After our tour of Casa Bonita, Gwendolyn and I returned to her apartment, and a few minutes later Aunt Joan showed up with French-dip sandwiches.  My cousin Bill, Joan’s son, and Gwendolyn’s brother arrived shortly after.  Both Gwendolyn and Bill had spent time living with my family when they were growing up, but by that time I’d been away at school.  There were a few other cousins in Denver I didn’t have a chance to look up on the trip, the children of my Uncle Gene, who’d passed away two years after my father.  All the patriarchs were gone now.  Only the women remained.

After Joan and Bill left, Gwendolyn and I kicked back on the couch and watched Netflix.  Later, I crashed out on it, telling her I needed to leave around eight.  Instead, she came downstairs around six and I left then, hugging her as I almost ran out the door.  The idea was to drive to New Mexico and probably camp around Taos.  The 285 looked like an interesting way to get there since it went up into the Rockies, close to Breckenridge, before heading south.  The leaves were yellow, which were particularly compelling on the white aspen trees. 

Before long, I was driving through the mountains at a high elevation.  The temperature outside was in the 30s.  It started to rain, which then turned into snow.  All of a sudden, I was driving through a snowstorm.  What turns wouldn’t this trip take?  In Alamosa the road became Los Caminos Antiguos Scenic Byway.  A black locomotive sat covered in the white snow.  Only ten minutes later, the snow turned back to rain again.

On the outskirts of Taos, there was a mural of an Indian with a flaming heart, holding two plant spirits in his hand.  My wish was to visit the Taos Pueblo, but for the first time on the trip I was turned away because of COVID.  Most of the reservations in New Mexico are called pueblos.  Although I’d been to the Taos Pueblo before, I was still disappointed and the freezing cold rain that kept falling made me wonder if my trip had finally run off the rails.  Was my luck about to run out when I needed it the most?  What would all of my journeying accomplish without a strong finish?  I couldn’t even go there.

There were doing major construction downtown.  I managed to find free parking and dash over to the Kit Carson home.  Carson was a hunter, trapper, guide, and soldier, who, like Buffalo Bill, grew famous based on dime novels and the exploits attributed to him.  As an Indian fighter, his strategy was to destroy their sources of food, just as others had slaughtered the buffalo.  The adobe home that serves as his museum, was where he lived with his Hispanic wife and seven children before moving to Colorado.

Whatever I thought I was going to do in Taos, wasn’t happening in the rain, which continued to fall, cold and unrelenting.  I decided to just move on, and after multiple detours because of the construction, got on the 68 heading towards Santa Fe, by now my irritation flaring.

I’d put twelve thousand miles on the Mountain Bluebird by now, and that was causing me some concern.  It was due for an oil change, but as had been the case in Duluth, I went looking for an independent operator, afraid that if I pulled into an Avis agency, they’d snatch the car back before my trip was finished.  At a pueblo called Ohkay Owingeh, I came across a Jiffy Lube and pulled over to check with them. 

They needed an hour to change the oil and had some problems getting to the filter.  The whole time I sat in the waiting area with my laptop, tense with paranoia, waiting for the Avis police to kick the door in and haul my car away.  Whatever the fine print on the contract had been, I didn’t want to know.  If they grilled me later, I’d produce the receipts to prove I hadn’t totally neglected the engine.  Beyond that the strategy was just to play dumb.

There was some interesting street art on display when I first pulled into Santa Fe.  It was a combination of futuristic and Native American themes; a mechanical Mayan god looking out of a scrapyard, a raven-headed boy, an electric Madonna, striped, feathered warriors, a stick figure from a sand-painting holding up two discs.  I made my way to the Santa Fe Plaza in the center of town, passing the San Miguel Church, the oldest church in the States, built by the Franciscans in 1610. 

Continuing along the old Santa Fe Trail, I passed galleries and sculptures, a Native couple holding pottery, a brave in a tussle with an eagle, a frontiersman on a bench with his rifle, another warrior battling a cougar, two mountain men in a packed canoe.  It was the romantic ideal of the Old West, one filled with nothing but heroes and battles that made sense.

