It’s very quiet here tonight. There’s nothing like 18-inch thick adobe walls to block out sound. But then it’s very quiet every night, except in summer with the windows open when coyotes move in close. That’ll make you sit right up and take notice, all right.
I don’t know where I was for the last few days. If you find out, don’t go there. I know where I was this morning (Tuesday), though, and you can follow some of the adventure at FotoFeed over the next few days.
It certainly was an adventure. I was so excited, I did at least six really stupid things within the first two miles. Maybe seven or eight. I tried to get the windshield clean, for example, because sometimes I take pictures right through the glass, and of course I like to see. But New Mexico dust is composed of the finest clay: no matter how much you wipe off, there’s always a film remaining. That didn’t stop me from trying, and I was so intent on getting rid of the streaks that I managed to drive off with a big roll of paper towels and the Windex on the roof. If they hadn’t bonked and clattered going over the top, I never would have known they were gone.
As mentioned below, there was one startlingly primitive stretch that looked like it had been cleared by a team of woolly mammoths. That led to a hairpin curve in the fold of an actual cliff where I could look across and see the rest of the road. My wife wants to go with me next time. From the passenger side, she’ll be able to look right down over the edge. I wonder if she knows that.
I can’t tell you how good it felt to be out there all by myself, listening to the water in the canyon or standing in the cold clear breeze at 10,000 feet. It’s incredibly powerful.
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We may be sick animals living in a fallen world, but grace – or, if that’s too big a word, call it simple cheerfulness – has a way of breaking in on all of us, I’ve noticed, however cracked. Maybe it helps to take a holiday from too much analysis. A dose of Nature is pretty good for that.
You edit yourself more than anybody I can think of, as if you were being reborn every second or third day and had to throw away the parts of yourself that didn’t make the cut. The good Lord himself didn’t wield such a hair-trigger delete button over even his wickedest creatures. But the Lord had his own devices, you have yours and I reckon I have mine.
Anyhow, nice to see you back to form and full of beans, compadre.