Sliding through predawn darkness, my car fishtailed toward a snowbank along the canyon’s edge as a semi listed sideways, bearing down in my askew rearview mirror—the oncoming lanes choked by a pileup.
Amid my brain’s cacophonous, contradictory flight-and-fight mental directives, I attempted to maintain some semblance of composure—feeling a momentary sense of relief that I’d remembered to tell my parents where JoJo was being boarded. She might not appreciate Alabama’s humidity, but she’d enjoy my parents’ cozy fireplace—quickly forgetting that curly-haired man who’d so selfishly taken time for himself, and subsequently hurtled down a mountainous gorge.
But before my car’s back bumper skated into the snowbank and over the side, I regained control and slid further along the obscured canyon pass turned bobsled chute. Decelerating, I put “Heroes” on a loop, straightened my mirror, and refused to exceed 10 mph until the road revealed itself beneath the thickening layer of ice and snow. Behind me, the semi pulled off, leaving me and a rust-speckled Tercel shuddering down the corridor alone.
Eyes trained on a strip of blue sky bursting through the snowy veil, and knuckles clenched over the steering wheel, I cautiously reached for my nearly cooled coffee as my salt- and snow-caked rental sedan’s wheels finally reunited with hole-pocked asphalt.
Sun glanced across the snow-smeared windshield. And as I watched the behemoth monuments rising from the landscape—their jagged, brownish-red formations stark against the snow—I took a long, deep pull on the lukewarm dark roast and melted into the music.
“We can be heroes just for one day.”
Image description: taken from far away, the shot features an expansive blue sky with a few white clouds. A few brownish-red peaks are visible above the snowfall on the ground; the bases of the peaks are covered in snow and sage brush.
***
Naivety bookends travel, and travel infantalizes us: everything is new, awe-inspiring; we’re jellyfish floating in an expansive sensorial sea, drifting into and longing to experience its deepest depths.
Two days before my foray into the canyon, I locked my apartment and felt a mantle of anxiety lift from my shoulders. I had a very schematic outline of what I intended to see and do over the ensuing 3,200 mile road trip, but left most of it open to chance. As my windshield defrosted, I familiarized myself with the rental car’s most vital functions, and slipped my crowbar beneath the driver’s seat.
Hours later, I passed quietly through southeastern Washington’s green, amoeba-shaped agriculture fields and wine vineyards with aged, woody plants wrapped tightly around cracked pergolas. Manicured stretches along the horizon gave way to broken, upturned trunks and tilled fields. Treed oases shrouded weathered clapboard houses and trailers with glowing porch lights: tiny beacons welcoming a new day. The rising sun bathed the fields in a lavender glow, and outlined the snow-flecked, rolling hills against the steeply rising mountains far into the distance.
With an impatient produce hauler tailgating me, I eased into an abandoned convenience store parking lot to snap a few photos of an array of midcentury chairs encircling a fire pit. Across the road, coyotes perched atop the hills, keenly attuned to the hoards of bloated finches gliding down over felled, shattered trees. Down a produce farm’s cottage-lined gravel road, a school bus rumbled out with its charges: tiny bodies clamoring over the seats, lowering the fogged windows—shrieks of laughter and curious, wide eyes as they passed me: the stranger regarding the entire spectacle.
I lingered out in the chill, taking in a panoramic view, listening as the sounds of the morning crept into the air. Hairs pricked on the back of my neck, cajoling me back into the car’s encapsulating warmth. Sections of the sky remained forebodingly dark. And as my sedan glided through northeast Oregon and across Idaho’s wide, empty fields, I felt an encroaching storm stalking me.
Having finally arrived in Salt Lake City, I scanned my phone screen with heavy, drooping eyelids, and then screamed. The clerk inside the gas station raised their head, momentarily scanning the dark parking lot for the source before returning to their newspaper. Through a combination of exhaustion and ineptitude on my part, and clever subterfuge by a third-party hotel room reservation platform, I’d unwittingly blown most of my lodging budget in my first night. Once I abandoned my futile attempts to find loopholes in the cancellation policy, I pulled into the hotel’s parking lot, wandered into the brilliantly gleaming, gilded and colonnaded lobby, and asked for my room keys. An apartment-sized suite appointed with an uncomfortable bed and mint green accents in its superfluous living room area all but greeted me with, “Welcome, sucker.”
I lay prone on the king-sized bed, willing my anxiety to dispel and enthusiasm to surge.
It’s ok. Everyone fucks up. It’s a learning moment. EVERYTHING’S FINE.
It was nearing 8pm, and my residual anger combined with overwhelming hunger fueled a speedy restaurant reconnaissance walk. I inched up to the stoop of a highly rated sushi bar on my list, opened the door, and faced a wall of hard, accusatory stares from hipsterish poseurs and wannabe influencers taking selfies and rapping out captions—most of which undoubtedly included #YOLO.