Even though the rain had stopped, it was still cold and windy.  It felt like I was on the verge of having my first bad day of the trip.  A few had been a little sketchy, but up until this point nearly every one had paid off in a big way.  It was just another fifty miles to Albuquerque.  Not knowing what else to do, I returned to the car and kept driving, getting on the 25 and heading south. 

Under a shelf of gray clouds, the wind was blowing so hard that a strong gust would push the car sideways.  When I got into town, I saw a sign for the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center.  That proved to be another lucky break, as it was well-worth checking out.  There seemed to be some event going on.  The security guard was talking to someone else and didn’t see me walk in.  I don’t know if that would have been an issue or not.  There were artifacts and old photos, art work that fired the imagination. 

One mural depicted two dancers with buffalo bonnets, leading a train of others who wore antlers.  This was the Herd Dance.  Another showed six men with rattles, standing behind six women in turquoise jewelry.  It was the Turtle Rain Dance.  In the Eagle Dance, two dancers with feathers over their arms soar above the dry land.  There was also a painting of two horses, introduced by the Spanish, and integral to the lives of the Natives, a source of power and pride.

It was late in the day and I had no idea where I’d sleep that night.  I went over to check out the Old Town of Albuquerque, which seemed to be something of an outdoor mall that was closing.  Gallup was the next town I wanted to hit up, but that was still two hours away.  I got back on the 40 and was heading west, when suddenly the last of the daylight faded from the sky and it grew pitch dark.  It was cold outside; almost colder than any other place I’d been.  I’d probably need to spring for a hotel, but didn’t know where, maybe at a truck stop.  Just then I saw a billboard for the Sky City Casino.  They had rooms there for less than a hundred.  I probably wasn’t going to do any better that night.

The casino is administered by the Pueblo of Acoma.  My room was at the end of a long hallway.  To get to it, I had to pass by the gaming room, mostly full of slot machines.  It was a huge room with a huge bed, the towels rolled up into coils at the headboard.  After putting my stuff away, I decided to walk up to the casino.  Walking down the yellow hallway, I passed black and white photos of the old days on the reservation. 

A woman is standing on clay steps, balancing a pot on her head.  In another, dancers in regalia are lined up at a ceremony, adorned with feathers and jewelry.  One man stands with a band around his head, sash around his waist, and necklaces around his neck, in front of a wall that is crumbling down.  When I turned the corner, there was the casino, with its flashing lights and clanging noises and sirens.  The difference between the way things were, and the way they seem to be now.

It didn’t seem possible that I was coming into the final week of my road trip, one that had been fueled by spontaneity and ecstasy, covering the vast expanse of the former American frontier, most of it now privately owned, a good portion of it cut off from everyone.  The spaces were still there, but the freedom was gone.  You didn’t have to commit a crime to be locked up for life.  All you needed was to go to a good college or buy a reliable car, and if you weren’t one of the elites, could end up an indentured servant. 

Where was the promise now?  Where was the hope?  It came in the form of casinos and lotteries, that one last wild, extravagant fantasy, that anyone, from any background, can one day strike it rich and spend the rest of their life on Easy Street.

I have nothing against gambling, casinos, or lotteries, I’ve just never been a player.  I learned the value of a dollar too well.  The entire scope of my life had been adjusted to the parameters of hundreds and single thousands of dollars.  I was still in habit of walking out of restaurants that showed double digits on their menus.  These days that would keep me out of every establishment.

When I got to the Sky City Casino I was in a haze; too much driving, too little sleep, too much manic observation, too little repose.  It had been a long hard day and my feet were still chilled from the rain.  The thing to do was to hit the shower and bed, but I wanted to walk down to the casino, to sit there and meditate if that was even possible.  If I got disrupted it wouldn’t be like yanking me down from Shangri-La.  I was already agitated.

In Wyoming I’d climbed to a mountain top to visit an ancient Medicine Wheel.  Now I walked into the casino and stood before the Hot Stuff Wicked Wheel.  A little devil toddler sat with his chin in his hands.  The grand prize was fourteen-thousand dollars.  There were two hundred and forty-three ways to win.  Lights flashed in front of my eyes.  A thousand sounds assaulted my ears; whoops, hollers, bells, sirens, clangs, bongs, computer voices, lasers, coins falling, groans of desperation, elevator music. 

