His eyes were panicky and bright yellow and his lips were crusty and white, I didn’t see much of him after that night. He eventually dissolved out of our group of friends and moved somewhere far off; to a town like Terilingua, Texas.

            We must have hung out for over two hours, tossing rocks into the grate and climbing shell chasms like children. On our way, walking back towards the distant lights of the movie-house-bar, he began having a profound and deep conversation; with no one. He talked to himself for most of the walk. When I finally broke his concentration by asking him who he was speaking too he said, “Sorry, I, sometimes, talk with people that, aren’t, of this world. Sorry I don’t normally do that, around people. You know?”

            “Well, at least you waited a few hours,” I said, “Otherwise I might have though you were crazy.”

            “Yea..” He said. Nothing more.

 

                                    …

 

We got back to the parking lot and he offered for me to stay with him, I politely declined and made a B-line for the car. Ignition-first gear-gone. What, the, fuck. I was gone, out of town and on winding darkened roads far away from streetlamps or city ambience. I wasn’t feeling confident in the sheriff’s directions and grew weary I had passed the tee-pees and would start on the mountain in the night. I found a wide shoulder on a turn and pulled off. I killed the engine and was smacked with silence. A powerful quiet and darkness that is unfamiliar to my generation. It sent shivers through my body and started my heart in a panic of beating. As my eyes processed and my pupils shrank I began to notice a strange glow off to the left, growing in intensity. Ten minutes later I realized it was a vehicle pushing on the winding road. As it passed the turn I was parked on it swung around and put its spotlight on my rearview window. Cop, great. I opened the door and got out, hands first, and made ready an explanation. I didn’t feel safe sleeping with the crack addicts of Terilingua and didn’t wanna climb the scary road, offica. I stood leaning on my trunk staring into blinding spot light and listening to the dispatch call back my address and previous history with police officers. After my history had been made public for anyone who was listening, a small graying man came over, materializing out of florescent backlight.

“Everything alright? Anything I can do for you son?” do for me?, what? I thought.

“Um, no. I’m sorry. I was afraid of driving on the steep part in the dark, I was looking for a place to pul, err, a safe place to pull off for the night-“

“You found it.”

“Huh?” I said, puzzled.

“Yeah, this will be fine, you’re far enough off the road no one will hit you, your plates check out, I’ll keep an eye on you tonight, you’ll be fine. It’s a beautiful drive in the morning, anything else?” I was dumbfounded.

“Umm. No. Thank you?”  I stammered.

“Think nothing of it, It’s my job. Goodnight now. If you need anything just wave me down.” He got back in his truck, hit the light, and was gone.

It was the first time in my life I had felt ‘served and protected’; as opposed to ‘harassed, profiled, questioned, lied to, wrongfully detained, illegally searched, etc.’ I sat in the drivers seat going over how pleasant the interaction was in my head for over a hour. 

Thank you for reading this.

Shitting with wild animals.

I turned off for Big Bend national park half-heartedly. I was about mid-point between the ten-hour drive from San Antonio to El Paso. My friend Chuck had eagerly recommended it to me on the phone, viciously building it up with information from a friend of a friend, promising nothing short of a life changing experience. It was a steep detour, involving at least a day’s time, but I hadn’t done much in San Antonio and figured some hiking would be good. I pulled off out of sheer boredom from I-10 west driving and went south without considering what I would do when I got there.

            After an hour of worrying I stopped at the only real town this far south to game plan this endeavor, and ended up bellied up to a genuine 1950’s counter. It was a homely affair, set in one of those aluminum tube-trailers that placed more importance on ambience than modern health concerns. There were two women working, one the cook, and the other the front woman.  They were overtly friendly and we soon started up a good conversation between the three of us and an ancient farmer, who has been parked at the same spot from 4-6pm, drinking gallons of coffee, since the Eisenhower administration.

My main concern for pulling into the joint was to get recommendations on where to sleep for the night. I was concerned that being so close to the border I would have a difficult time. I think the question gave off the wrong impression. They assured me that it wouldn’t be a problem, the counter woman saying, “Nah, you’re the wrong color. Their not gonna bother you.” They gave me the number of the local police station and told me too call ahead and tell them what I was planning on doing. I thanked them and stuck the number in my pocket, never actually thinking of calling the police to tell them anything of the sort. Then the woman on the grill offered the idea that, provided I didn’t have any warrants, she could call the local church and they would put me up. I declined politely and she went back to work, coming back five minutes later to apologize if she had embarrassed me.

After a few minutes of working the grill she came back over, leaned over, and whispered to me, “Do you want me to make you a burger, sweetheart? It’s no problem, I do it all the time for people who are in need. I’ve been there.” I felt she had gotten the wrong impression of whom I was and what I was doing.

