Friday, February 14, 2014 - Valentine’s Day – From the Heights of Big Bend National Park to the Abyss of Del Rio, Texas

We arise, settle our bill at the hotel and head back into the park, stopping at a small store for ice and eggs.  A complete stranger hands me a rose for Valentine’s Day.

Pearl climbs the Chisos Mountains once more.  I drop the boys off for the Lost Mine Trail hike and drive over to the visitor center.  Pearl and I argue.  Pearl claims that she isn’t the size of a small piano truck.  She considers herself dainty, cute and feminine, especially in her hat.  Tiring of the argument, I park.  Sven and I exit via Pearl’s ramp.

Sven and I again motor out to the terminus of the Window Ledge trail.  I sit on the park bench and write, this time with a glass of tea in hand.  Once again, I luxuriate in beauty, listening to birdsong, feeling so calm and content.  Could life be better?

At the appointed time, I return to Pearl. Sven and I enter the car; I transfer to the driver’s seat, pushing the button to retract the ramp.  The passenger door won’t close. Finding some invisible mote of dust, the door springs open repeatedly.  A passerby, another complete stranger, shuts Pearl’s door for me.   My best friend forever Lahoma, seriously ill long ago said, “You expect rudeness from strangers as your illness marks you as obviously physically other.  It’s the kindnesses that make you cry.” As always, she was correct. 

I retrieve the boys from their hike.  They bound into the car telling tales of wonder and enchantment.  They’ve seen piñon pines, oaks, junipers, grasses and old stone CCC works.  Climbing up the trail, they gaze over the rock turrets of Casa Grande and eroded remains of long extinct volcanoes.  They once again see the scary, spiny dormant stick Ocotillos but now knowing their secrets, can approach them fearlessly.  Topping a hill, the boys look into the Chihuahuan Desert.  The boys finally ascend lost mine peak at 7600 feet.  “We climbed all over the rocks, Beaver – seeing the vista below from multiple angles.  We ventured out as far as we dared, not wanting to fall to our deaths below.”

An old local legend tells of Spanish explorers finding silver veins in the peak, enslaving the local Indians to work a mine like a mini-Potosi, I suppose.  The workers revolted, slew the Spaniards and sealed the mine entrance to eliminate the potential of further exploitation.  No trace of any mine remains, aside from the cool story.

Leaving Chisos, we stop and cook our lunch of pork chops and kale, grateful for the roofed picnic tables erected by the park.  Even in February, the desert teaches appreciation of shade.

Following lunch, we reluctantly drive north across the desert floor, exiting the park.  We pass through a seemingly endless dry bowl surrounded by hills rising on the periphery.  At long last, Pearl finds a crack in the bowl leading into the south Texas desert. Heading north on 385, widely spaced scrub and prickly pear await us as we enter yet another bowl.

Turning east onto route 90 we travel through a land of vast dry mesas.  At first we see gigantic cattle ranches.  Gradually the fences disappear as the land becomes too dry for cattle.  Is driving across Texas a rite of passage?  The land begins to roll as the mesas recede into the south.

The miles tick by ever so slowly.  We crawl across the landscape, tired, smelly, hungry and sorely in need of a washing machine.  We can’t count the miles via mile markers, because Texas, the cheapest state in the union, refuses to erect them.

At long last, we arrive at the Ramada Inn in Del Rio, Texas.  I hit the traveler’s wall.  Why is travelling through the center of our country so endless and difficult?  For years, I’ve been greatly offended by the snooty New York term “fly over country,” since of course I’ve always lived in the “fly over country,” but now I get it.  I get it.

Somehow, Del Rio, Texas aside, we expect a decent place for dinner, but find nothing exceeding Yuckdonald’s.  Being pretty spaced out, we decide to eat dinner at the hotel restaurant, despite visions of John Waters’ Holiday Inn hell with a really bad band loudly playing Tony Orlando and Dawn songs.

With some trepidation, we join the line for the hotel restaurant.  We watch the restaurant fill with two hundred amorous Hispanics out for a Valentine’s Day event.  At long last, we’re shown to one of six empty tables.  The restaurant brings to mind the Sons of Norway Lodge in Eagle Grove, Iowa.  The hotel may have imported the same old rickety chairs and tables.  Tonight, the staff covers the tables with white tablecloths for the holiday.  I picture the Iowa Norwegians doing this too for important events – my family reunion not being one of them.

After a good wait, our server greets us.  “Hello,” we respond, “What kind of wine do you offer?” “I don’t know.  I’ll have to ask at the bar.”   She disappears.  Around ten minutes later, she returns with an answer.  “Chardonnay and Zinfandel,” she reports.  Keith orders a Chardonnay for me.  I glare at him.  My stolen, outdated motto is “ABC – anything but Chardonnay.” “Dear Beaver,” begins my ever patient husband, “the wine here is much too cheap to be oaky.  You’ll prefer the cheap Chardonnay to the cheap Zinfandel.”  He’s right.

Tonight, as a special for Valentine’s Day, cue Guy Lombardo or Lawrence Welk to strike up some schmaltzy music, the restaurant offers a five-course meal.  Did we want that?  “Sure,” we respond, doubting the existence of other options.  “Great!” she replies, “Get your first three courses at the salad bar over in the corner.” She leaves.  Keith dutifully trots over to what may be a salad bar, noting it lacks food.  Perhaps it was a salad bar in a previous life.  Another worker tells him to sit down, stating, “Your waitress will bring your food.”

In another ten minutes or so, our waitress again returns to our table.  We share our insights on the salad bar.  “Oh,” she says and confesses that she works in the bar but she didn’t know what kind of wine they sold.  Dutifully, she takes our order for the first three courses and wanders off to the kitchen to get our soup, the first course.  Ten minutes later she returns to tell us that they’re out of cream of broccoli, would I care for the other soup?  “NO,” I heatedly respond, now having a glass of wine in me and still no bloody food, not even a fucking cracker.

She scurries off, returning with our salads sans dressing.  She sees the dressings, then asks another worker which one is Caesar.  “Hell if I know, I work at the front desk.” Bloodroot rescues her, helping her choose a dressing. 

Famished, I pour the dressing on my Caesar salad, discovering not Caesar salad dressing but genuine Sysco Truck sweet and sour dressing.  I’m so hungry I eat the unpalatable mess in front of me anyway.

Here comes course three, some sort of burnt offering that may at one time have been a piece of shrimp.  Even the boys can’t eat this.  I order more wine.

The wine and the main courses finally arrive.  Mine consists of heavily salted beef and vegetables.  “The baked potatoes will be out soon,” we hear, but no longer believe anything this woman says.  Bloodroot eats my beef; I eat the vegetables.

We order our three desserts – two for Bloodroot and one for Keith.  I fight boredom as they eat.  During the dessert course, our baked potatoes arrive complete with some margarine on the side.  We toss the margarine, boxing up the potatoes for breakfast.

NO WONDER WE COOK!!!!!

Musing in the bar after dinner, consuming our free drink tickets, I think about our waitress.  Now working the bar, she looks our way and flees, scuttling away like some small rodent.  As a cripple, I don’t generally, well ok, never, incite fear in people.  Pity and disgust, but not terror.  I ponder, wondering.  How do people this stupid manage to walk around all day and not set themselves on fire?  Where is social Darwinism when you need it?  At long last, with enough alcohol and quasi-food, pity overcomes my anger. 