I walked over to the Rawhide Quick Strike.  This was the New Wild West.  The three wheels on the slot machine depicted cowboys, covered wagons, and bags of gold.  There was the Buffalo Slot.  Three charging buffaloes raising up a cloud of dust.  Multiply your wins up to twenty-five times.  Multiply your wins up to a hundred and twenty-five times.  I went and sat down at a slot machine that had just been sanitized.  The man to the left of me was trying his luck at the Celestial Temple.  Come on, Zeus! 

A pop song came on the radio.  How can any woman be too beautiful?  The carpet was a pixelated haze.  It was a very small crowd for such a big noise, just a handful of senior citizens and a few tribal members.  Ding-dong.  Ding-dong.  I put three dollars in the penny slot and lost it all in a few minutes.  Wolf – Ace – Elk.  What did you need to win?  I got up and started walking again, almost stumbling, in a trance.  Flamenco Forever.  Shadow Diamond.  Golden Tower.  Spartacus.  The room was full of every distraction in the world.  Even a holy man could wind up wrecked. 

Somehow, I made it back to the hall and headed back towards my room.  Now I was hungry and there were vending machines, but I’d used all my singles dollars in the slot machine.  That was messed up knowing that I’d gambled away my food money.  For someone who didn’t gamble, I’d sure caved fast.

That night I didn’t sleep well.  The bed was comfortable, but my mind was bumpy.  At four-thirty I got up and made a pot of coffee.  Then I got in shower and stood in the hot water until it ran out.  The night before had been the first winter storm of the year.  It was in the 30s all over the region.  It was still dark out when I left and went out to the car.  There was so much frost on the windows I had to had to warm up the car to melt it before I could drive.

The place I was heading to that day was the Navajo Nation, with a few stops along the way.  I’d been through it a few times before, always making it a point to visit Monument Valley.  The Navajo Nation is the largest reservation in the States, exceeding the land area of ten of the states.  The people who inhabit it call themselves the Dine, or the People.  Their way of living is described as walking in beauty. 

I took a scenic drive to get there, taking the 40 east, but then veering south on the 53, passing the Bandera Volcano and Ice Cave, the El Morro National Monument, and then briefly stopping to visit the Zuni Pueblo, once part of the Seven Cities of Cibola, sought by the Spanish explorer Vasquez de Coronado.  There was a visitor center I went into with maps and black and white photos, and also a few gift shops I stopped outside of.  Most places weren’t open yet, but the art outside was fantastic, butterfly dancers, corn maidens, kachina dolls, ads for turquoise and silver jewelry.

From the Zuni Pueblo I got on the 602 and was heading towards Gallup, when I passed a trading post with a series of life-sized Kachina doll cutouts out front.  That made me nearly whoop with excitement.  Kachina dolls are based on spirits that live on sacred mountains in the Southwest.  When dancers wear the masks of the kachina they come to embody the same spirit.  They are wildly colorful and intricately carved. 

There are over 250 kachinas.  A few examples are the Broadface, the Buffalo Warrior, the Hoop Dancer, the Morning Singer, the Mudman, and the Owl.  They are the superhero action-figures of the Native belief system.  Just seeing them beside the road gave my mood a giant boost. After stopping to take pictures, I looked down at the speedometer and saw I was flying down the road.

Gallup, New Mexico, is known as the Indian Capital of the World, and was formed as a base for the Union and Pacific Railroads.  The Famous Highway 66 runs through it as well.  I drove into it with zero expectations, but came aways suitably impressed by all the artwork, galleries, and trading posts I passed.  Jewelry, blankets, and pottery were for sale. 

A mural in town showed dancers beneath a rainbow and settlers with their wagons.  Another showed Native families, the men in yellow shirt and red bandanas, with their horses, cows, sheep, and goats.  In one window was a stuffed mountain lion and huge rack of antlers.  In a second, were kachina dolls of every color and stripe.

It was just twenty-five miles from there to reach the Navajo Nation.  The first thing I happened across was the Navajo Nation Zoo, which features animals indigenous to the region and gives their Indian names and designations.  The bobcat was known as the hunter.  Mule deer were called the respected ones. The Mexican gray wolf is the endangered one.  The cougar is the silent one.  Golden eagles were called our great protectors.  The elk was the powerful one.  The owl was the messenger. 

