You Have to Get Away

Yes, you do, especially if you live in Taos.

There’s just something “too much” about el Norte that demands a break every once in a while. I remember reading D.H. Lawrence’s essays about New Mexico many years ago, and one of the things that sticks in my (paraphrased) memory is that living here — or there, since I’m writing this in Iowa — will eventually suck the soul right out of you. That’s one aspect of the “terrible beauty” of the mountains: being able to see for 90 miles from the mailbox has exactly that side effect over time, and one needs to revisit other places to restore a sense of empathy with humanity. Another way to say this is that living in northern New Mexico has apparently rendered me incapable of tolerating any other location for very long. On the other hand, one has to get away once in a while or else remain forever incapable of relating to other folks. A good friend of mine in Taos says that the only thing wrong with living there is that”you can’t visit here,” if you get the drift. In its own way, that’s the same thing I’m talking about.

So get away we did, on a trip to visit my wife’s family in Iowa. As usual on these adventures, we avoided interstate highways as much as we could, holding off until hitting I-76 at Brush, Colorado. From there we drove to Kearney, Nebraska for the night. The next morning, we headed east on I-80, intending to go as far as Omaha, but the relentless idiocy of interstate highway travel drove us back to the rural two-lanes in short order.

If you have the option of taking almost empty two-lanes, interstate highways are often NOT faster! Driving along in a clump of frustrated drivers behind a pair of semis pretending to pass each other is no fun and awfully dangerous — one such blockage in the middle of Nebraska lasted ten full miles, and that tore it for me.

More on this shortly, time to go to lunch…

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