Thursday, February 13, 2014 - Big Bend National Park & the Real Texas

Today we’re up early and out the door, heading east to the park before breakfast but long after sunrise.  As it is February, perhaps I should say relatively early.  We stop to buy gas, our entire lives now revolving around satisfying Pearl’s seemingly unquenchable thirst and our lingering fear of empty gas tanks.  Checking the park map in the gas station, we note the nearest picnic table location with some chagrin.  We buy some tea and settle in for a long haul.

Driving into the park, we stamp our passports at the Panther Junction Visitor Center.   Outside the center, the park has planted a garden of flowers that grow in the desert.  We see creosote bush, acacia, prickly pear, agave, and various cacti.  As we walk through the garden, I see numerous six foot tall completely dead spiny, spiky sticks.  Why has the Park Service left such frightful looking things amidst this pretty garden?  Have they resorted to passive-aggressive crowd control methods to keep the tourists at bay?  Ah no, we’ve found the magical Ocotillo plant that grows leaves and big red blossoms within 48 hours of rainfall.  Without rain, we see only the scary stick.

Returning to Pearl, we stop at the first picnic spot we find.  The gods of camping smile upon us, although I can’t camp anymore.  In this very arid park, we’ve found a table sitting in a lovely copse of medium sized willow trees.  The tree leaves dapple the sunlight, shading us, important here even in February.

Bloodroot carefully retrieves our stove and from Pearl’s hat.  At $160, the cost of our new Primus Firehole far exceeds the price of any camping stove we’ve ever owned or even contemplated owning.  I recall buying tents and sleeping bags for less.  Remember those old Coleman stoves we all had?  And all of the craziness we’d employ creating windscreens for them?  “OK, Keith, stand over there.  Bloodroot – you to the right of him.  Hold your tent bags. Up!  To the left now!  Block the wind!”   With recessed burners deep inside the box, our high tech stove lights and heats in full wind. 

Camping-the new high tech. But shouldn’t young people have to use the old Coleman stoves?  Just to toughen them up a bit?  Just think, early one morning, we magically replace all smart phones with Coleman stoves.  I can hear Bloodroot already, ”Hey, what’s the story with the Wi-Fi on this big green screen?” Would mass starvation ensue?  Would we create an apocalypse? Or maybe just the plot line for an installment of The Hunger Games where the old people are the good guys?

Keith and Bloodroot prepare a great breakfast of bacon and eggs.  As a mother, I proudly reflect that Bloodroot wouldn’t starve even if a Coleman camping stove replaced his i-phone, although he may subsist on nothing but bacon for the remainder of his life.  I’m not sure that bacon and eggs have ever tasted so good! 

During breakfast, we hear a creaking noise.  We wander off to explore.  Not far from our copse we discover an old windmill, one of those ancient rusty contraptions forever associated in my mind with the depression and dust bowl.  Nearly a hundred years old, the windmill still pumps a bit of water out onto the land, greening the area surrounding the picnic table.  The water spurts out rhythmically as the pump gears clack and turn.

Dugout Wells, green and shaded, sits amongst the remains of 1920s farms.  Exuberant farmers once irrigated the Rio Grande’s floodplain growing cotton until the depression took all.

After our refreshing breakfast, we pack up and head down to the river where the boys plan to hike the Boquillas Canyon trail.  We meet two park employees with a backhoe digging something or another.  Keith immediately notices the woman’s fine, powerful and costly Zeiss binoculars.  An unfailingly polite bear, I’ve never previously seen Keith stare at a woman’s chest.  I see the gears turning in his head as he considers leaving me for her.  “I’m taking a bird census,” she states, interrupting his ruminations.

We discuss birds found in Big Bend National Park.  She directs us to a path near a boat ramp where Sven and I can drive right next to the water.  We follow her directions and look out over the river flowing by, wide and lazy, enjoying the spring sunshine with us.

Down by the river, Keith and Bloodroot begin a sword fight with bamboo-like rushes.  Bloodroot towers over Keith but always loses these competitions despite his far greater reach.  Keith chases Bloodroot bonking him on the head repeatedly.  Bloodroot lacked a father growing up and never learned these games, nor does he ever tire of them.

The boys take off on the Boquillas Canyon hike.  Their trail climbs up and over a hill then descends following the river for a wee bit.  Enterprising Mexicans ride horses across the border and set out twisted wire scorpions on rocks hoping to entice the tourists.  The Mexican merchants leave notes in English beside the mini-sculptures assuring us that sale proceeds fund schooling for their kids across the border.   Whether true or not, what a tug on the heartstrings!  The US Park service has given us detailed lectures about NOT buying anything from these entrepreneurs. 

We pile back into Pearl and discover the most amazing thing - the Boquillas Border crossing.  The crossing opened in 2013, unmentioned in our pre-2013 guidebooks.  We failed to bring our US passports with us.  Keith doesn’t believe in the post-2001 seriousness of US borders and drives up to the crossing imploring Bloodroot to ask if we can pretty please cross.  Bloodroot complies, although certain that this will be the stupidest question asked the border patrol all day.  Bloodroot returns with the expected answer, “No US passport; No crossing.”  From now on, should we plan to venture within 100 miles of any US border, we’ll put the damn things in the glove compartment.

We drive away, playing Wall of Voodoo’s Mexican Radio full blast, singing along to celebrate at least looking into Mexico.

Eschewing the far eastern side of the park, we return to the park’s center and climb into the Chisos Mountains, the highest in the park.  Up, up, up Pearl ascends, taking the switchbacks with ease.  “See, I’m strong,” she purrs.  We park at the visitor center.

The Chisos Mountains, named for an extinct Indian tribe, are tall enough to attract moisture.  Daily autumn rains bring the moisture which sustains the basin all year.  The park exhibits speak of the area gradually drying over the past ten thousand years, leaving the high mountains cooler, wetter islands.  The bigger trees gradually died out, losing the battle to the more arid climate.

But a park volunteer tells us otherwise.  In the late 1800s, miners and mining companies completely denuded the park taking every tree and scrap of wood they could find for mine supports.  No longer forested, desiccation began.  The forest has never returned.  Chisos now has scrub trees and much more green than the desert floor below, but no forest. 

The boys head out on the Basin Loop Trail while I investigate the park’s sole handicap accessible trail, the Window View Trail.  Sven and I motor out to a bench overlooking the area.  Mountains surround me as I gaze out over the Chisos Basin, the left hand side much greener than the right.  The mountains funnel water into a stream pouring out through a window dropping to the desert far below.  I peer out through the distant opening listening to birdsong while the wind blows around me.  Birds fly everywhere.  I write. 

The boys return from their short hike.  “Not much of a trail, Beaver,” Keith says.  “We saw a couple of valleys.  I think this is a prequel to tomorrow’s Lost Mine Trail hike.” “We ran into some deer and woodpeckers,” Bloodroot chimes in, far less disillusioned.

Pearl glides down the mountain toward the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive again.  Keith abruptly stops her, jumping out to chase and photograph some bird he sees.  I love him so much!  Bloodroot takes the wheel, guiding Pearl through the desert.  He parks alongside the road while we all nap for half an hour.  Waking, we watch the sun set over the mountain range behind us throwing shadows that creep up the range before us.  Darkness descends; the moon rises.  We leave the park.

Back in Terlingua, far too tired to cook, we decide to dine at the bar next to and a part of our hotel.  We assuage our guilt by noting that we did eat both breakfast and lunch in the park. 