As I turned to exit, I cut a sideways glance at two bouffant-capped tweens in acid-washed mom jeans and Carhartt jackets—clothing reminiscent of my earliest field clothes as an archaeologist.
Silly Salt Lake City children. You won’t out-hipster me. I’m from fucking Seattle.
Twenty minutes later, I took a deep breath, straightened my brilliantly vibrant sweater, flecked my conditioned curls, and charged back inside—bulldozing my way through the hipster gauntlet to the host’s stand.
“Name for the waitlist, Matt. Seat for one.”
I flicked off my generic gloves with an air of decided disinterest in the entirety of the belabored, attention-seeking social positioning unfolding around me, shoved a crumpled jacket toward its owner, and seated myself at the end of a crowded waiting bench. I smiled into my phone’s dark screen, and turned it over. Looking up at the ostentatious light fixtures, I closed my eyes and rested my head against a bank of planters.
It’s all a performance. Just keep dancing.
***
With the canyon and Salt Lake City behind me, I parked at a rest stop to soak in the sun and massage my tense shoulders. Albeit brief, my visit to Utah’s capital had been remarkably uneventful, bland. Everywhere I went, I sensed an air of subtle surveillance, which only amplified my desire to leave quickly.
Overhead, open, blue skies streaked with pillowy clouds entreated me to keep moving forward; I felt more at home there, at a rest stop, than I had in the entire city.
Back on the highway, as the air whipped my hair, I hollered into the vastness—whooping at the arching rocks, the stoic cliff faces, until my lungs felt like tattered rags.
Image description: taken uphill, the shot focuses on an arched geological formation dusted with snow. Sage brush grows in the foreground.
Hours later, as I stooped in thigh-high snow to capture a few shots of a mural stretching along an abandoned storefront, a man pulled up in his Bronco. Immediately, my shields went up, and I angled toward my car; he called after me.
“Hey, you trying to get Horsehead?”
Unsure if this was a local proposition, I stared, vacuously cow-eyed.
“Up there, just near that triangle of trees,” he continued, angling over his seat and pointing far uphill, toward a mountainous stretch.
I aligned myself with his outstretched arm.
“Oh! Yep, I see it.”
He leaned back and smiled.
“So, you’re from Washington, huh?” he said, adjusting his cap and nodding toward my license plate. “What part?”
“Seattle.”
“OH, Seattle,” he crooned nostalgically. “My wife and I go up there once a year. We moved here to be closer to her family. I’m from there. But it’s so expensive now.”
“Yep, it is. I’m sort of on a mission to get out of there myself,” I replied. “On my way to Santa Fe.”
“Welp, yeah, you got a ways to go, but it’s nice.”
He finished by reciting a complex roadmap for reaching Horsehead Canyon. I knew it wasn’t on my way, but waited until he was done, thanked him, and waved him on.
Placing my camera on the passenger seat, I chuckled to myself.
Of course I encountered one of the most open, friendly people from Seattle in New Mexico.
That night, as I drove along streets sprinkled with adobe buildings bedecked with bright tiles, porch arches glutted with hanging chiles, mammoth Cottonwood trees towering overhead, and low, Gaudi-esque walls outlining succulent-peppered greenways, I exhaled.
This feels better.
Image description: an adobe facade with an entry gate, which is made of wood and metal. There are colorful tile mosaics flanking the gate; urns sit atop pedestals on either side of the gate.
***
Fueled with multiple helpings of scrambled eggs slathered in green and red chiles, I slung my backpack over my shoulder and began traipsing around Santa Fe.
Within the first hour, I found myself near tears in the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. While her art has always been inspiring to me, what continued to swirl in the back of my mind was how she described her affinity to New Mexico—the landscape, the beauty of natural forms—and how much of a foil it was to her life in New York City. Blocks away, in the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, I became even more overwhelmed by the place-based narratives on Native life and traditions, and the destruction wrought through colonialism, and its modern day avatars—all reflected through generations of artists.
Exiting the museum, I ran into droves of people leaving the main square—pink hat-wearing Womxn’s March participants, most of whom were coupled and white and clearly satisfied with their annual contribution to democracy. I scanned the area, landing on the pavilion where Native speakers continued addressing the rapidly dwindling crowd, calling for Indigenous rights to be recognized, honored, and protected. Scattered applause from the crowd faded, melding into the rising conversations from nearby cafe diners and shoppers. Methodic drumming began onstage, rising as the bells from the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi intoned.
Everywhere, this country’s violent history collides.
***
Over the ensuing days, I explored the city center, and ventured out to the periphery—always observing, contemplating, absorbing everything: spiced drinking chocolate; green and red chile; cheese-slathered enchiladas; honey-sopped sopapilla; lime-infused caramels; baskets of bloated bags of homemade red pepper flakes; soft lavender soap; and dark piñon coffee.