Porcupines were the unique ones.  The red fox was the distinguished one.  The gray fox was the grizzled one.  Wild turkeys were the colorful ones.  The red-tailed hawk was the efficient one.  The racoon was the masked, curious one.  All of the names meant something and were spot-on, the same as the names they gave their people.  What do our names mean?  How many Johns and Steves do you need?

In an adjacent museum I read the story of the Navajo Hero Twins, Born of Water and Monster Slayer, sons of Changing Woman, who set out to rid the world of monsters that were endangering the lives of their people.  Then I headed towards Window Rock and Fort Defiance.

The name behind Window Rock was clear once I arrived.  Beneath a window in the rock stood many government agencies.  Nearby Fort Defiance was established in 1851 on land that was important for grazing to the Navajo.  This led to numerous attacks and raids.  The response was an assault on the livestock and food sources of the Navajo, who were then marched 450 miles to Fort Sumner.  At least twice Fort Defiance was abandoned and burned.  The Navajo Treaty of 1868 returned a portion of the land to the people.  

When I got there it seemed to be mostly houses and horse trailers.  It didn’t strike me as a good place to just get out and go for a walk, so I wheeled the car around and headed toward the Hopi Nation.  The road was black and the dust was red.

There are twenty-two tribal communities in Arizona and the land that makes up the reservations is roughly twenty million acres, more than a quarter of the land in the state.  The Hopi Reservation which I was driving towards, is totally surrounded by the Navajo Nation.  Hopi refers to people who are civilized, polite, and well mannered.  They do not see time as a linear construction and often experience the past and present at the same time.  This ability keeps them closely in touch with their ancestors and the land around them.  Their goal is to maintain the balance between all things.

It was two hours to reach the Hopi Nation from Fort Defiance.  The sky was clear and the road was straight ahead.  The first place I reached was Keam’s Canyon.  There was a market beside the road with a painting of a California Condor on the side, soaring high above a canyon.  Next, I passed the Hopi High School, then Hopi Fine Arts.  Further down the road, I came upon a museum with a petroglyph out front.  Both it and the restrooms were closed.  I wasn’t sure if this was because of COVID or not. 

My destination that day was Monument Valley, and I was taking the long way to get there.  I reached a mesa where even the surrounding mountains were flat.  The road began to seem endless.  Then I found some abandoned buildings that had been turned into a street art gallery.  A woman in a COVID mask that had bluebird written on it.  Two elders beneath a psychedelic mountain.  Faces with red eyes that looked like skulls.  Another native woman in a gas mask.  A drummer.  A horned toad.

When I got to Tuba City, it was still almost a hundred miles to get to Monument Valley.  By now I couldn’t drive fast enough, and was twitching in my seat, speeding along the north 160, until I came upon a group of cars stuck behind a camper going 45 miles an hour.  There was too much traffic in the opposite lane to pass.  I almost went ballistic.  Inside I kept pushing and pushing.  I had to pull over and let them get far enough ahead of me, just to avoid a seizure.

When I got back on the road, the land and the clouds were like a painting, towers, chimneys, and mesas on both side of the road.  I was starting to get lost in the dreaming when I caught up with the RV procession again, somewhere around Kayenta, and immediately reverted to lunatic ravings, shouting out loud, slapping my thigh, praying to God to send a lightning bolt to earth to strike me dead.  That went on for the next twenty miles.

When I reached Monument Valley, I got lucky.  It was nearly five and they were about to close, but the woman at the booth let me in anyway.  A few minutes later and I would’ve lost my mind.  Monument Valley has been featured in a number of Western movies and may be among the most photographed destinations on the planet.  Its trademark is the three buttes that stand at the center of it; West Mitten Butte, East Mitten Butte, and Merrick Butte.  Thankful just to be there, I left my car in the lot and stumbled towards the overlook, my shadow leading the way.  The sky was still blue and the clouds above the buttes were spiraling like galaxies.  It was that magical time of day between late afternoon and nightfall, where all is calm and crystal-clear.