The bar/restaurant occupies two floors, the upstairs consisting of both a restaurant and a promising outdoor deck.  Lacking a ramp or an elevator, we can’t go upstairs.  We sit downstairs with the cigarette smoke.  Locals flagrantly ignore a sign proclaiming “Smoking on Deck Only”. 

Downstairs we sit at one of about ten dark tables.  To our left we find an extensive bar.  In front of us we see a cleared area with a microphone, microphone stand, speakers and chair for a singer.   Offering cigarettes at a mere $8 per pack, a cigarette machine stands in the bar’s back corner.  Have we fallen into a time warp? We explain cigarette machines, an embarrassing blast from our past, to Bloodroot.  Very large, very drunken Texans occupy the table next to us, including two assholes smoking.  Frankly, not wishing to be pummeled by their fists, I’m content to let them smoke.  Eventually the drunken smokers leave.  Unfortunately, their stench remains behind.

We’ve entered the real Texas, where folks don’t want the government or anyone telling them what to do, including commonsense things like not smoking.  I order a hamburger and home cut fries, recalling my erstwhile friend Alma’s advice, “Buy what the restaurant excels at.  A salad will suck in a bar.”  Alma knows her restaurants well, being the sole person in her 50s I’ve encountered completely incapable of cooking.  And she’s right.  I enjoy my hamburger while dipping my fries in mayonnaise.  What else could I want?

A local man, guitar in hand, takes the chair and microphone and begins to play.  It’s awful.  The audience begins shouting.  The man stops, adjusts the soundboard and begins again.  He’s really good.  We hear original songs about alien abductions, opera and moving to the zip code 79852, explaining why you’d move here.  “I found myself in the middle of nowhere…”

After the performance the bar clears.  Perhaps people do have day jobs here.  We buy a CD from the singer Alex, learning that his wife sings opera.  No one appears to be from here, but they all moved here, drawn by the idea of living in the middle of nowhere, away from the city, away from mortgages, away from rules, away from lights to a place where you can be yourself, look at the myriad stars and just live.

I’ve found the Texas I’d so feared.  The West Texas of the movies.  The Texas of certain police harassment due to our Colorado license plates.  What did we find?  Kind, loving people.  People feeding Bloodroot because he appears too thin to them.  People interrupting their work day to measure a door to be sure the wheelchair would fit.  Everything I thought was wrong.  Time to examine my own prejudices!

Wednesday, February 12, 2014 - Prada in Big Bend National Park

Yesterday’s near empty tank brought a sleepy headedness to Pearl.  She finds it hard to think without fuel and feared that Bigfoot might munch on her too.  “He may like metal you know,” she admonishes Keith.  “And I am quite attractive, younger and better looking than any of you lot.”   We have a precedent here.  On a prior trip, I recall Bloodroot admiring himself in a spoon proclaiming, “Ah, Beauty.”  Am I to be ever surrounded by this clueless vanity?

We buy gas in Van Horn.  Primed with petrol, Pearl completely recovers from yesterday’s scare.  She heads out down Texas route 90 whistling along, exuding the happiness common amongst all young things.  We cruise through a stark dry country dotted by the Van Horn then Sierra Vieja Mountains to the west.  “Texas?  Mountains?” you ask.  Yes, west Texas boasts numerous mountain chains as the Rockies wind down into Mexico.

We drive through an empty place, encountering perhaps five cars between Van Horn and Marfa.  Yet the desolation creates beauty.  We see roadrunners.  Unlike their cartoon namesakes, they move quite slowly.  Pearl chases the birds off of the road.

Around forty miles north of Marfa we find a Prada store alongside the road in the middle of absolute nowhere.  Another tourist couple stops, snapping photos.   They tell us, “This art was created by a New York artist who tired of Manhattan and wanted to relocate as far from the New York art scene as possible.  He picked Marfa, Texas.”   Fact checking on the internet, I learn that these people were completely full of it.  Two Scandinavian artists working in Berlin created the sculpture as a comment on consumerism. 

Locals immediately vandalized the work, breaking the windows, spray painting the building and stealing all the genuine Prada articles inside.  But this working class rage, this honest response to obscene consumerism doesn't fulfill the artists’ desire.  The artists quickly rebuilt the fake Prada store installing Lexan plexiglass windows, numerous security cameras both outside the building and concealed inside the new bottomless Prada purses.   Prada donated the merchandise twice.

I see the very same anger exploding, inciting the have-nots to attack Prada, one of wealth’s great symbols, also driving the more impoverished Taos locals to spray paint graffiti all over the property of the rich back in Taos.    

The artists themselves want the sculpture to decay into the environment.  They do intend a statement on consumerism.  Their statement isn’t Marxism and class struggle but rather the impermanence of all.  Even the fabulously wealthy will die, fading into dust just as the Prada store will dissolve into the desert.

We drive on to Marfa.  Marfa has become a center for minimalist art but we fail to find any of it.  We drive around the town for a bit, stop at a coffee shop/laundromat duo, obsessively buy more petrol and drive on.  Marfa has revitalized its economy by attracting artists to live and work out here in the middle of the desert.  We see a lot of desperate rural poverty on this trip; it’s good to see a small town doing well.

We arrive at our hotel around 3PM, the only early day we’ve ever had.  Some confusion arises around our reservation.  We finally learn that Bloodroot made the reservation in his name.  As a family of this century, none of us has the same last name.

After check-in, we have three hours of daylight.  “Let’s go!” says Pearl as we head out to Big Bend National Park.  This afternoon we cruise down the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive taking us past desert vistas and tall mountains devoid of green.

 We stop first at the Tuff Canyon. Bloodroot charges off down the trail into the gulch.  Keith follows him down into the canyon at a bit more leisurely pace.  I drive Sven in circles above them, contenting myself with wildflowers – lupines everywhere.  Scanning the scenery, I begin to think. 

As the eternal student of languages I never master[1], I note that English has two identical words for elevated flat land forms – butte (mound) from the French and mesa (table) from the Spanish.  English, the eternal amoeba, grows by absorbing all other language words, even carefully whispered ones you think that she doesn’t hear. 

My mind wanders back to the Norman Conquest (1066), a time where one would expect the language of the victorious French to replace Old Norse/Germanic English.  Au contraire, English expanded to include the new words brought by the Normans, leaving us Anglophones with two words for most things.  You can come (German kommen) or arrive (French arrive). The French word generally a bit more high-faluting, our language eternally reminds us of who conquered whom all of those years ago.  Bloodroot posits, “Mom, you’re lending credence to my theory that European languages are really all just elaborate hoaxes.” 

The boys return, interrupting my musings. We climb back into Pearl, Bloodroot scurrying to the Castolon Visitor Center to collect the all-important national park stamp.  He then spends ten minutes perfectly parking Pearl, during which time the visitor center closes.  No stamps today.

After shedding a few tears of disappointment for the missing stamps, we venture on out to the Santa Elena Canyon down by the Rio Grande, where we discover an entirely different world.  Limestone cliffs rise 1500 feet above the river.  The river’s water feeds trees and vegetation producing greenery rare for this area.  Across the river, the mesas join together leaving a small passageway, inviting, but unfortunately in Mexico.

 On the Santa Elena Trail, the boys hop across the Terlingua creek and begin walking along the Rio Grande.  They hike up a narrow canyon, watching the river recede as they climb.  Reaching the top of the switchbacks, the boys look north to the Chisos Mountains and south into Mexico, only a few hundred feet away. They walk until dusk descends in the canyon, snapping photos of the moon on their return trip.

