Westering and Back

(Essay from the original Snowmelt collection. Added here years now after the death of C. D. Wright after a long flight back from South America to her home in the northeast. She died in her sleep, apparently from a pulmonary embolus. She was 67. And when I learned of her death I had about a week of what felt like true mourning for someone I had never met. Her books still move me. And I have some clarity about this trip that is clearer than some active memories from this week or even this morning.)

Lear: …you see how this world goes.

Gloucester: I see it feelingly.

Lead me, guide me to the light of your paper. Keep me in your arc of acuity. And when the ream is spent. Write a poem on my back. I will never wash it off.

                        C. D. Wright

                        From Deepstep Come Shining

Road Atlas and C. D. Wright—these are the things to carry west, along with various butterfly guides and paper. I tap the compass as if it would help. It says ‘C’ for some reason. As if change is needed and it does not care which direction I choose to accomplish this. (The next morning it says ‘W’ again as if pacified by the road and more cooperative after its spell of bile.)

Deepstep Come Shining being the book by Miss C.D. Wright that follows me west in the passenger seat. One can pick it up at a whim and scan a line. But the first night I am an arrow southwest. Focused until night pulls me into the metropolis and down for the dark. Sleep after 300 miles. Best to go quickly in the first dive. Metropoli are best transgressed in the dark.

Lights out, hon. During which, CD says, the hatching of supernovae, acres and acres of them.

Up early in the dark again and the Dallas sprawl is behind me. All I remember are the shadows of stacked entry ramps ten stories high. There was a glow against the underside of the sky—only the strongest of stars able to find you. The compass is still happy as I wend off the freeway onto real road, real landscape and the places where people actually live: a woman and her coffee mug wave from a porch; a cattle dog rides atop his load of hay, his hair in the wind. Dogs often seem happier than I am—happier perhaps than my whole capacity for happiness. I do not begrudge them this. It is the sign of an older soul.

The country grows low and brushy after Dallas. It becomes fences and trees, watercourses so tree green and compressed they look like the seedlines of monster gardeners who wandered with no plan but a hole in their pocket and a stagger and slouch toward the far Mississippi. Cattle, a rare antelope, here-and-there roadkill attended by the black windbirds whose noses are attuned to gut and rot. At one spot a skunk corpse is sprawled on the center of the highway all gone to God and then 50 yards further on is a vulture flattened into a shape out of Van Gogh (all those black wedges on his paintings before he shot himself). (I could see things getting out of hand on these straight highways: the domino effect of lure and death, lure and death; dying by speed.) Large black birds always remind me of Van Gogh. Especially dead ones, I guess.

Now and then a Roadrunner roadruns. I weave through them all. I stop at the meager watercourses, rumbling off violently into the gravel. There is rarely much water. I am on the alert for the change in the creature array, a shift in the biology map. Monarchs float by but they will stay with me no matter how far from home I go. They are floating south across the whole of the Americas. I am cutting across the great band of southbound Monarchs. I never fail to note them whatever my speed. I will go thousands of miles and never strike one dead with my window, though other blunter and slower insects do not fare so well.

At one place a herd of Roadrunners (this cannot be the collective noun for this bird; there may not be a collective noun for this bird) are in the road. And I am moving at 65 damn MPH. Three birds dodge smartly left but one tries for my side and then thinks better and turns away. I am bent in deceleration, lordotic with much grimacing, as the bird makes up his mind. And then I am past. I would have deepfunked for a month if I had flattened a Roadrunner. I would have shut down and prepared a roadside funeral with much ceremony, among the Monarchs and the wind: a decorated grave of desert flowers. (A grapple of Roadrunners? A spear of Roadrunners?)

Funston and Roby—town names are in my head and out. Midway, Texas. (Get out of here. Midway to where?) Cool, Texas—a small town. One of the houses sports a colossal statue of Yogi the bear. I wonder where Boo Boo is? Why have one without the other? The rest of the lawn is green and unornamented. Just Yogi, the bear with the tie and the hat, waving and smiling to the whole passing world. I think it is in Cool. Though maybe Cool had the antique store with the ghost of portliness—the lost child of Santa and Colonel Sanders—smiling and slightly frightening in the midday sun.