I went into the giftshop and there was a collection of souvenirs based on every tribe in the nation as well as every figure out of folklore that the Old West ever produced.  There were postcards, cowboy boots, T-shirts, dreamcatchers, keychains, puzzles, shot-glasses, you name it.  On one window ledge were a series of kachina dolls, looking like they were dancing in the sky above the three buttes.

When I left the parking lot, I pulled over at a statue of a Navajo family and turned off the car.  It was late enough to start thinking about a campsite, but I hadn’t even meditated yet.  My phone service wasn’t working and it was already cold out.  The sun was right behind me and the shadow of my car was right in front of me. 

All I could think about was where I would go that night.  Mexican Hat?  It was absolutely still until another car would pass.  There was a whirring to the left of me and a truck with a trailer went by.  My stomach growled so loudly it sounded like a bear in a cave.  Just then an Asian family pulled up right behind me.  The father jumped out and began taking pictures of everything.  He must’ve taken seventy-five pictures of the statue from different angles.  The mother and daughter got out of the car, both wearing COVID masks.

I’d had five perfect weeks.  Was my luck about to change?  What would happen next?  I wasn’t meditating.  All I was doing, was sitting there worrying about where I’d sleep that night.  It would be a shame if it ended up being in the car.  My nerves were so shot, and my back ached so badly, that I couldn’t even go there.

By the time I left Monument Valley it was almost sunset.  The sun was just above the road in the rearview mirror.  I seemed to remember a budget hotel in Mexican Hat, Utah, but when I got there it all seemed to be boutique hotels and resort-style accommodations.  I continued on to the San Juan River and drove down to a campground there.  It was packed out.  Every space was taken.  There wasn’t even room to pull off to the side and stay in the car. 

I continued onto Bluff, but it was the same situation, either expensive hotels or no hotels, and nothing that resembled a campsite.  By now it was pitch black.  There was a restaurant and trading post at a place called the Twin Rocks.  I pulled over in the parking lot and put the seat back, but that was no good at all.  How long before someone came driving up and hassled me?

There was a place down the road called Montezuma Creek that seemed promising, but then I never came to it or it wasn’t large enough to register.  Finally, I came to Aneth and had no choice but to give up and stop on the side of a gas station.  The last thing I’d wanted to happen had happened, but only for the second time on the whole trip.  I wouldn’t be sleeping as much as just sitting there waiting for the dawn.  That would mean a whole twenty-four hours in the driver’s seat.  Does Avis give out medals for that?  More than likely it would be a fine.  If they ever do need a spokesman and want to pair me again with the Mountain Bluebird, they know where to find me.  That would be a trip.

It was a good thing that no one came out to check on me.  I put the seat back and got under the sleeping bag.  Then I just sat there in a vegetative state, only my mind working, until four o’clock.  That was enough of that.  I put the keys in the ignition and got back on the road, driving in total darkness, dependent on my brights to cut through it.  At that point, the stars were only faint pinpricks of light.

When I got to Four Corners, where Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado meet, it was still dark and the gate was closed.  I’d been there a few times, but it was still a setback.  There was nothing to do but park beside the gate, but I wasn’t going to wait for them to open.  Rather, I needed to calm my frazzled mind. 

Now I stepped outside and the stars were magnified.  Orion.  The Pleiades.  Betelgeuse.  Aldebaran.  Sirius.  Leo.  Ursa Major.  These were stars and constellations from my stargazing crash course during the pandemic.  They were bright in the black night, trinkets, and jewels, that shined through my eyes and into my foggy mind, clearing the confusion.  The cold air snapped me back to my senses.  The world was alive and well. 

I had been pushing so hard to get somewhere, but the stars were always above me, rather I recognized them or not.   I could feel my heart beating in my head.  My pulse steadily slowed down.  The four corners were sacred, the crossroads, where the red road meets the black road.  I thought about the Black Elk Monument in Blair.  Is it a cross or a tree of life that the lonely man clings to? Perhaps, they are one and the same.

Could it be that I was heading back east next?  Could I possibly be thinking of driving to Mesa Verde?  Why not?  It wasn’t that far.  When I left Four Corners it was still pitch black.  They probably wouldn’t be opening for hours.  Even though my phone service was out, and I didn’t have Karen from Google Maps to guide me, if I got lost, I could always look up at the stars.  They wouldn’t lead me to Mesa Verde, but I could still look up at them.