 Meanwhile, I motor towards the river for a better look.  Sven quickly raises concerns about the sand, fearing that we will spin ourselves into a hole like Rumpelstiltskin, perhaps emerging in China.    Listening to reason (for once), I return to the picnic table, look out over the river toward the tall cliffs of Mexico, and read my Taos book about Kit Carson.

As the day ends, we drive back out of the park to our hotel in Terlingua, Texas.  When we made our reservations last fall, the hotel staff measured the door to make certain that Sven would fit into the room, calling us back with the results.  Sven would fit.

In reality, the sidewalk and door frame aren’t really wheelchair accessible.  Each time I enter, I take a running start from the parking lot to bump up over the sidewalk curb and the lintel of the door frame.  Sven often gets stuck.  The boys will then provide a power assist for his motor, pushing us into the hotel room.

Our room has no cooking facilities but we do have a picnic table outside on the sidewalk.  We set up our new stove, chop vegetables, and prepare a wonderful steak stir-fry.  The hotel dogs begin circling us warily.  We befriend them by feeding them beef scraps.  They love us. 

After dinner, Bloodroot is still hungry.  He walks over to the hotel’s bar/restaurant seeking ice cream.  A server takes one look at him, sees a starving child needing feeding, and promptly dishes up five scoops of ice cream, which he devours.  We all wish for Bloodroot’s metabolism.  She refuses payment.

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[1] Not for a lack of interest.  No employer ever considered me cool enough for an overseas job assignment.

Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - Carlsbad Cavern, Bigfoot and Texas

Carlsbad - what a great name, but how did it arise?  I seek Carl’s bath in vain.  Is there a spa here?  Healing waters?  This question draws quite a few blank stares and head shaking from the locals.  Amongst the normates, wheelchairs infer diminished mental capacity.  My question only confirms this prejudice.  Finally, thanks to Wikipedia, I learn that the town and the caverns take their name from a Bohemian town with hot springs visited by a holy roman emperor Charles IV in the 1300s.  I know nothing of Charles the IV save that he once bathed in Bohemia.  Did he improve hygiene in the middle ages, or simply notice the smell surrounding him?  We’ll never know.  HA!  High school German comes in handy once again.

Bad weather all week in Carlsbad, but does it matter?  We’re underground.  Rising early, we arrive at the caverns in time for the 9AM lantern tour.  A snow ice fog shrouds the parking lot.  “Yuck,” says Pearl, settling in for a long nap. 

Carlsbad houses thousands of healthy bats, as yet untouched by the white nose death fungus (white nose syndrome or WNS).  Since 2006, the disease has steadily marched west from New York, leaving millions of bats dead in its wake.  WNS arrived in

Missouri in 2013.  Before allowing us to visit the famous caverns, the park service wants to ascertain that we haven’t visited any eastern caves housing the fungus and dead bats in the past five years.  We haven’t.

While I sit in the cafeteria, sipping hot tea and writing, Bear and Bloodroot depart for the lantern tour.  On their excursion, each student spelunker receives a specially designed wooden lantern to use during the two hour ranger led tour.  Exploring a route not open to the public, the boys learn the history of the cave and hear stories of the cave.  Each person uses his lantern to illuminate the rocky path through the cavern, recreating the experience of the early cave explorers. 

The boys return for lunch.  In the early afternoon, we all descend to the main cavern.  During the summer, the wait for an elevator ride down can stretch out to two hours.  The park service has been building four additional elevators for several years now, as yet incomplete.  We presume that they hired the same moron contractor we hired, Mr. Magoo.  As we travel, we note Mr. Magoo’s fingerprints all over the place.  He sure gets around. His reputation for incompetence, chaos and mayhem must NOT precede him.

We visited Jewel Cave two years ago.  Touring that cave, I descended via elevator, circled a room around size of our kitchen and rode the elevator back up to the surface, having explored the extent of their handicap accessible space.  Thus primed, I don’t expect much from Carlsbad.

I roll into the cavern.  Wow!  The expanse before me shocks me.  Taken aback, after a moment I see that Carlsbad’s accessible trail dwarfs some entire caves I’ve visited.  We explore the Big Room and meet up with Virginia, the NPS ranger who led the boys’ tour this morning.  Virginia walks along with us, providing our own private tour of Carlsbad.  She took this job as a fluke one summer, concerned about working underground.  Her fears evaporated as she found her soul in the cavern; she has never left.

Every night from May to October, thousands of bats burst forth from the cave hunting their evening meal.  Long ago, local ranchers traced the bats to the cave.  Around 1900, a teenager named Jim White began exploring the cavern with his homemade ladder constructed of rope, wire and sticks.  He named the features and rooms near the surface.  The first rooms reveal his fear of his discovery (devils, witches, cauldrons).  Was this the pathway to hell?  Calming down, the later names become more fanciful reflecting the awe the cavern inspires (fairyland, temples of the sun, lion’s tails, brides, etc.)

Unlike most caves developing slowly as rainwater percolates through limestone, much of the Carlsbad system formed when hydrogen sulfite rich ground water mingled with rainwater.  The resultant sulfuric acid dissolved the limestone creating the massive caves while racing (geologically) ever deeper into the earth.  Over the next million years, dripping water dissolved calcium in the remaining limestone decorating the caves with long pointy stalactites (clinging tightly to the ceiling) of myriad different shapes and sizes.  The calcium laden water built stalagmites (you might trip over them) climbing upward from the floor. The water flow determines each feature’s shape. Slowly dripping water forms soda straws and stalactites.  A stalactite and stalagmite grown together become a column.  Rainwater flowing down a slanted ceiling creates curtains.  Calcium collecting around a pebble builds a pearl or popcorn, depending on mineral composition. 

Virginia shows us each sculpture on the trail, fondly naming each.  We see colors in the features.  We close our eyes while she inserts her flashlight in a cuplike feature of a stalagmite she named “the bride”.  Upon command, we open our eyes to a green glow created by her flashlight exciting the calcite molecules in the sculpture.

We also learn that the bat death white nose syndrome originated in Europe.  Curse the eternally ethnocentric American park system!   While we had not visited any eastern North American caves in the past five years, we did visit the Cro-Magnon caves in France.  Performing a quick inventory of my attire, I exhale upon realizing that not one thing I’m currently wearing had been worn in France.  I could still walk then and hadn’t yet met Sven.

Even today, the caves hold many secrets.  Last year, rangers became curious about a dark space above the Big Room.  Carefully anchoring a rope near the ceiling, they laboriously shimmied up the rope to discover another huge set of caverns.  Working in October, they named the new rooms the Halloween rooms in honor of their discovery time.

The ever patient Bloodroot tires of our companionship and decides to take the half hour trail walking out of the cave.  We arrange to meet him by Pearl.  In what seems like a very short time, Bloodroot returns to collect us.  He tells the rangers guarding the cave entrance that he’s lost his parents.  We naturally are still talking with Virginia.

We reluctantly leave the Caverns, stopping to buy some necessary souvenirs.  Keith wakes up Pearl, a bit groggy from the weather.  We drive back out to White City passing the only gas station around for miles.  “Doesn’t look open,” says Keith stepping on the gas, turning south on 180 heading toward Van Horn, Texas.  We pass last night’s hotel, never thinking to ask the employees there about closest gas station.

“Dear, how much gas do we have?” I query a bit later. 

“I don’t know how to read this gauge,” he responds.  I look and point.  Pearl has calculated her remaining gas will take us 52 miles.  We have 137 to go. 

