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ROAD DIARY: Yet another 'tiny' project
The road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the road has gone,
And I must follow if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And wither then? I cannot say.
-Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien
Preface (of sorts)
I was inspired by this trip. I decided to look at this voyage a bit differently
than I have before, so I concentrated my attention on the road and the way the
landscape allows the road as a passage. Roads and how we travel through them
turned into an analogy for life itself. I decided to write all my thoughts in
a travel diary, so I have been spending some time doing that. This will be an
illustrated diary, with woodcuts and wood engravings, and my first book project.
I will publish on my web site as I go along. My main problem right now is that
I want to go back to all those
places that I am writing about and absorb anew all the wonderful inspiration
and beauty gained in this trip.
I learned to "see" in a different way. I snapped pictures right through the
windshield (amazingly turned out okay for reference), over my shoulder, out
the back window without even looking. A trick while driving to be sure, but
I wanted to remember. I learned to remember better with my memory, catching
every light and shadow and line and form and shape and curve, transforming
every road-scape into an instant mental woodcut print. The task now for the
artist in me is to attempt to communicate all those feelings and all that awesome
beauty. The open road, the sinuous mountains, the stark desert, the blasted
canyons, the rocky passes, the fertile farms--roads traversing them all and
connecting them with one another.
Ars longa, vita brevis! (dangit).
Tuesday, August 1st, 2000
They say that a crucial difference between amateur and professional photographers
is that amateurs don’t take enough pictures. I sure don’t want to be accused
of such error, so I try to make up in quantity what lacks in quality, when it
comes to taking pictures. In any case, I always end up with a bunch of photos
that elicit a quizzical: “What was I trying to –er– capture there?”
They’re just reference pictures anyway. I also don’t want to be accused of
being the kind of artist that works from photographs (heavens, no!), so I figure
that if I take really bad pictures I will be absolved of that particular artistic
deadly sin. Most of the photos I took on this trip were snapped through the
windshield, probably freaking out the photo-shop where I will develop them who
will undoubtedly wonder why someone wasted 8 rolls of film on such idiotic blurred
shots.
We
travel to Kansas from Nevada every year, by road in the summer, by plane in
the winter. This year, I wanted to see things in a new way, so I decided to
focus on the roads. Amazing things happen when you decide to view the same thing
with a different lens, so to speak. Before leaving I had made a couple of engravings
from memory of roads going into the distance. Hooked on the feeling, I wanted
more. Roads are magical, are they not? They take you places, they lead you by
their mere presence to lands unknown. They speak to you of things past and they
plead that you follow, only to plead again but with a luring and compelling
voice, haunting and beckoning.
We set out early, as one must when leaving the desert, otherwise risking being stuck a hundred miles from nowhere with an overheated vehicle. Leaving the desert valley is an interesting experience. No matter which way one exits, there are a good 2 hours of what most people call ugly road—desert on both sides, barren lands everywhere you look, nothing but a four-lane highway in front and behind. That’s to those that don’t know how to see. I guess my job as an artist is to point out what really is there, if you care to look.
But the land isn’t really flat at all, not like it will be later in Kansas.
In fact, later I came to the conclusion that no part of Nevada is as flat and
featureless as most of Kansas (not to knock Kansas and its lush green fields).
No, Nevada’s desert is rugged as a lizard’s skin, washes and ridges scar its
surface in every direction, mountains frame every view, purple in the distance,
gaining warmth and color as they close in—or as one approaches them, leaves
them behind, and heads into the next layer of mountains. Blue, purple, violet,
magenta, red, sandstone pink, sandy brown, layers upon layers of hills and mountains,
different every time one looks up from the lines between which the vehicle must
be kept at all times. The interesting thing is that fixating upon a point where
the road disappears will eventually bring that very point under the vehicle’s
tires, and the road will again beckon you to follow it to the end, just over
the next mountain range—just another hundred miles over the horizon. And then
another hundred miles…and perhaps another.
The road just advances at this point–it might have been built a few yards that way or this way, but it was built right there–moving ahead at speed. Turn offs are few and far between, as are gas stations and shade. Up close, the desert is full of life, both plant and animal, but it is scant and efficient, as one must be when living out where annual rainfall may not fill a standard bucket–not even once. And it appears lifeless to the uninformed, to the non-observer, to the tourist heading for greener lands, or the Hollywood fun times of modern California. Amazingly enough, towns grow here, inexplicably just far apart enough to fill everyone’s tank with gasoline and coolers with ice. They didn’t sometime ago, and then travelers relied on springs and watering spots placed just far apart, or were forced to follow the river. I guess things haven’t changed all that much.
