First night on the road is inevitably restless, our bodies missing the comfort and familiarity of home. Beds are too hard or too soft, motel rooms much too noisy and light to allow restful sleep. When I lay in the dark unable to sleep, I try to recapture the images seen and imagine the ones to come and I picture myself at the block, drawing and carving and printing exactly what I saw. The mind expands when you do that, and soon no references are needed and you can sit and dream anytime and anywhere and confidently draw what you saw.
Not wanting to add anxiety to unrest, I think how well I will sleep tomorrow perhaps.

Before we hit the road today there are needs a Spanish woman must meet immediately upon rising, one of which is the need for a cup of real coffee. Yes, every decent modern motel that charges more than fifty bucks a night, now offers the luxury of in-room coffee makers, but what is that stuff that you are supposed to brew! Colombian? Decaffeinated? Rich Mix Special? Please! I do hope I don’t offend America (North America, that is), but you do not know what you speak, when it comes to coffee. Resourcefulness is probably the asset I am most proud of possessing. And with resourcefulness and the aforementioned Spanish need, comes acute eyesight and the ability to spot an “espresso” sign from a piece away, a fur-piece, in some cases.

This morning I had the incredible luck of spotting my morning brew just across the street from the motel (coincidence that we picked that motel the night before? I don’t think so!!!). The unlikely host for this particular espresso sign (always neon, always) was a tiny Native American hand made products store and run by a genuine modern Native American gentleman whose name I did not ask, although I think the store was called Joe’s something or the other, hard to focus on the name with that shiny espresso sign in my face. Leather goods, medicine bags, moccasins, peace pipes and a variety of jewelry crowded the small store and I took pleasure in looking while the smell of my “double-straight-up” filled the shop. Music was playing and being a sucker for flute and guitar and simple yet rich sounds that fill your heart, I bought a couple of tapes made by a local celebrity of sorts. Spirit lands music would later fill the cab of the Jimmy, complimenting with the sound the views rushing by outside. Spirit sounds would much later fill my head, upon our return home, as the Navajo gracefully allowed our passage through the lands that inspired the sounds of the native flutes.

The Rockies could be seen now, light blue painted shapes just beyond the massive flat-top presence of Mesa Verde. This appropriately named mesa harbors so many secrets of ancient peoples that really you must visit on your own and be inebriated  by their spirit. Suffice it to say that you will be taken back to another time, if you care to be at all sensitive to such things, and will learn anew what legacies permeate the very soul of this region. Oh, I guess we are on the road again. Espresso has a way of getting me going fast. We always traverse the Rockies in most unusual ways. Rushing through them is impossible, as it should be. Time stands still here, be it the winding roads, the inevitable caravans behind logging trucks, the majesty of the peaks, the again bewitching effect of the sinuous roads. If we trace with a finger the roads we have covered on a Western States map, we seem to glide about a palm’s length on the first day, then use the thumb and forefinger close together to indicate the distance we covered on the second day–the day in the Rockies. We head for Durango, where decisions have to be made about which way to go from there, and where they welcome the weary traveler with public restrooms right across the street from a tiny espresso stand!

*****

As I mentioned, time is now on hold to the point that it seems as though there must be more minutes to the hour, or is it less? Anyhow, we climb. The Million Dollar Highway was so named because property on both sides of the road starts at a million and goes up from there. We play the inevitable “I’d like to live here” game, but not so close to the road, not so visible from the highway, add a lake, that farmhouse with a stream...no! that one with a pond and a meadow...We arrive at the conclusion that we will need a meadow, a forest of deciduous trees close to the house and pine trees a bit farther back, a stream with clear running water, and a pond big enough to leisurely canoe around on a lazy Sunday afternoon. The road makes you silly up here, or it possibly could be the diminishing atmospheric pressure.

Mountains overpower the road here forcing it to double onto itself in places and demanding that travelers slow to a crawl. Mountains surround us, not blue in the distance as in Nevada, but enveloping us completely rising from the sides of the road dressed in pine and spruce and daunting deadly cliffs. We often refer to this terrain as: “there be bear here.” Surely there must be. The road is a friend here, treacherous as it may seem, the only friend to lead us through this cruel beauty. Following is the only recourse and so I feel trapped, gone is the freedom given by the open desert roads–I am a captive here and so the magic, for me, dwindles. Not so for my traveling companion, my husband, who enjoys this stretch the most of the entire trip.

Surely an artist can find some magic here held high by the towering peaks. But what strikes me most about the crossings through the Rockies is just that, that they are crossings. You can bypass them if you wish, on the Interstates that carefully border the chain at its northern and southern most points. But if you choose to ascend these roads, then you are bound by their crossings, the only passages, doorways to the entries to the hallways leading to the doorways that exit.

In another sense, once you get deep enough into the mountains (“in amongst’em,” as we tend to refer to the situation) there are only road and mountains. As if the entire rest of the world had suddenly disappeared, the road is now a safety rope and the pull forward is strong. Many times clinging precariously to the very edges, always ascending (seemingly I cannot ever remember the downhills). “Don’t look down,” we caution knowing that we must peek here and there just to see how far down we would tumble if we err off course. There be bear here for sure! Here the road hides behind these massive forms that unfold as we twist and turn and look for the next passage, for the next break between the forested cliffs, for the last exit out to the open plains. Entries and exits continue to appear and vanish, and we must continue on this passageway between green rising slopes, enslaved by its winding course.