“We’re hosed.”  We don’t have enough gas to return to the city of Carlsbad, 27 miles north of the park, or enough to reach our hotel in Texas.

“Perhaps the next national park will have a gas station near it,” says Keith brightly, ignoring the reality that Carlsbad, a much bigger park, did not.  Silently, I too hope for a gas station by the Guadalupe Mountains National Park.

Pearl ascends into the Guadalupe Mountains as her gas gauge sinks toward oblivion.  Entering a gothic novel, we climb into an ice covered winter world.  The temperature drops.  A white mist descends, covering us, the mountains, the road and Pearl in secrecy and silence.  Bigfoot lurks, camouflaged by the white.  He waits with a hunter’s patience for Pearl to consume our remaining gasoline.  Once we’re truly stranded, lacking both petrol and cell phone coverage, he’ll pounce.  I pray for a quick ending.

Bloodroot spots a sign saying “Guadalupe Mountains National Park.”  We pull into the parking lot, quickly killing the engine.  Bloodroot runs to the visitor center, collecting the all-important national park stamps, making Guadalupe Mountains our first drive by stamping.

I remain in Pearl, delighting in the glorious reality of intact entrails uneaten by Bigfoot.  I check my arms, legs, torso, discovering myself intact, unbitten, unscathed.  I sigh with relief.  Exhausted by our brush with death, I have no desire to visit the ice shrouded park.  I’m sure that I hear Bigfoot, deprived of easy prey, howling outside.

Keith negotiates plaintively with the park personnel.  They reluctantly sell him two gallons of their lawn equipment’s gas for $15, no more, with three gallons we could have made it to the highway (I-10) and civilization.  He learns that the gas station by Carlsbad was open; just unattended.  “Use your credit card to start the pumps.  They’ll dispense gas.”

The park rangers give us directions to the nearest gas station, in Dell City, Texas, forty miles east.  We had been heading due south.  Gliding down out of the mountains, using as little gasoline as possible, we descend into the Texas plains.  As we drop, the snow, ice and haze diminish then disappear.  Bigfoot, the star of our gothic novel, melts into Texas’ endless plains, the plains somehow also gothic in a more cowboy way.  As we drive the hour out of the way, we begin to breathe slightly more freely. Time dilates, crawling along, while I do my best to I think of anything but the gas gauge.  (Time dilation-speed of light-theory of relativity-Einstein…)

At long last, we spot the Dell Oil gas station ahead.  The locals at the station, busy buying gas for their farming equipment, listen as Keith tells the full blown story of our escape from peril and the paucity of gas stations in this part of the country.  He gesticulates, his body displaying his angst.  “We almost ran out of gas!” he concludes.  “Yup, you can’t do that here,” a sweet Texas tinged voice responds.  (And Bear says I talk to rocks!  This woman is quite kind, not at all lithic, but he will also talk to anyone who will listen.)

We buy $60 of gasoline at Dell Oil, drive another hour back to our southbound route followed by another two hours south for good measure to our hotel in Van Horn, Texas.

After our day’s adventures, the boys express unwillingness to cook in the dark.  Not that I blame them.  We head over to the one promising looking restaurant in town, the Hotel El Capitan.  But the HOT is dark in the hotel sign, so it reads EL EL CAPITAN. 

In the 1930s, an El Paso businessman Charles Bassett constructed five similar hotels to serve the north south route tourists between Carlsbad Caverns and Big Bend National Park. 

In the late 1950s, interstate 10 opened running west to east across northern Texas, taking most tourists with it.  The hotel closed to be reborn in the 1970s as a bank.  In 2007, times changed again.   Painstakingly restored, the western style hotel features exposed beams, expansive tile and woodwork, producing the feel of luxury a century past.  The bank vault remains adjacent to the dining room, now stocked with liquor.

We notice more people working in the restaurant than dining there.  Our server, Nina, moved back to Van Horn to care for her ALS afflicted father.  With her care, her father lived an additional 14 years.  I’m impressed; ALS generally kills its victims in five.  Nina, a single parent with two kids, also adopted two more children whose mother had been incarcerated.  All the children have grown up and are doing well with their lives.

I order a pistachio crusted fried steak, not realizing that a fried steak is a glorified hamburger.  Is the food particularly good?  No, but it’s real and different.  I’m in Texas.  I enjoy the food for what it is.

I do so miss the South and Southerners.  I miss complete strangers giving you sincere, heartfelt love and kindness.  People will open their lives up to you, wrap you close in their arms and enclose you in their circle of love.  I miss the politeness in the way we treat each other.  Someone once famously said, “If you can’t appeal to a Southerner’s sense of decency, you can usually appeal to their sense of politeness.” And we touch each other all the time too.  I miss women hitting me shouting “Girl!”  I do NOT miss the obscenely conservative politics intertwined with conservative religion NOR do I miss the heat.

Nina asks us if we’ve seen the reality TV show Duck Dynasty as our travels will take us to Louisiana, the dynasty’s hailing spot.  We express our unfamiliarity with the show.  Nina shares her opinion, “Bunch of rednecks acting trashy.”  “But,” she adds, “They don’t have to work anymore.”

We query Nina about the liquor in the vault.  “There’s nothing in this town to do but drink.  So we thought it best to lock the liquor up.” Ah, Southern practicality.

We find this hotel far more charming than the Taos Inn.  The El El Capitan doesn’t make a pretend past for the tourists; it breathes authenticity of a time long gone from its broken neon sign to the liquor in the vault to the down home Texan menu. 

Nina ladles out encouragement.  “Keep travelling,” she says, giving me a big hug as we part.

Monday, February 10, 2014 – Petroglyphs, Friends and Aliens - Albuquerque to Carlsbad

Waking up on the urban farm we meet all of our host’s animals, the chickens, guinea pigs, goats and rabbits.  The incredibly cute, cuddly animals have completely destroyed her backyard.  Our host is happy, living a vegetarian life surrounded by animals, earning her keep through Airbnb rentals.  She provides insightful information on all Albuquerque tourism opportunities.  She occasionally refers to her dining room table, littered with maps and brochures, handing us the relevant ones.

Today we visit the Petroglyphs National Monument, a bit outside of Albuquerque.  Volcanic activity created basalt escarpments covered over time by a dark desert patina.  People learned to make pictures on the boulders by carefully pecking away the patina revealing the lighter gray rock underneath. The monument preserves 20,000 fragile images painstakingly tapped into the rock by ancestral Puebloan Indians, the Spanish who followed them, and finally the Anglo ranchers. 

Stopping at the visitor center, we gather the all-important national park stamp for our national park passports, our first stamp of the trip.  But my stamp is a bit blurry.  Never fear!  We stamp a piece of paper clearly.  When we return home, we’ll carefully cut out the better stamp and glue it into my passport.  Is this a bit obsessive?  Yes.

Bloodroot and I have separate national park passports.  Back in the 1990s, we bought my passport on our very first trip together when we visited the Grand Canyon.  Since then, through stamps, we've recorded nearly every trip taken in the States. (We do occasionally forget to bring the passports along.)  

Establishing his blossoming manhood and maturity, Bloodroot purchased his own passport in 2012.  Returning home following that trip, he color photocopied, photo shopped and searched the internet to create stamps identical to mine, capturing the same date and color for each stamp. He then carefully cut out each quarter sized stamp and glued them onto the appropriate pages in his passport.    He calls this his four hour ode to Paul Distad (my father) his OCD grandfather.