Soon enough, the open desert gives way to the mountains, which surround it at every horizon and which must be crossed to exit the valley. How pioneers on horseback found these passes among the bare pinnacles that fence the flats is impossible to determine. But they did, and now we have roads where only horse-hoofs used to step. In fact one amazing thing about traveling is that one never really has to leave pavement—not from our driveway to our destination, not for a minute. We could, of course, but we don’t, not for a minute, as if we were trapped by the confines of that pavement that connects us to everywhere.
The feeling is that you are going to
run smack into the mountains unless this road knows what it is doing, because
there they stand right in front of our faces. But there is a crossing, there
always is. And like any of these desert passages, crossing through the Virgin
River Gorge feels like driving through a tunnel. Never mind that among 
walls
of bare rock there is a flowing river, often the color of mud, but always full
of water, somehow surviving the 120 degree heat and in turn giving live to the
mountain sheep, rabbits, coyotes and other critters that inhabit the area. The
road plunges into the canyon walls, often a hundred feet high, winding with
the meandering river. Surrounded by barriers and sometimes with cliffs on one
side or the other, it is difficult to pay much attention to see the scars left
by the drills where explosives were burrowed every ten feet to blast the rock
and make room for this road. Foot by foot, blast by blast, the road was painfully
carved to connect two worlds—isn’t that what all roads do? And foot by foot
and much slower than the ten years that it took to perfect this passage, the
river carved itself a road, of sorts, a canyon for its own passage. Flash flood
by flash flood, rain by rain, gnawing at the sandstone, the river carved deepening
the channel until it felt itself comfortably able to meander through the canyon.
We spot a ram on top of a ridge, proudly standing silhouetted against the
perpetual blue sky. Too far for the camera, of course, but we are rewarded for
a few seconds by the handsome fellow. Too fast we pass by, not enjoying the
sights. Here in the gorge, I feel really trapped by the journey, pushed by the
traffic behind, pulled by the traffic ahead–just passing by and thinking about
the day when we will come just to here, to this point. 
And
we will hike the canyons and go down to the river again, and up those washes
where rivulets disappear into the walls, just to see where they go. And maybe
that time, we will stay a while and enjoy the proud ram under the blue skies
just a little bit more. But we must drive on because the road commands that
we do so. We are on a road trip, after all, and the purpose is to “get there.”
Wasted are the washes and the promises of a hike and the refreshing river below
and the walls rising around us–we are on a road trip, after all, and adventure
in itself. We must continually choose between stopping or going, between taking
a longer break to linger on a view, or gaining a few precious miles. The road
again compels us to choose.
" Let us as artists, then, feel that we have trust. Let us be sincere, if
for no other reason than to give our craft character. Let us choose to
reproduce beauty rather than the sordid, if only to elevate the standards
of beauty. If we seek an audience to our way of expression, let us make the
things we have to say worth while. When we have a choice, let us build, not
tear down. If we are endowed with the vision to encompass beauty, let us be
grateful, but not selfish about it. To live and work only to please one's
self, using art as a means of display for uncontrolled temperment and
undiciplined license, for devorcing oneself from the normal and ethical
standards of life, to my mind is wrong. Art belongs to life, and essentially
to the common, everyday man.
Art is essentally giving. Ability of high order is rare. The successful may
well rejoice that they few, among the many, have been given the eyes that
see, the hand to set down, the perception to grasp, and the heart to
understand the big truth. What we take in we can strive to give back in
greater perfection. It seems to me that this would not be possible without
patience, humility, and respect for life and mankind."A. Loomis
"All the things have not been done in art that can and will be done. I don't
think our bones and muscles will change much and that light will shine
differently, so all the good rules will still hold. I can only say that you
must have the courage of your convictions, believing that your way is right for
you and for your time. Your individuality will always be your precious right
and must be treasured. Take from the rest of us all that you can assimilate,
that can become a part of you, but never still the small voice that whispers to
you, 'I like it better my way.'"
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