The strong, arid air that sucks the moisture right from your skin while refreshing your lungs with its deep, cool gusts. Passersby who acknowledge you and smile.
And, of course, I forced myself to face the downsides: I’d have to buy a car, and I’d probably have to wave goodbye to any hope of a romantic life—but I could probably rustle up a few LGBTQ+ retirees to commiserate with.
On my last night, after a whirlwind jaunt to Albuquerque and dinner in Española, I watched the blood moon rise. A formidable, massive orb, it hadn’t yet flushed red; from my vantage point, it hovered between two shadowed peaks. Its massiveness in the desert’s vast emptiness made it one of the most beautiful moonrises I’d ever witnessed.
Everywhere here, there is natural beauty.
***
With my sights set on Taos, I made a short detour to Abiquiú, again marveling at the richness of the landscape. Soon thereafter, I crisscrossed winding roads, and felt my excitement build as I began noting the amorphous, small hills dotting the Greater World Community: earthships. Walking through the model earthship was like stepping into the future—or, more appropriately, how the present should be. Experiencing an off-grid, sustainable building constructed with recycled materials—tires, plastic bottles, cans—was indescribably inspiring.
About a mile down the road, I crossed the Rio Grande gorge, and spotted my last lodging in New Mexico, spread along the Taos Mesa: a hotel of vintage travel trailers arranged next to a brewery.
Image description: two vintage green and turquoise trailers with a connecting deck, taken an an oblique angle. Snow is on the ground.
Once I stuffed myself with sweet potato fries and tofu tacos, I settled into my small trailer, and peered out at the sprawling, snow-covered mesa. Approximately 15 feet, the trailer had everything I needed: a functional heater, bathroom, bed, and kitchen—as well as ample storage. Given my desire for a more mobile, longer-term living situation, I’d wanted to experience this, in all its imperfect glory. And while the space was expectedly small, it felt effortlessly comfortable.
I gazed out the windows as snow fluttered down, and the heater kicked on.
I think I could do this.
Image description: me wearing a bright sweater, laying across the trailer’s bed, and looking out the window.
My eyes drifted to the empty storage shelves and cubbies, and I mentally populated them with my belongings from home.
Wind from a snowstorm began buffeting the sides, and the heater continued humming; I stretched over the bed, dipped beneath the covers, and slowly fell asleep.
***
Steam writhed inside the rim of my tin coffee mug and a snowy haze glowed outside; it felt like the entire world was asleep.
As I rubbed the night’s sleep from my eyes, I marveled at the trailer’s beautiful simplicity—having the necessities within reach, allowing you to melt into being present in the moment.
I looked around and couldn’t help but think: I could give up the rest of what I have to make my own version of this. After all, at the heart of it, the beautiful remaining pieces I possessed weren’t really any different than the built-in table, small shelf by the door, or ample bed with ruffled sheets: all bits of wood and metal and fabric pulled together into a workable shelter. And, as such, their faults could be sanded, repainted, darned, and mended: a patchwork tapestry encouraging growth and change, propelling me into life rather than suffocating my desires or intrigue with a burdensome mortgage, inescapable debt, or a string of unnecessary belongings.
Over my third cup of coffee, I fleshed out a scheme to steward a small parcel of land just north of the earthships. There, I could move a small trailer while methodically building an earthship hut: which, to most, would resemble nothing more than a hole in the desert. But in my mind, it’d be the manifestation of so many personal goals: a base from which I could live a more sustainable, debt-free life.
A few hours later, I made one final pass through the trailer, and then headed to my car. Soon thereafter, I punched in latitude-longitude coordinates for various parcels I’d been stalking online. Snow began cascading down, icy veins of it blowing across the road. Cautiously, I pulled off at the mouth of one of the dirt roads leading to a slew of my target acreage. With little reception and no cars in sight, I decided not to chance it.
Instead, I stood against the wind and snapped a few blurry photos. And questioned my mental state.
What a wildly absurd idea, right? I mean, this is sort of mad.
I took in one last gulp of frigid air and exhaled.
But living is all about exploring the madness.
***
Whether or not I can translate my musings to reality—be they maddened dreams or viable alternatives—remains to be seen.
But if I don’t try, I’m not living.
So, I plan to continue dreaming of a day when, somewhere out in the desert, I’ll dig a hole, and shape it into a home. Where I’ll feel the warmth of the earth around me, and admire the small place I’ve made for myself—embracing the cracks and fissures that’ve formed in my life along the way, whilst acknowledging that I haven’t let the most vital parts of who I am cleave away.
Like the ancient land around me, I’ll weather on—bathing in the starlight, reflecting all of the character and subtle gifts from the myriad turns of the sun and moon.