Today’s extensive travel plans necessitate exploring only a few short trails in the Monument.  We hope to see some petroglyphs.  Despite park literature to the contrary, the boys are sure we’ll find at least one accessible trail. Sensing potential, they send me down a sidewalk.  Looking good!  The sidewalk ends in a hundred feet.  Sven and I return to the picnic table.  The boys disappear, climbing up the Mesa Point trail wandering through cinder cones.  At the trail’s peak, they see the Sandia, Jemez and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.  Still no blood they report.

Meanwhile, I look up to see an almost hazy blue sky.  Brilliant sunshine pours down on the volcanic rocks.  I sit out in Mom’s Norwegian sweater and a sunhat and write my five pages.  (My hands refuse to work after five pages.)  The boys wave to me from the top of the hill they've climbed.  They return down the trail.  I’m watching little wispy clouds and the same mountains in the distance.

Using the spotting scope in the picnic area, I too can see the macaw petroglyph, the park’s motto.

Leaving the park, we enjoy a too leisurely lunch with best friend from sixth grade.  We catch up on our lives after forty years’ separation.  Around two, we part once again, dropping her off at her apartment.  We shop for gas, ice, and food. 

By 3:45, loaded up and ready to go, we leave Albuquerque bound for Carlsbad, a journey we believe will take three hours.  Error!  We had originally considered sleeping in Roswell and forgot to update our spreadsheet when we decided instead to sleep in Carlsbad, actually five hours distant.  (Naturally, as an accountant I plan all trips on Excel spreadsheets.  I’ve proudly passed this legacy on to Bloodroot.)

Ah well, off we go down 285.  Leaving the mountains behind, we see plains stretching to the horizon covered in desert scrub.  Eastern New Mexico rolls eternally before us.  Vegetation becomes sparser as we speed south.  We encounter very few other vehicles.  Solitude descends upon our car like a bell, surrounding and containing us, muffling our disturbance of the endless landscape.  Pearl worries.  How will anyone admire her youth, power and beauty out in this endless desolation?

The sun sets; we drive on.  Arriving in Roswell at night, we see a few spaceship logos on hotels and restaurants, not much else.  Only one alien spaceship flies over our car.  Unimpressed, Pearl sniffs, “Is that the best they could do?”  She planned a technology competition with the aliens, confident that she’d win with her retractable ramp. 

After Roswell, we see more traffic.  In another hour, we come to Artesia, a town full of petroleum factories that we smell long before we arrive.  Amidst a trackless desert visited only by aliens, lights erupt from the huge industrial complex, slashing the sky, completely destroying any feeling of night, quiet and solitude.

One last hour hurtling through the dark brings us to our destination-the Rodeway Inn in Whites City New Mexico, located conveniently next to Carlsbad Caverns.

We find a veritable handicapped palace in the Whites City New Mexico Rodeway Inn.  Who would have thunk it?  We have a low bed transfer height equal to the wheelchair height.  I so struggle trying to get into high beds.  When your hip flexors break, you can’t raise your knees to climb into bed.  Over time, I've developed a mechanism where I sit on the bed and violently throw myself back, using momentum to hopefully fling my legs into bed too.  In case of failure, the animals stand by to assist with my errant limbs.

We have a roll in shower with a stool for me to sit on.  The toilet has bars hung beside it.  I've seen bars directly above the toilet tank.  What possible use would a bar above the toilet tank be?  I mean, even if you’re a guy?  Would you place both hands on the bar in back and let your penis just fly free?  This would be really gross.

And I can roll under the sink to wash my hands.  Needless to say, all doors and pathways to the bed accommodate Sven. I write notes singing the room’s praises to the staff and on the internet.  I don’t know if all Rodeway Inns have these amenities, but I know where I’m staying next trip!

Sunday, February 9, 2014 - One Last Day in Taos

We wake to a brilliant blue sky, the weather sunny and warm.  After listening to Keith grumble for two days, the weather sends the clouds packing, allowing him to see the top of Wheeler Mountain, Taos’ tallest peak.  He is happy.  Although the clouds have all run off today, going wherever clouds go, gathering and plotting darkness, they have not ceded their primacy willingly as they wait upon nature’s mischief.  “We’ll be back,” they say, chortling evilly.

Since our Taos arrival, I’ve been watching the Sangre de Cristo Mountains[1], each sunrise and sunset, waiting to see the red of Christ’s blood splashed on the peaks.  I never see it.  Propaganda!

Funny how we cling to the smallest things as cripples.  I still shower at home.  My animal family helps me into and out of the shower, but I sit on my bath chair and wash myself.  Having always done this, I am reluctant to give up one more bit of independence.  This morning I face a dilemma – should I roll Tinky into the shower, sitting on him to bathe, soaking him?  Or should I brace myself standing in the small shower and let my fellow animals wash me?  I choose the latter.  Keith soaps me as I stand under the water for the best shower I’ve had in years.  Now I’m lying down for half an hour recovering from standing for ten minutes.

We pack up, planning eventually to arrive in Albuquerque tonight.   Bloodroot leaves a note in the casita guest book detailing Wiccan moons, ley lines, conversations with demons culminating in the explosion of his spleen charka.  Sighing, I realize I will be developing a new Airbnb persona.

Following my glorious shower, we visit the Kit Carson Home and Museum.  I’ve never thought much about or acknowledged Kit Carson, the quintessential American hero, believing him to be some sort of Indian massacring white dude.  But I have learned only of the dime novel Carson, enshrined long ago as the walking embodiment of the myth of the West.  Kit’s ghost, ably assisted by the museum docent, teaches us otherwise.

Born in the early 1800s, Carson moved west following the shifting frontier.  He married an Arapahoe woman named Singing Grass, paying a large bride price.  Together they trapped all over the Rockies. 

Singing Grass died young and game became scarce.  Carson, a brilliant linguist (speaking at least ten languages), and a preternaturally gifted scout, found his services much in demand.  Possessing a frontiersman’s loyalty, he formed life-long bonds with the Spanish-Americans, the Utes, Apaches, Arapahos and Pueblo Indians.  He had no use for the Navajo, the traditional enemies of his friends.  He held every position the West offered, ranching, guiding and scouting for armies, negotiating between Indian nations, at times also fighting various Indian nations.  Late in life, he used scorched earth tactics to tragically round up the Navajo sending the tribe to a reservation.  He later argued successfully for their release.

Carson spent the last twenty-five years of his life married to his third wife, Josepha, the daughter of a prominent Spanish American family.  He converted to Catholicism, fathered eight children and spoke Spanish at home in Taos.

The obsessed docent talks even more than I do.  She’s met each and every one of Carson’s descendants.  She loves the latest Carson biography Blood and Thunder, claiming it to be as good as the Comanche story Empire of the Summer Moon.  Sold, I buy the book, which I will report makes a good read but is NOT anywhere comparable to Empire of the Summer Moon.  We also purchase a Kokopelli covered bag (made by far eastern Indians) to hang on Sven. 

After Kit’s house, we encounter time constraints.  Should we see D. H. Lawrence’s paintings that accompanied Lady Chatterley’s Lover, deemed obscene and banned by Scotland Yard in the 1920s OR should we visit the UNESCO World Heritage Site Taos Pueblo?

Eschewing possible titillation, we choose the Taos Pueblo.  Nestled under the Taos Mountains, we find an ancient traditional adobe apartment building.  Around 150 people live in the pueblo much the same as they have for the past thousand years.  People access their personal apartments via ladders, carrying water, fuel and food.  The all-important stream runs next to the pueblo, providing water for both the people and the crops.  My soul delights in seeing the Red Willow people sober, healthy and proud, preserving and honoring their traditions. 