In Rome, Georgia, CD says, the citizens hail their fellows as Romans. It follows that in Athens, Georgia the citizens hail their fellows as Athenians. West of Rome is Poetry, Georgia. I wonder who lives there?

Suddenly, New Mexico. (Now that should be a name.) I mean I am in New Mexico. Instead the town is called White City? It is the Cavern region. More people around but not many. It is a small town near the caverns where everything is situated. The big hole in the ground takes everyone in except me. I am there for the desertscape. The trails above are completely empty of anyone but me and the wild, wild world. And there I can take my first walk into new fauna/flora. A roadsore bottom is happy to be up and about.

A scheme of Roadrunners? A shard?

My water supply is heavy. It is a descent into white stone and spinery. (Spinerocity?) Lovely and stark, windless and layered, I walk on fossils.

It is not that we live in a world of colored objects, CD says, but that surfaces reflect a certain portion of the light hitting them.

I had forgotten this. I see a snake. This never fails to stop me. This one is reflecting light at me. It is calmly stretched inside a Palmetto top. It has seen me with its large eye. I do not know its name. And I remember this is why I am here across all the miles. To be among things I cannot name. I squat down and we stare at each other. I take his image with my camera. I will name him later. For now he is the Slim, big-eyed Desert Bushsnake (we must start with something).

In the bottom of the canyon there is a breeze and the butterflies work against it. They move from yellow bloom to yellow bloom, working in the dry wash for this, their only nectar. Checkerspots and Skipperlings—I know parts of their names. Enough to fire circuits in the brain that will begin to sort things into memory and order. Desert mountain and shadow, white stone and butterflies, some vultures move in sweeping teeters along the higher rims. It is silent except for the turn of the breeze. I am alone but not yet lonely. I find the desert does somehow magnify the excellence of bottled water. And behind a big boulder I can see some moistness to the ground. I understand that I could dig and make a pit of new water if I were desperate enough, if I wanted to vanish from the scene. I could have carried a bag and tent and stayed out in the dark night. At moments I have regrets. Below me, in the leaves, there moves the largest centipede I have ever seen. It is the size of my largest elementary school ruler. Good lord, what does it eat?

Where he is, CD says, in the utter absence of chlorophyll. How could he choose to be without trees.

Sitting under bent scrub I frighten a dragonfly into the air. It is the only dragonfly I have seen in this waterless canyon. What are his odds of finding a mate here? He must eat the dry butterflies that work against the wind. What a diet. He skirts up and down the wash after I flush him and I see that I do, in fact, know this ones name though I have never gazed on his kind before. He is a dragon that one wishes for if one is a wisher of dragons. (Wished for, not upon. Though, why you couldn’t wish upon a desert dragon I don’t know. Surely they are lucky.) This is the Pale-faced Clubskimmer. Magical just by his name. The hatching of his egg somewhere around here must be quite a story. Is he born in moist sand? Born along in the rare washes of rain from some higher elevation where the water pools and falls? He lands back up under the shady scrub and hangs there. Waiting for something important, he ignores me. I respect small things that ignore me.

Before sunrise the next morning, it is pleasing to know I am only going thirty miles by car—to another canyon where water is aplenty. Outside my hotel, thousands of Cave Swallows are circling and diving to a morning drink at the hotel swimming pool. It must be fine water to a swallow’s palate. They whistle and skirmish on the phone lines. Only a few people are about. They all seem to ignore this whirl of birds. This seems normal.

