Prairie Land

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Timewarp out of the summer of 2006 into January 2023 because that’s when I’m sitting down to transform this ancient blog post that, up until this time, was but one photo, the one at the very bottom, paired with a minimal amount of text. As I’ve stated the same in many other posts, back in the day, posts saturated with a lot of photos were taxing people’s devices and our internet bandwidth, so I kept things brief. But here I am a thousand years later (as measured in internet time), and I started dragging old photos out of their digital tomb and presenting some of my favorite zombies.

As was our routine in our impetuous youth, we sped across the landscape and stayed on the move. This day would have been no different as we obviously left Taos early in the day. Well, we left the town proper…

…as we were on our way to Taos Pueblo, a few miles up the road.

For over 1,000 years, this village has been occupied by the indigenous people who call it home. I have mixed feelings right now as I consider that I’m looking in on their lives as a curiosity, but then again, I do the exact same thing on the streets of California or if I visit a forest. I have an inherent curiosity that wants to know what’s what. If I could find an angle to be invited through this door to join in for a meal and an hour or two of listening to a story about those who lived here prior to the current inhabitants, I would jump at that opportunity.

This is what we all come to see: the Hlauuma (North House) of Taos Pueblo. We were too early for vendors to be present, the shops to be open, nor were we able to sign up for one of the tours that hadn’t begun yet.

I believe we are near Angel Fire, New Mexico, and I have the vague memory that as we passed through, we’d made a mental note, apparently quickly forgotten, that we should return to the area as it was extraordinarily beautiful.

Reaching Cimarron, New Mexico, we had a choice: go straight ahead and reach an interstate or turn left and go north on a secondary route, we opted for the main highway as we had a ways to go today. As for the photo, this is looking back to whence we came.

Get real, we did NOT take the interstate! We are plying U.S. Route 64, a two-laner taking us by wonderful places such as the Colfax Tavern, where they call their lone outpost next to the road “Cold Beer,” though, in reality, it’s at the farthest western point of Maxwell, New Mexico.

A band of rain and a whisp of lightening hover over the flattening landscape of the Great Plains in northeast New Mexico

During our road trips across America, Caroline and I try to respect and appreciate the culture and beautiful land as best we can. Out on these nearly barren plains, one can almost imagine that just 150 years ago, there were 60 million bison eating their way across a sea of grass. It is a tragic shame that the imagination of so many overstimulated TV addicts cannot see the wonder that exists even in places like the plains where seemingly nothing much at all is happening, but an entire complex ecosystem once thrived.

We take a small, lonely road called NM-72 from Raton, New Mexico, to Folsom, the site of the famous archeological dig of the early 20th century, where it was determined that humans had lived in North America for nearly 10,000 years. Six years after this find, and 170 miles southeast near Clovis, New Mexico, a Clovis point was unearthed, dating Native American occupation of North America back 13,500 years. A long history of Native Americans exists in the United States but is largely ignored. Current thinking places humans in North America for about 20,000 years now, but our (white) ancestors discovered America.

Maybe if the indigenous peoples of North America had left empty ketchup bottles in their wake, we could have taken them seriously, or as Eddy Izzard once said (I’m paraphrasing), without a flag, the land was up for grabs.

The weather on Capulin Volcano forced us to stay in our car; we drove up, we drove down, and we were gone.

If this is the biggest grain silo we’ve ever seen, we must be in Texas, and from the name atop those silos, you can deduce we are passing through Sunray.

After Sunray, we arrive at sunflowers. Funny how sunflowers are so big and happy looking, and yet, as they fill the view with their incredible splash of color, they offer nothing in the way of scent.

South of Morse, Texas, at the intersection of Farm to Market Road 281 and Texas Route 136. Now, we are really in the middle of nowhere.

About an hour later, I’m pulling up and introducing Caroline to the Cattle Exchange Restaurant in Canadian, Texas, where my mother and I first ate the best ribeye steak I’d ever had. Wouldn’t you know it though, Caroline is a vegetarian, and while she agreed that the bread pudding, bread from a nearby bakery, the salsa, and baked potato were all superb, she does not have an opinion about their amazing steaks, though she does see that it brings her husband incredible joy.

And here we are at our lodging, also in Canadian, Texas. This is the 5,400-acre home of the Arrington Ranch but also this gate and barn figured in the Tom Hanks film Castaway, as did the wings the young woman in the film was making. I’ll share more about this place tomorrow, but first, I must recover from a food coma.