One clan, men only, dances a corn dance to bring rain, health and luck to the people.  Each clan has specific dances and responsibilities.  We watch the corn dancers weave in and out of the pueblo.

We visit the church – the best combination of Catholicism and native religion I’ve ever seen.  Mary dominates the church, reigning supreme, her sculpture standing in the center spot usually reserved for Jesus.   Tall verdant corn plants sprouting abundant ears of corn frame her altar.  Jesus hangs above Mary, painted about 1/4^th her size, his unmangled body attached to a cross of equal length beams.  

The people dress Mary and the Saints for each season.  Right now, they’re clothed in white for winter.  Each August, the entire pueblo re-muds this adobe church, using special mud-60% sand.  This church apse also tilts to the left.  Exiting the church, we see Mary robed in blue, shimmering beside and blessing the Red Willow Creek, that selfsame creek that has nurtured the people for years. Mountains rise behind her.

We buy a magnet and some treats from a Puebloan vendor.  He tells us stories of the Red Willow people, handed down through oral histories.  “We were here to greet Coronado.  He sought gold and we sent him on his way.  A black man travelled with him – the first we had seen.  The church tragically burned down 150 years ago.”

What the gentleman politely doesn’t tell us I learn from reading Blood and Thunder.  In 1847 during the Mexican-American war, a few young Pueblo hotheads joined the Mexican locals in a revolt killing the new US governor of New Mexico.  Carson blamed the local priests, unhappy with their diminished role under American rule, for fomenting revolution.  He could never prove his allegations, which remain controversial to this day.  In retaliation, the US Army attacked the Pueblo.  The rebels huddled in the church, believing that God and their eight foot thick adobe walls would protect them.  The army shelled the church, setting fire to the roof and blasting a hole through the adobe, killing anyone trying to escape.  The Puebloans rebuilt the church in 1850.

The tribe recently repurchased a few hundred acres of their traditional land from an elderly woman who only wanted her initial investment back - $3 million.  The estimated land value topped $6 million. 

As they earlier threatened, the clouds return, bringing winter with them.  We leave the Taos Pueblo driving two and a half hours down to our next Airbnb spot, an urban farm in Albuquerque.  With Airbnb, we always can cook.  We enjoy a nice stir-fry dinner of sausage and vegetables and crawl into bed.

---

[1] Blood of Christ

Saturday, February 8, 2014 Kamikaze Touring in Taos

The day dawns cloudy, windy and cold.  Taos lies in a dry sage covered plain within the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.  The sun peeps out from time to time illuminating sweeping mountain vistas and dry arroyos.  Mist rises from each mountain as the sun strikes snow, yet clouds obscure the peaks.

Taos draws artists like a New Mexican mecca.  Even I feel a compulsion to paint or sculpt or draw or perhaps all three intertwined in an explosion of visual creativity.  This could be downright dangerous; I am a tax accountant. Just think – the Internal Revenue Code sculpted in your backyard!  I’m flexible; I could sculpt any section you liked.  Yet Taos enraptures even me, the one who couldn’t draw her way out of a paper bag.  No wonder so many artists settled here over the past two centuries.

We first visit Taos’ oldest church, San Francisco de Asis (St. Francis of Assisi), finding the large adobe structure closed for winter.  Ugh!  But wait – the unlocked front door opens.  We enter and meet the cleaning crew busy preparing for tomorrow’s masses.  Eschewing compensation, they clean the church each Saturday in a labor of love and devotion.  Moving slowly, mystically, guided by an inner rhythm, they gently and reverently polish each pew, every surface.  They and their families have worshipped here for generations.

Respecting their devotion, we speak softly at length with them while they work.  One of the women sold candles to the parishioners for her first job.  She was ten and the church allowed her to keep the profits.  She’s been hooked ever since.

The Spanish built the adobe church in 1815.  In continuous use since that time, the church houses the oldest extant congregation in the States.  The church has two high bell towers yet maintains the rounded adobe flow, reminding me of Frida Kahlo’s work.  Many Taos artists have painted the structure. 

Once in the late 1960s, the congregants embraced modern technology and plastered the church.  To their abject horror, the building began to crumble.  Adobe has to breathe.  Currently the congregation re-muds the building every June, using the traditional adobe mixture of sand, clay, water and straw.

Inside the church, the congregants have lovingly restored the altar.  After careful research, they found recipes for the original vegetable dyes from the 1800s.  The altar has both painted saints and foot tall wooden carved saints (Santos).  All the saints and deities look Hispanic.

Taking their rediscovered dyes in hand, the congregants also carefully refurbished a second altar. Standing to the right of the apse, the altar depicts eight painted saints, each in its own 1 foot by 2 foot framed square.  St. Francis, tonsured like a proper monk, occupies the lower two squares surrounding a recessed altar featuring Jesus’ mangled body on the cross.  In the right square Francis holds the baby Jesus, while on the left he holds a skull.

The pope outlawed tonsuring of monks in 1972.  But how could a real monk not be tonsured?  Think of all the stories you read as a child!  This one papal act explains the entire problems facing the Catholic Church.  Yep.  Tonsuring clergy again will solve everything.

The pews sit under a 40’ tall pine beam ceiling.  Where the ceiling intersects the right wall, we see a stylized wooden rope running along the crease, traditional for the Franciscan order we hear, although we never learn why.  The building apse leans slightly to the left, copying the direction of Christ’s head on the cross (stage right). 

As we leave we glance up to see a painting of Jesus bleeding from His arm and leg wounds. His arms have sprouted bird feather wings as He flies up to heaven.  Jesus’ wounds shoot laser beams at St. Francis injuring him in the exact same places.  St. Francis recoils.  My fellow animals begin to laugh.  I shush them, attempting to invoke some piety in the lot, an exercise in complete futility.

We exit the church into brilliant sunlight, blinking like owls awakened startled to the day.

We drive out to see the Rio Grande.  The river begins in Colorado, flows through New Mexico, then forms part of the border between the States and Mexico before emptying into the Gulf of Mexico.  We expect a small river, gently bubbling along like an eastern stream, ten to twenty feet below a simple bridge.  Our mind’s eye pictures the river’s edge a soft verdant green, abounding with life, squirrels and birdsong.  We discover a bridge spanning a 500 foot chasm, the river invisible below us.  No green in sight.  Locals offer rafting tours.  I’m impressed that anyone crossed the river before the bridge.  You’d spend half a day walking down, ford the river and take another half day to walk back up the opposing side.

We park next to the chasm and hike along the canyon trail (Sven and I motoring along, of course).  The trail never provides any view of the river.  Keith & Bloodroot wander off trail to see the river, leaving Sven and I trailbound stymied by rocks and scrub vegetation. Temperatures have climbed the 40s, but wind cuts through you like a knife robbing you of all warmth, making it feel colder than Denver at 0˚F.  We return to Pearl.  I retrace Sven’s tracks carefully, concerned about damaging the frail, thin desert soil.   Unfortunately, Sven and I have to ride beside the asphalt parking lot for a while before we find a curb we can cross.  My environment guilt skyrockets as we run over the fragile sparse vegetation.  I hope it recovers.

Following our aborted viewing of the Rio Grande, we drive a few more miles out to see the Earthships.  An architect from the University of Cincinnati began designing Earthships in the 1970s, building the first prototypes in the 1980s. Set out in the Taos desert, the Earthships operate off of the grid.