I stop first at a spring and an old farmstead that has been preserved by the national park service. It is lush beyond belief in my new registry of things wet and dry. Water oozes from the ground and sparrows play in it. I’m tempted to wallow in it myself. I stand in the dense shade and listen to the water. Below me, I see shuffling motion and a very hairy pig steps out from behind cacti and into other cacti. It is a Peccary or Javelina. Oh my. They are very wary. (But so, sometimes, am I.) I hold very still. And more Peccaries come out, including some miniature ones. These, of course, I realize are babies and not midget Peccaries. (I am quick.) I have never seen babies. I have only seen adults when they were running away. These adults are strolling. They stop now and again to sweep that round pignose in the air. They peer down their noses right at me but I am a statue in the garden of the oasis. I watch the Peccs scrabble up in the prickly pear and pluck off the purple bud heads and eat them like apples. These are the size of lemons—purple lemon cups. They can’t seem to get enough of them. Several adults work each Pear plant. Their jaws work with a crunching piggy contentment. These must be tasty. Eventually twelve of these desert hogs are in view. The babies don’t eat. Or they try for some nipple but mama is eating Prickly Pear apples and she will have none of it. All is otherwise contentment in the world. Birds sing around me and pigs eat until one of the pink noses eventually gives me away or catches me on the air. To hogs, I think, I am a stench upwind, a stinkpot in their Eden, spoiling their breakfast. I have been worse.

A small hop away, there are no other cars in McKittrick Canyon. This is a good thing. There is a man in the visitor center, who must have been dropped off. Now this is a job. No going back until you are rescued from wilderness every day. The parking area is huge and I have heard that in summer this is the most popular canyon walk in these Guadalupe Mountains. He comes out of his info center to give me a look. He nods at me like a man who understands a need to walk in desert canyons. And surely he does.

When I come to the first running water I gape as though I have never seen such a miracle as a creek. It is the readjustment of the senses. Butterflies congregate at the water and flutter up when I draw near. It is like standing in the glass snowball after shaking. They settle back and I sit down to watch them next to the sound of water: Duskywings and Roadside Skippers. Above me, vireos call. The water is as clear as water can be. Further up the canyon the water disappears and returns in many places. It appears to run under ground periodically. And I must assume it does. Flowers track with the water. Swaths of Liatris and stands of Indian Paintbrush, along with a scatter of red and pink flowers I do not know. On one flowertop—a steady flap of orange. A Large Orange Sulphur is held by a feeding Mantis. She is eating away at the wiring of the butterfly body while it wings away in its last dreamy flight over the trees. At a shaded spot a Mule Deer comes straight over to me like it needs to have a word with me. I don’t know if it has been fed before or what the story is. But I am astounded as always by the size of its ears at close range. And by their dexterity. We humans lost out when we did not get mobile ear cups. Oh, the listening we could do.

West from El Paso the roads are so straight. They cut right to the horizon. I think of the paint they saved on no-passing lines. They could have attached one sign to the county line pole saying ‘Pass my friends like you have always dreamed of passing’. Unfortunately, there is no one to pass. But on the highway I see an army of coasters? All golden and chocolate and…and leggy? No, I lean up to see, they are spiders—Tarantulas. There are thousands of them and they all appear to be heading south across the road, making their runs across this weird gray river. I weave smoothly and steadily to miss them all—Charlotte’s and Miss Muffetts every one. There would be no special funeral stop for one of these beefy arachnids. But still, I concentrate and spare their spider souls. They are innocent of crime. Someday they will thank me.

I see two border patrol vehicles on this stretch and they are off the highway. For a moment I am leery they will stop me for my drunken Tarantula-avoidance driving.

“What the hell were you doing back there?”

“Saving Spiders sir.”

Who would hide out here in this place? Who would choose this place to sneak into? The landscape is red sand with a desert plant life that makes a great maze of hummocks as far north and south as you can see. Walking, you would be down in the furrows of the land amid red dust. Distantly there are mountains which ride up and out of sight as I go west but here it is flat. If it were not for these dry land plants this would be a dusty red Sahara smitten by the plague of desolation. My birding eye here is Scissortailed and Mourning-Doved into submission. Otherwise Ravens gather in unexpected places. They stand atop the power poles and ride the wind. Waiting for me to kill something, no doubt. But on I go without leaving even a Tarantula snack-cracker behind me.