Chaco Culture, New Mexico

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

On the way to Taos, New Mexico, we made an unscheduled stop at Chaco Culture National Historic Park. This was our fourth time visiting this World Heritage Site. Those first few words are part of the original post I shared back in July 2006, along with one photo, the overhead view of Pueblo Bonito a few photos below this. This acknowledgment is part of an update in January 2023 aiming to share more of the details and more images from our epic 4th of July trek to Texas. As was the case with the previous day, this post was originally fewer than 200 words long, and there are no notes to refer back to that might illuminate what was in our minds over the course of the seven days of this particular vacation. No matter, my goal is to add some kind of context that should Caroline or I read this ten years hence, we’ll be entertained that this writing captured something that rings true with what might have been.

This wouldn’t be the last time we visit Chaco, and though we’ve been here a number of times, we continue returning, looking for something that remains elusive. I equate this search with the same thing I’m looking for in cathedrals, castles, and other historic sites: the echoes of those who preceded us. Some might think I’m looking for ghosts, but that would be silly as I do not believe in phantasms. I do think that humans have a powerful recollection that is able to project into our consciousness what might have filled the space at one time based on things we’ve seen in the past. For example, if you were chased as a child by a dog at a particular corner in the neighborhood you grew up in, you might look for the sign of a dog a decade later when making a visit to that childhood home. In that sense, you have the image of the ghost of that dog in your mind’s eye. I’m looking for those indigenous people I’ve seen elsewhere to be transported here because I wish it to be so. I have no real expectation of experiencing such a thin, but it is that unfulfilled dream scenario that brings me back to finally discovering what I failed to see previously.

Literally, hundreds of people could have occupied this kiva 1,000 years ago, while today, we visitors can only try to imagine the sights, sounds, smells, and nature of the ceremonies, storytelling, or celebration that would have occurred here under a massive roof that once covered the kiva. For me, this is the grand cathedral of the ancestral people that helped shape the culture of the southwest.

We are fortunate that even this much still exists of the history of these people, and while many artifacts have been preserved, there is a secret life that, though it may echo across time, remains secret and mostly hidden to those of us who’d love to peel back its veil of mystery.

Toddlers maneuvered through these rooms, teens slept here, adults realized lives, and elders shared wisdom with the group that allowed them to exist in an environment that was likely just as remote and severe as it is to us who visit today. What I imagine they did have was a routine that reassured them that this life was the best life and that their version of normal was the glue that held the fabric of their society together.

We may look through the windows and doors of Chaco, but there is nobody on the other side. Everyone is gone, and there are no markers or diagrams to offer us an understanding of anything more than what we might choose to imagine. The hands that toiled to build a dream have fallen silent long gone, and as much as I desire, I cannot pull their sounds from the ether. As in the cathedral, where on occasion I can smell the frankincense or myrrh, I yearn to smell anything that might linger here all of these hundreds of years after the inhabitants left and, as I might also experience in a church, as the choir finishes a hymn and I listen to the reverberations of those voices moving through the cavernous space, I long to hear a native voice, drum, or flute that has remained lost in a corner here over the centuries.

View of Pueblo Bonito from overlook at Chaco Culture in New Mexico

With a cool morning but a blazing sun, we opted to take a hike up the sandstone face near Kin Kletso. A somewhat steep 350-foot (106 meters) scramble up rocks and boulders leading to a narrow crack slicing upwards to the top of the cliff, the Pueblo Alto Trail offers a spectacular view of Pueblo Bonito, featured here as today’s photo of the day.

I now wonder, how could I have left out these ancient sea fossils we found atop the cliffside? Was my curiosity as strong about them and their lives in the millions of years before the indigenous humans arrived, or was I blinded by my desire to better understand the Puebloan inhabitants?

What’s encoded here? I’m going to put forth that this is a packing list and directions for those going on a journey to Mexico to trade chocolate with the people who lived well south of here. Sure, it might mean something altogether different but who cares at the moment one is taking in what one cannot understand?

From the top of the cliffside, looking in the opposite direction of Pueblo Bonito, the view leads into badlands with nothing on the horizon aside from an infinity of space that might go on for eternity.

Now thoroughly sunburned and almost four hours behind schedule, we leave the park, bouncing over 20 miles of rough washboard dirt road to reach a modern ruin, a relic of a gas station in Regina, New Mexico. Good thing we didn’t need what they weren’t selling.

And with the convenience of gasoline in an air-conditioned car, we close the infinity of space in mere minutes, able to travel roads paved for our convenience with nary a thought of ever getting truly lost. As a matter of fact, just how difficult is it these days to be lost, excluding those locked in mental illness? We just keep going, and ultimately, we’ll get where we need to be.

Excuse me while I go out on a limb, but I just wrote about a magmatic dike seen at Shiprock yesterday. I’m guessing this here was a sedimentary dike, also called a clastic dike, where sediments filled a space between other rocks, and then those rocks eroded, leaving this column of red rock.