            “No, no thanks. Thank you though. I’ll save that luck for when I really need it,” I said. She said ok and offered incessantly for another twenty minutes, then set back to her work frowning. I decided I should set things straight and tell them that I was a photographer/writer who was traveling for pleasure before going to New Zealand and Australia. They become instantly enthralled, stopped what they were doing, abandoned the other customers, and gathered around to ask questions.

I hadn’t wanted to talk about myself, and would rather have listened to them to see what they were about, but I didn’t want them to think I was causing trouble, or anything else that strange tattooed young men do while sleeping in their car in southern Texas. We chatted for a while and when It came time too leave they offered for me to stay in the parking lot and refused payment for my eight-or-so coffees.

I left and began the drive south with a loose plan of sleeping somewhere outside the park and entering at dawn the following morning. I was assured in the diner that things were more-or-less lawless down here and I would be fine. I happened to time my drive with the setting sun and it made for the best drive of my life. The flat plains of western Texas rose into amazing columns and plateaus of red and amber rock. The sun set behind them and It was magnificent.  I stopped a hundred times to take pictures saying each time, this is the best spot, no, this one, no, this.

About halfway it hit me that I was harboring about two pots of coffee in my body and, after driving an hour into no-mans-land, I needed a restroom. Desperately. I poured over the map and began speeding for a small rest area, marked some distance ahead by a little table stamped on my atlas. I came up on it and tore into the little loop of picnic tables. I saw a single blue port-o-john off to the side by the trashcans. Thank You! My short-lived sense of relief was shattered when I got closer and saw the twenty or so wild boars that were digging through the trashcans.

I don’t know anything about wild boars. I know that they are wild; and that wild things can stampede and hurt you. They were big. Hairy fanged versions twice the size of the ones people keep as pets. I pulled over next to them hoping they would leave. Nope.  They were indulging in familiar human waste and it obviously wasn’t their first rodeo.  I tried the horn. No. I tried driving into the port-o-john and rocking it around with my car. Nothing. I hadn’t seen a car for hours and if I got myself hurt I knew no one would find me until the weekly trash bag changing. On the verge of shitting my pants, I rolled down the window and pleaded with them. “Excuse me, boars, ummm, If I get out of the car will you maul me? You see, I really have to go in that little blue house..” They were being unreceptive.

It got to the point where I didn’t have a choice. I backed the car diagonal alongside the stall so I could swing the door open and make a small barricaded trough to the dunnie. It worked. I did my business and, getting back to the car, lingered around. They didn’t seem interested in me at all.

My confidence rose and I got the great idea that this should be my Poloroid for the day. I pulled out the camera and began to approach them, slowly mouthing Steve Erwin catchphrases to myself. “Looks like we got us a family a wild boars here, crèche, lets see whattl happen if I flash this little light in their faces, shall we..” I decided to pick the smallish one with the limp to molest. I approached him slowly and tried to cover the flash with my fingers as best I could. He was growing tense and had stopped grazing to stare me down.

Deep breath, 3, 2, 1. Click. I hit the button and the flash rang out. Like in the cartoons, the two of us grunted and squealed, and ran away in opposite directions. The runt ran over to the pack, squealing and causing a ruckus, and the rest of the group followed suit. They all started grunting and getting frantic and I took my opportunity to get the hell out of there before they ganged up and ate me. I tore out of the gravel loops and continued driving with the falling sun. I arrived in a small outpost two miles shy of the park’s gate around ten o’clock. Everything was closed. There were technically only three “things,” a general store, café, and hotel, and they were all done for the night. I saw a woman locking up the store and pulled in. I caught her before she made her car and asked if there was some place safe I could sleep for the night. She thought a moment and sized me up. I had used the imperative word “safe.” I’ve found it gets a much better response when you pose a desire for safety, as if you really care about yourself while living homeless. “See those tables just across the way, the store owns them and I don’t have a problem with you resting there for the night. You’ll be alright there,” she said and continued on her way home.

I thanked her and told her I’d see her for breakfast in the store’s café. She smiled and said she would be there. I pulled over for the night. Lying in my hatch looking out at the bright starry night I though about the genuinely nice people I had met throughout the day. It made me realize I needed to stop to meet people more. That was the purpose off all this anyways. I had spent more time hanging out with British travelers in my travels than real Americans. I had hardly even spoken to anyone since Mississippi.  I made a promise to myself that I would indulge in more afternoon coffee sessions in small diners. A small cost for great conversations. But not as much coffee. Otherwise I would be up all night looking at stars and considering the days events. And writing over the same thoughts in my journal until late in the night.

 

Thank you for reading this.