The Arizona Mountains rise like unexpected towers from this flat land. True trees grow there. The temperature falls. There is water. There are birds. Outside the rooms in the only hotel for forever, hummingbirds zing wildly. Every room has a hummer stop. They zoom like the devil’s own icepicks out to blind us all. They jazz and whir, zig and zang like quickstop fairies of the needle-nosed variety. For all the days I am there I throw my arms up now and then to shield myself from the arrows of their going. I forget. I run up the stairs. I make small shrieks. I duck and cover. They make me laugh.

At dusk I drop into a wash surrounded by deep treeshadow. A Goshawk shoots up to perch above me and stare. It is a stunning hawk. We both stare. He seems to disbelieve me. He seems to be trying to disbelieve me out of his canyon. I am the stubborn mote in the eye of the hawk. An owl lifts and goes up the streambed. I find a butterfly lodged in a cedar fork for the night. Butterflies sleeping in dark trees: I wondered where they were.

Above 8000 feet I am a lung patient. I am wounded by deoxygenation. I gasp after tracking quickly over a flowered field. Signs warn of Black Bear. ‘Do not feed them’ it asks. I pray I do not. I have visions of the Black Bear who comes back for me night after night to take his dinner: my chops, my backstraps, my lovely hams. Here, so close to the damn sky, I could not outrun a dung beetle or a centipede, let alone an altitude adapted bear who longs for manmeat.

At the abandoned old forest station on top of the world I have the view of neverland and hereafter, silence and woodpeckers, the scraping exit of the clouds near my ear. If a black bear shows up I can break down the door of the skyhut and scream obscenities at the bruiser from behind the glass until he goes. Of course, it is a mile to my truck. It is over a mile to the floor of the desert to the east. It is as close to heaven as I am allowed in my history of sin and questionable behavior.

Ride. Eat. Sleep. It said on his T-shirt.

The closest gas stations, I am told by the kind lady who serves the only food for miles, are in Rodeo.

“There are two of them,” she says proudly.

Rodeo is downhill to the east. Clouds rain to the south and to the southwest. I cannot tell whereto the weather trends in this strange land. It seems to go where it wants, with whim or vengeance—I know not which. Closing on Rodeo though I note a sheriff’s car cocked in toward the road. I lean hard on the brakes, although I am not going that fast. I nod at the oddly unemotional sheriff and proceed to the only gas station I see. It is a town that appears to be about 200 yards in length. There is a diesel pump and one unleaded pump that says ‘out of order’. Hmm. Back down the strip, near the sheriff’s car I see the second pump—a squat affair, shorter than R2D2. It has one flavor of unleaded. And one price. They could charge 20 dollars a gallon and I would have to come up with the cash. I park and fuel while I watch the back of the sheriff’s head. He has a fine hat on. Inside, the combination cook and station attendant, takes my card and gives it a good scrubbing before she tries it against her reader.

“It takes awhile,” she warns. I stare at the drying pies and doughnuts inside a display case. I don’t want them. Or maybe I do.

“I won’t mind a little rain,” she says.

Out the door the rain bands still fall only a mile away.

“I believe you are due soon,” I answer, nodding in that direction.

She doesn’t seem impressed with the visual evidence. “I wouldn’t mind having to sweep the door out even.” She explains that on most of these flash rains the water comes in the door next to me and she must clear it out toward the gas pump with a broom. For some strange reason, I am comforted by this.

As I leave, driving back by the sheriff, I start to wave. And then I see the face of the man inside. He is still in his lazy lean to the left. It is the face out of ‘Twilight Zone’, flat and alien. It is a storefront dummy, plastic or styrofoam, fully dressed in his sheriff’s uniform. I do not know if it is eternally so, or if the sheriff just hauls the dummy into the back seat when he needs to use the car. Either way, I laugh, heading back into the mountains.