Like an Eye of Horus or maybe more like the eye of the hawk, this cloud over Antonito, Colorado, is open to interpretation, but when we see symbols and reminders of the life around us, how might these appearances have influenced people to see the spirit of all things in the world around them?

We’ve already passed through Cuba, Coyote, Cebolla, Brazos, and Chama today, and while they obviously leave impressions, the images shared from this day ended up being more important to my memories than the recording of those places that have names.

Only to contradict me in the next paragraph, we stopped here in Manassa, Colorado, to show my age. We are standing outside the birthplace of famous boxing champ Jack Dempsey. Oh, wait, Dempsey fought from 1914 to 1927, and I was just confusing my knowledge of the past with showing my age, but in a sense, I am showing my age as it would seem to me that the current generation has quite a limited knowledge of cultural history beyond about the 1980s.

I point out a lot of things I’m in love with, but have I ever shared my appreciation for heavy clouds in the distance where some small corner of the looming giant bursts and a column of rain blots out the light from behind it, leaving no ambiguity that a torrent of water is falling from the sky over there? And then, if that wasn’t enough, we are treated with a curtain of crepuscular rays peaking out from the heavens above.

I look at this photo with what might be considered a sense of dread. As a modern human, I cannot know what it is to look at a horizon and have the understanding that there is just much more of the same ahead. How long would I have needed to walk 35,000 years ago to reach an end, a sea, or an impassable chasm? In another age, how much time might I have been able to afford a long walk under the sky with no sense of purpose or responsibility other than to myself to find food and water along the way and fend off animals that might want to eat me?

I’d imagine that the family that stopped here along their path in life had something similar in mind about going out for a walk in the middle of nowhere when they found this isolated corner; they felt it worthwhile to drag what they’d need out here to make a living and build a house. Things must have been tough out here as even to this day, only a few people seem to have figured out how to survive. Even the tenacity of indigenous people must have understood that you do not build permanent camps out here, only use this land during the seasons compatible with nomadism.

Now, as it grows late in the day, we need to stop this daydreaming and go connect with where we’ll take refuge for the night. Our destination is down in Taos, New Mexico, where we already have a reservation at the Indian Hills Inn near Taos Plaza for only $78, while dinner was at Antonio’s – The Taste of Mexico.

Rusting in Colorado

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Joe & Aggies Cafe in Holbrook, Arizona

Here I am, once again, performing restorative surgery on old blog posts. It’s 2023 as I take the scalpel to carve things up, enhance, and hopefully improve the appearance of what were some sorely lacking posts about this 4th of July 2006 trip that took us to Texas. Take this entry that is very specifically titled Rusting in Colorado: that reference was about the rusting swing found near Cortez, Colorado, that you’ll see down below. That original post was 185 words about the swing and its owner but now, with greater bandwidth and storage available, I’m adding more photos and trying where I can to pull details into the trip narrative.

As was already noted and shown in yesterday’s post, we stayed in a Wigwam right here in Holbrook, Arizona, on old Route 66, just down the street from Joe & Aggie’s Cafe. This little standalone cafe opened in 1943 and was operating up until 2020, when COVID-19 hit. Suffering a couple of deaths in the family, loss of employees, and the subsequent loss of momentum, Joe & Aggie’s may well be permanently closed.

Road #77 to Keams Canyon, Arizona

There was a strategic reason for spending an overnight in Holbrook, and that’s because State Route 77 travels north out of town up into the Navajo Reservation. Somewhere out there is Indian Wells and the nearby Bidahochi Butte; it was there that we turned east on Greasewood Road, a.k.a. Indian Route 15.

Sunrise Trading Post ruin south of Ganado, Arizona on Greasewood Road

Finding the Sunrise Trading Post in 2023 was slightly difficult as someone identified another ruin as being the Sunrise Trading Post, though that building has no signage remaining. Well, we stopped to photograph this decaying old building near Shonto Spring, and, zooming into the image, it clearly says this is the Sunrise Trading Post. Sure, there could have been a second location, but the information regarding these old outposts is thin.

Sign to Nazlini, Arizona

North on Highway 191, we come to Indian Route 26, pointing us in the direction of Nazlini, exactly where we want to go.

Navajo Route 26 to Nazlini, Arizona

The Navajo Reservation is a vast land about the size of West Virginia with what seems like only about a dozen paved roads. In order to see more and go farther, we are looping out around the New Mexico border before heading north, all the while on good old dirt roads.

A roaming horse on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona

From the badlands of Nazlini, we climb into the forested area approaching Sawmill.

On the Navajo Reservation in Arizona

About the time we reached Wheatfields, also on the Navajo Reservation, we encountered paved roads again and some beautiful sandstone monuments.