Designed to creatively repurpose as many materials as possible, the Earthship external load bearing walls use old tires as ballast.  They recycle multicolored glass bottles by carefully cutting them in half, matching colors and plastering them into walls.  Once in the walls, the bottles create a Gaudi like spray of colors, especially upon catching the light. I am ever drawn to color.

Hippies build the Earthships into the earth, each with a greenhouse and complex solar electric systems.  They run refrigerators and lights on DC charged batteries and computers on AC.  The Earthships collect water from winter snows and use it four times (potable, washing, irrigating and sanitary) before the septic tank. Although their motto is “Climate Change, Bring It On, We’re Ready” I foresee trouble when the winter snows stop.

Despite the computers, the Earthship community feels as though they left our world in the early 80s, striking out for a recycled utopia.  I smell patchouli.  The time space continuum opens, sucking me into a time warp.  I find myself careening back to the Akron (Ohio) Cooperative Market in the 1980s.  I loved that community which sustained both single parent me and Bloodroot.  For us, that time is so long gone.  I’ve sold out, gotten real jobs, sent my son to suburban schools and moved to Denver.  I feel odd touching it again, as if I’ve moved out of time’s flow.  What if I had stayed on the hippie course?  Would I have ended up owning an Earthship in the desert?  Would I have spent my life building community instead of assisting the wealthy in their travels through US tax land?  Would I have made the world a better place?  I wander through the exhibits contemplating what may have been.

The company adapts Earthships for any climate and location.  They provide interested people with the knowledge and training required to construct an Earthship.  Building Earthships costs around $200 per square foot (reasonable Denver price), depending upon how much of the work you do yourself.  Personally, I see Earthships in Detroit.  Wouldn’t it be cool to remake Detroit’s post-apocalyptic squalor anew?  Who would then care that the wealthy had long ago fled to suburbia, abandoning the rust belt city?  With Earthships, we wouldn’t need any city services.  The fantasized comeuppance tastes so sweet.

The animals confer.  Should we sell our Denver house and buy an Earthship out here in the Taos desert?  Keith would be so happy melding into the art scene here.  But I want to live in the city.  I am also uncomfortable living with such a dichotomy between the rich white people and the Hispanic poor underclass.  I see no middle here.

After the Earthships, we again stop at the Rio Grande.  This time, we park Pearl next to the bridge spanning the river canyon.  Sven carries me out to the middle of the bridge.  What a sight!  The river rushes along far below us, ever deepening the chasm.  But the cold wind still drives his chill fingers into me, ramming his way past my warm windproof coat, grasping at my heart.  Fearfully glancing over my shoulder, I leave the river, motoring back to the car. 

Archaeologists and the Comanche recently found Comanche rock art in the Rio Grande Gorge right here.  The area makes an excellent strategic camp, providing a place for hiding teepees, abundant water and an adjacent natural corral.

Back in the Rio Grande parking lot, we eat lunch inside Pearl, grateful for her heater.  Keith and I polish off the remains of Thursday’s stir-fry, while Bloodroot devours my Taos Inn leftovers, finding the old chicken far more palatable than I had.

Keith fusses about the clouds obscuring the peak of the Taos’ Wheeler Mountain. “I’ll never get to see it,” he groans.  At Taos’ elevation of 7,500 feet, clouds at 10,000 feet will indeed cover mountain peaks of 12,000 feet.  Pearl murmurs, consoling him with the promise of more museums. 

Despite our fervent disavowal of kamikaze touring, we appear to be at it again. The cold strongly suggests selecting indoor venues.  After a whispered conference with the wind, Pearl turns south toward town driving up to the Blumenschein house. 

Ernest Blumenschein studied art in Paris and New York, then spent most of his artistic career painting New Mexico and her people.  We first saw Blumenschein at the DAM in 2008 and fell in love with his work then, entranced by the colors and lighting.

Blumenschein’s original adobe house proves far too narrow and small for Sven.  Bloodroot takes me in Bess, power-lifting me up two curved steps (the absolute worst!).  Bloodroot considers all places handicap accessible, given sufficient force.  This may somewhat contribute to Bess’ repeated repair needs.  We ramble through the Blumenschein house.  In her quest to see all, despite carrying a cripple, Bess knocks down a bit of plaster surrounding a narrow door.  We apologize profusely to the docent.

Exploring Blumenschein’s house, we discover his family’s paintings.  In 1905, Blumenschein married Mary Greene, an artist in her own right.  Greene won the Gold Medal at the prestigious Parisian Salon d’Automne, the first woman winning since Mary Cassatt.  We see her work which mingles flowing art nouveau figures with the hues and faces of the southwest.

The Blumenscheins had one daughter, also an artist.  Their bedroom contains twin beds perhaps explaining the sole child.

Are we seeing the misogyny of the art world here?  Everyone painted, but only Ernest found success.  As a male, he had the freedom to grow and develop his unique style, while Mary met contemporary expectations, giving up art for marriage and home life.  I must admit that I do prefer his paintings over the rest of the family’s.  But what would Mary have become had she pursued art instead of domesticity?  Women hold up half the sky.  What do we lose as a species when we constrain the contributions of half of the people?

After the Blumenschein house, I hit the wall of fatigue.  We visit one last museum, the Harwood down the street.  Collapsed in Bess, teetering between wake and sleep, Bloodroot pushes me into a room full of seven 10’ by 10’ canvasses painted various shades of white.  Two thoughts enter my mind:

1)    People get paid for this, really? 

2)   When will I begin drooling?

We descend back to the street in a creaky scary elevator.  “Enough boys!” I complain, “I just can’t take any more touring.”  “Okay, okay, one last stop,” they agree reluctantly, although time has once again graciously closed everything.

“Just one last stop.  We promise.  Drive through touring.”   Lacking Pearl’s keys I’ve relinquished control.  The boys strap me into Pearl’s passenger seat.  I try not to drool.

For our last event of the day, we drive past the Mabel Dodge Luhan house.  An eastern banking heiress, Dodge lived in New York, California and Florence (Italy) befriending everyone including Gertrude Stein, Alice B Toklas, Emma Goldman, Margaret Sanger, D. H. Lawrence and Ansel Adams.  Her friends and compadres read like a list of “Who’s Who” of the early twentieth century.  Firmly in charge of her own life, she had affairs with both women and men.  She married repeatedly, finally settling down in a scandalous (for the time) interracial marriage to Tony Luhan, a Taos Pueblo Indian.  Their marriage lasted forty years until death parted them. In Taos, she built a huge adobe house (now a hotel), shocking the locals with her top floor glass solarium and shower. 

We wander through town looking for chicken to buy for dinner.  We’re repeatedly directed to the cheapest places, Walfart and a Super Saver.  But we want organic free range chicken-chickens who we hope had a good life before we eat them.  Taos has the same storm drainage idea as Denver-none.  Just tilt the roads and build high curbs in front of each and every parking lot and the infrequent rains will run off.  Poor Pearl!   She rides very low, burdened with her hat, the 300# wheel chair and the three of us.  “Uff,” she complains to Keith as we scrape bottom once again climbing out of the fifth poorly designed parking lot.

Despite the damage to Pearl, we are ultimately successful. We return to our casita with organic chicken and a bottle of wine.  Completely fried, I nap.  Keith and Bloodroot work together to create a wonderful chicken pesto dish.  I am so blessed to live within the circle of love and happiness created by such kind, caring, capable animals.