Mesa Verde National Park is the oldest archaeological park in America, with remnants of both ancient pueblos and small villages tucked away in rock faces left by the cliff-dwellers.  I’d been there three or four times in my life and knew it to be a place that captures the imagination.  Most people will tell you that the Indians lived in tipis, which some of them did, but they also lived in hogans, adobes, wigwams, longhouses, and stone houses lodged in crevices.  It was really only an hour away to get to Mesa Verde.  I’d started so early I figured I’d get there right when the park opened.

Along the way I passed the Ute Mountain Reservation.  The Utes were hunters and gatherers who began trading with the Spanish in the 17^th Century.  After the land was won from Mexico, the United States began paying the Utes five thousand dollars a year to serve as allies against the Navajo.  Eventually, they were confined to reservations. 

In 1879, a band of Utes attacked the agency on the reservation and killed Nathan Meeker and ten of his employees, taking the women and children hostage.  When the army intervened, the Utes killed a major and thirteen soldiers.  This was known as the Meeker Massacre.  In the treaty that followed, the Utes lost most of their land.  Millions of acres became open to be settled by the whites.

When I got to Cortez, I pulled over to gas up and get some coffee.  There were some interesting murals on the side streets, horse rustlers, three men breaking a stallion, kachina dancers, a team of pack mules, four men playing cards with death, as a woman smokes and another holds a hatchet.  By now I was only fifteen minutes away.

I must’ve been the first one at the gate, but then a few cars appeared behind me.  They accepted my National Park Pass, which had now paid for itself ten times over, and almost made up for the fact that they now require reservations to camp, almost.  In this bloated, overpopulated age, it might be necessary to prevent the parks from being overrun, but it is also a damning testament to what has happened to our freedoms. 

Is there any way to just go out there and be spontaneous anymore?  Of course, there is.  I was proof of that.  But it is an endangered way of life.  The pioneers came across open land and just took it for their own.  Now it is risky to find open land and even try to sleep on it.  You might get busted.

The ascent to the visitor center was steep and winding.  If any car got behind me, I just pulled over and let them pass, rather than endure the irritation of feeling pressured to speed up.  As an old principal of mine used to say … Your urgency is not our emergency.  When I got to Point Lookout I pulled over to survey the land below.  The sky was gray and heavy.  The fields, if that’s what they were, looked like mudflats.  The bushes in front of the car were dry and leafless.  I was getting into fall weather.

Leaving that, I passed through a long tunnel, the approaching light at the end feeling like a description of death.  When I burst through, I was close to the visitor center.  There’d be time for that later, if at all.  I was bursting with exuberance, almost bouncing up and down on the seat.  When I got to the first Pit House I leapt out and raced around that sunken divot like I was competing in a pig race.  Then I raced to the Square Tower House and nearly sprinted to the overlook.  This cliff dwelling contains eight kivas, or chambers, and nearly sixty rooms.  It looked like a city termites would live in, with a stone overhang for a sky.

Running as if I were being chased, I moved on to the Pueblos and Pit Houses.  I could hardly contain my exasperation as I got out of the car.  There was more to see ahead.  So much more to see.  When I got to the Sun Point View the village there was partly obscured by trees.  What I could see of it, once again did resemble a termite mound.  The Oak Tree House was closer and a better view.  There were three large circular rooms and a few adjoining ones.  The Sun Temple was right in the open.  You could get out and wander around it.

That was enough.  All I wanted was to drive.  All I wanted was to jump back in the Mountain Bluebird and go soaring across the land.  That’s what the trip had mostly been about, the movement, the little bit of freedom I could make for myself before crashing back down into a quagmire of debt and unemployment.  Flying back down the mountain now was like being on an alpine sled. 

Highway 491 had once been the original highway to hell, highway 666, but was changed in 2003 because many Christians consider that number the mark of the beast, and the many accidents that occurred along it gave some evidence that it could’ve been cursed.  They also couldn’t stop people from stealing the road signs.  It was highway 491 that I took then, in the direction of Dove Creek.  I didn’t care what they called it these days, as long as it got me to Moab.