Love Tour 2011: The Sights

 

Crossing six states to and from my beloved Wyoming was a visual delight.  Perhaps it is because I started the journey taking an unaccustomed route, seeing land that I have not passed in many years, but my eyes began to see, to wander across the hills and horizons, to wonder at the variety of beauty with which we have been blessed.

We began with the mountainous foothills of Arizona.  The fields of saguaro standing at attention against rocky crags jutting towards the sky, and though I've always said that I hate the desert, this can not be completely true.  I certainly don't hate this part of the desert.  There's something wild about it.  Something untamed that calls to me.  And the color.  The green of the scrub brush and cactus against the dark browns, and oranges and reds of the sand and rock throwing themselves up at that brilliantly wide blue sky.  It makes me wish I were an artist capable of capturing that savage beauty.  Alas, I will simply have to remember it.

Then we traveled on into the mountains of northern Arizona.  They are a wonderfully kept secret.  When most people think of Arizona, they consider only the desert valleys soaked with sun, but we have some amazing mountains, cool and lush with pine and prairie.  When we escape there from the summer heat, we love watching the temperature gauge drop 20 degrees.  The day we left it was 118 degrees, so it was more like 30, and I wanted to kiss every pine tree I saw.

The rest of the drive to Santa Fe was fairly unremarkable except for the sunset.  What the desert often lacks in visual stimulation for me during the day, it certainly makes up for when the sun hits the horizon.  Suddenly the sky is painted with slashes of orange, fiery pinks, and dusty purples as far as one can see.  God doesn't skimp on desert sunsets.

What I will always remember about Santa Fe are the charming, old, squatty, adobe buildings of historic downtown.  Turned into mostly an artists' colony, we traveled through, around, and in and out of it to get to the children's museum.  It is a bit of maze down there, especially when you are pointing and saying to your children, "Wow, look at that!" every two seconds.  Both Logan and I were very taken with it, and she decided that she wouldn't mind living there for a while.  I confess I daydreamed a little bit about perusing the shops, restaurants, and museums at leisure.  Their history seemed to speak from those old buildings.  I'd like to spend some time getting to know the voice of that place better.

As the desert began to fade through southern Colorado, I began to contemplate my deep love of mountains.  Once, while in college, I spent four weeks traveling through parts of Nebraska, Kansas, Illinois, and Wisconsin.  For the first few days in that country I felt unsettled.  Certainly there was some beautiful scenery.  Even the never ending wheat fields held some interest for me as they danced and rolled under the breeze, but still there was an underlying discomfort.  I couldn't put my finger on it, until I realized it was the horizon.  The land just dropped off out there.  For the first time in my life, there were no mountains in the distance.  No mountains between me and the end of the earth.  It felt foreign and strange, and lonely.  I've spent all of my life in the intermountain west, and the fingers of the Rockies have a great hold on me.  In Colorado, they start to get serious.

These are real mountains.  Not hills or mounds of earth that pass for mountains back East.  I mean heavy duty, massive, imposing, put-you-in-your-place kind of mountains.  You can't look at these giants and not realize your own puniness, and yet, to me, they've always felt like a kind protector.  Like a mother standing guard over her children.  On this day, she let us play through her grassy foothills, so green this year thanks to an abundant snowfall and the spring rain that continued to visit almost every afternoon while we were there.  We spent four days nestled near her base, and I felt myself unwind in the sunshine and warm scent of pines.  I breathed deeply, kicked off my shoes and wiggled my toes in the grass, only now and then interrupted by bickering children.  They were too busy wading and catching water snakes to make too much trouble.

Soon, however, we were off to Wyoming, traveling parallel with the Rockies, never out of her sight.  Almost immediately after crossing the state line, I feel it.  It's like slipping on my favorite pair of jeans.  This giant square marked out in imaginary lines on the planet, this quiet, unassuming, gorgeous piece of property, this is my homeland.  She isn't the kind of state that lays out her treasures for just anybody.  If you're only interested in passing through on I-80, you're never going to know her.  She knows who she is without needing that kind of momentary adoration.  She just gives those voyeurs the dross.  Now, those who spend a little time with her, who are willing to search out her hidden places?  She'll make you fall in love.

to be continued...