But I skipped the espresso stand, faithfully waiting just where I left it last. Here they sell triple shots and they don’t seem surprised when you order one without all the gunky additives that people choose to toss in to kill the pure coffee flavor–straight up is okay here, my kind of town. Durango is growing and we joke about urban sprawl. There is now West Durango and other developments sprouting up in the beautiful surroundings. Somehow a road filled with housing doesn’t seem like a road anymore–civilization turns roads into streets, and streets are not magic nor do they fill the senses nor beckon to follow. Streets are merely trod, daily, constantly.

We head straight North now, toward Montrose, cutting a path right through the heart of the mountains. Lined again with evergreens, some of this road seems indeed like we are traversing nature’s heart. Surrounded by walls of rock, massive muscular rock, the road turns into a winding artery, carrying the vital nourishment that is essential for the survival of the scant villages. Held fast to flats carved out of the sheer slopes, old mining towns survive and thrive here, offering travelers places to stop and giving credulity to the stories of the first settlers who dared find a pass for us to travel, years apart. Waterfalls bathe every curve of the road stealing my attention from the tedious task of driving through here, if only for a moment. Again the road is clouded in mystery here, visible only in its entirety by looking at a map. We can no longer tell our heading, or how long until the next town, victims once more to the lure of the meandering artery, all our senses filled, no, drenched and overwhelmed with the chant of  majestic mountains.

Subordinate to the mountains, the road becomes a cloudy memory. I didn’t really know why until my companion pointed out that in the mountains, you must look high. Of course! The summits constantly call in a demanding tone–it is not the road that beckons here, it is the commanding voice of the pinnacles. Look up! We, the mountains, stood long before the road was built, stood in the path of travelers, stood in the midst of settlers crossing, stood and stand high in the heart of this country. Look up! And so we do, because the mountains were here first and presumably will outlast any road that dares through their rugged crossings. Look high but also mind the road, or else beware. Guiding a vehicle through is an exhausting sensual dilemma. How many took a wrong step here while answering the cry of the heights? How many were simply turned back by threatening weather and ominous climbs?

*****

Different beauty here–given beauty, obvious beauty–the kind of postcard elegance and grandeur that everyone agrees on. Needless to say I enjoy more the hidden appeal that the desert offers, beautiful only to those who seek beauty in all things. But there are treasures to be found here, one of which is the alpine lake on top of the mountain that like an honest mirror reproduces the surrounding peaks so faithfully and turns the landscape upside down and the lake becomes a fantastic reflection.

Even as we reach the road that traverses through the summits, we still look high to the peaks that seem so close now, so within reach yet so brutally unattainable. Naked of the tall evergreens that dressed them until this point, the very fibers of muscular granite flex and tighten as we pass among high meadows and bare rock, now alternating in the landscape. A length of road is seen again, meandering desperately through the high lands, looking for a way down–for a way out. Still lured by the heights, the lake now reflects them low for us so that we may gaze at will as we again seek the road and follow the reservoir along its length.

On a calm day this lake resembles a sheet of liquid glass, darkened by the charcoal peaks that it reflects, sometimes by the leaden sky, often by the disorderly spackle of gray and white clouds above. A bridge traverses and we follow, glancing at the fishermen below who shamelessly break the surface of the glass with ripples cast away by their oars and their wakes. We think about bringing the kayaks sometimes, and breaking the surface ourselves. But we never do, we just follow the road and with it, seek the passage that will lead us down from these Rockies and out to the plains.

The downhill course shows us a bit more road, teasing us with a few winding curves but seemingly heading straight for another mountain. More and more they keep coming, a curve, a straight stretch of road, a steep bend...another mountain straight in front, sidestepping at the last minute to offer another stretch of road... In fact the drive now seems like a game without rules and without end. Some one, some time had to find their way through here for the first time. Someone played the game, as we do today, but without the guiding ribbon of asphalt, around the bend, through the next meadow, down the hill a bit, twisting and turning with the mountain sides, sidestepping at the last minute only to give way to another maze.

The river, a road itself, perhaps guided their path, but not until the Rockies have given way a bit and now beckon us from behind. Not until the mountains are satisfied and worn from playing do they cease their calls and allow us to move on by giving us a river to follow. Road and river dance downhill together in swaying rhythmic step. Road and river hop and giggle, dancing and prancing and racing perfectly paired in a choreographed race toward the flats.

We have traveled just enough to know that tomorrow we will exit the mountain tunnels and descend onto the great plains. We stop at the very mouth of the sierra, as if we are still under the chanting spell of the beckoning peaks and don’t quite want to leave yet. We stop, perhaps a bit early, but the time spent in the mountains is tiring and we want to walk around this village whose name means Exit. They still surround us and we still must listen to their chants of goodbye and their invitation to come again. Tomorrow we will follow the Arkansas (pronounced “our-Kansas” once we get closer to that state) as it widens and rushes to the plain. Tonight, we sleep listening to the fresh whispers of air that bring the cool breath of the snow high above, still close to the stars, still nestled by our muscular guardians of rock.

**********

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