Were we not fearfully and wonderfully made.

I have a steak and two beers the night before I have to leave the high country. It rains again with strength and persistence that night as it had each night. Somewhere out there the hummers drip and shiver. Before dawn the pull toward home has started inside me. I have far to go. I track northward on a different route. Back roads again through a wildlife refuge in New Mexico. There I stop for dragonflies and find a young Peregrine Falcon trying to take some dinner on the wing. His failure cheers me. It is a dreamy miss and then a moment of dejection. He tries to cheer himself by chasing a killdeer on foot. It is a mythical moment in the birdworld. I am proud of the killdeer who knew not to fly in the face of the ultimate wing predator, the killdeer that knows he can outrun the winged demon on foot. And I feel for this falcon that fails in his youth, not yet knowing where his power lies.

On the east side of the continental divide I watch rain fall to my northwest and then west and behind me. In a desert wash I find the stormfallings have gathered and a tidal rain river blasts down the wash torrentially—making me almost run off the road (from shock, not direct water exposure). I watch the road signs for comfort, for signs of familiarity, for something undefined. At one long open stretch a sign makes me laugh and swerve. ‘Caution,’ it says, ‘dust storms may exist.’ It is the equivalent of finding a sign that says, ‘Caution, dental pain may be exquisite.’ Or, ‘Meteorites may fall from the sky.’ Of course they mean ‘caution dust storms may occur ahead’. Of course they exist. One may be churning across the Sahara now. But I see this sign several times. They made a stack of them. I am no stickler, but still, I laugh. Another sign says ‘Sweet Corn 1 mile’. And I think for a moment they mean a small town named Sweet Corn. Another lovely name that I think surely must be real somewhere. But I have never passed through Sweet Corn, Iowa or Sweet Corn, Indiana. In the atlas I find Sweetser and Swisher, Sarpy and Sac—and these in the corn states. Sad. Another sign says ‘Rest Rooms Pure Honey’ and I think ‘now those are the rest rooms I have been looking for’.

Darkness looms over me in the panhandle and over strange people that I begrudge my fatigue and my temporary homelessness. Can they tell I am falling away from something and towards another? I want to move farther east and I want to sleep. The radio is no help. Voices and warnings in the dark—doomsayers and murmurers. I think of the mountains I left. I think of the child in my bed and my wife, of the red dog. It is like a suspension between the poles: home and not home, a confounding dual magnetism. It is the strange need for both, the limitations of here and now. It is a determined two way pull, a strain sometimes but I would hate to stand somewhere in the world without it.

We were young. We was happy. Were we not. Happy. Young. Wasn’t we.

In the dark, at one point a tower appears. And it grows into surrealistic lines as I speed east. It turns into a cross that towers and towers until it is a stunning thing. Spotlighted from the ground—I think I have read of this cross, erected by a single man at the cost of 300 thousand dollars or some such. It is in barren, nowhere Texas but only a few hundred yards from the freeway. I am sorry I did not get off to go and stand under its light, to walk in its blunt-armed shadow. But as I pass I see a single figure, man or woman—it is unclear—and they are so close to the 10 story cross that they are craning their necks to see its heights. He or she leans back there in the spotlights as I whiz by. When I close my eyes the retinas still have the cross on them. And I think I can even see the dark little line of the figure beneath. I cannot decide if it is an image of awe or loneliness or the desperate prayer of a traveler, as the silhouette lingers and fades over the following miles.

Salvation. CD finds somewhere written above her own road. Don’t leave earth without it. Or your glasses. There is so much to see.

In the hotel that night I toss and turn between home and Black Bear country. The air conditioner drones and a streetlight mauls the curtain like it is dawn and dawn and dawn again. I finally just turn on the light for CD and I read her in the wee hours until dawn comes truly in its subtle but overbearing way.

Ride. Eat. Sleep. Where on earth will we go next.

Aint it hawd.

Hell, nothing scares me but real life.

Deepstep Come Shining.

The next day CD and I are home.

        HR