Roadside Navajo food near Lukachukai, Arizona

But it was in Lukachukai that we’d finally be able to nab some lunch and not just ordinary grub; we’re talking roast mutton on frybread, the king of sandwiches.

On the road to Red Rock, Arizona

You take Sedona and the crowds of pretentious arrogance, and we’ll bask in the isolated beauty of Red Valley.

Stopping at the Red Rock Trading Post in Red Rock, Arizona

Stopping at the Red Rock Trading Post in Red Valley, Arizona. Was it for gas, ice cream, or maybe a hunt for a Coca-Cola with lime? That damned drink haunted us for years, and as I started writing about it, I needed to do some fact-checking where I learned that I was on the mark regarding the timing of when we might actually have been looking for it. It turns out that Coke first introduced Coke with lime in early 2005, but it was quietly discontinued somewhere in 2006. Well, we didn’t get the message and spent the next years looking for it again and again. I need to stop writing about this 17-year-old trip for a moment and write the Coca-Cola corporation some hate mail right about now.

Caroline Wise and John Wise at New Mexico state sign

Looks to me like Fat Boy had all the ice creams and half a case of Coke with lime. Oh, how I miss that stuff! By the way, we are entering New Mexico on the Red Rock Highway, a.k.a. Indian Route 13, and I have to admit to some confusion: you see, we’re either in Red Valley or Red Rock, Arizona, and that depends if you are reading a map from Google or Bing.

Shiprock in New Mexico

Off in the distance is Tsé Bitʼaʼí, or “the winged rock” as translated from Navajo. We know it as Shiprock. The central formation is an ancient neck of a volcano. The “fin” that is here in the foreground is a volcanic dike made up of relatively rare lamprophyre rock that originates near subduction zones. At one point about 30 million years ago, the area we are standing at would have been at least 1,000 feet below the surface it has since been eroded, thus exposing all of this.

Ute Mountain Pottery in Cortez, Colorado

This shop south of Cortez, Colorado, on what was once Highway 666 in Towaoc, was the Ute Mountain Indian Pottery factory, where we bought a couple of hand-made, hand-painted bowls. Those bowls, barely visible on the left, are treasures of ours used multiple times per week.

Levell Harris of Cortez owns this old rusting swing in Colorado.

Through Cortez and around Mesa Verde, we traveled south, returning to what was to become today’s “photo of the day” until 2023. I took this picture roadside in southern Colorado at what appeared to be an abandoned home. As it turned out old man Lavell Harris of Cortez owns the place and used it as a hideout from the wife when he needed a moment away from it all. The swing was made by his father-in-law some 50 years ago. Lavell passed away in 2014.

Anasazi Inn in Farmington, New Mexico

From Colorado, we dropped back into New Mexico to stay the night. While the itinerary suggested the Anasazi Inn, there must have been something that triggered us to get away from that place. Instead, we opted for the Budget Inn down the road, a mistake as it was one of the worst rooms we have ever stayed in. Why was it so bad, you ask? Shit on the wall in the bathroom was just one part of the overall dark picture. Why didn’t we leave, you might also ask? We were cheap, we were tired, and it adds to the color of the memories we gather.

Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico also known as Sky City

Caroline and I love visiting the Native American cultural locations dotting the southwest and this trip to New Mexico was one of the best. Sky City, also known as Acoma Pueblo, lies just off Interstate 40. The guided tours of the village atop a tall mesa are offered daily from a nearby visitor center. One of the highlights, besides the great historical sense you get, is when the guide allows you to leave the Pueblo down the old trail. Today, a graded dirt road takes you up and down the mesa, but years ago, a small cut through some rocks and a steep climb on some carved footholds were the only way to come and go, and it was the way we chose to go. This visit was back on September 1st, 2003.

Click Here to view that trip.

Mother and Son Going to Buffalo, NY – Day 16

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Texas

No repeat of the stench-filled feedlots found in the other corner of Texas that Mom and I drove through. Just a grain silo and a bunch of not much else. Time to hit the gas and haul ass to Arizona. I need a hug.

New Mexico

It was only about 30 miles to New Mexico. Feels like we’re almost home.

New Mexico

Remember those back roads we tried to stay on for the previous two weeks? Well, that preoccupation has been tossed out the window as we hunt for the cactus that will tell us we’re home.

New Mexico

This photo of monsoon clouds was taken at 80 mph (130 kph) through the windshield of the van traveling west on Interstate 40 in New Mexico. Yes, it was from the driver’s seat; I was driving – duh!

Arizona

Woohoo, it’s Arizona, and again, with no time to stop for a photo, it must be taken as we drive by. The next stop is home, as this trip is now more or less over.

Mother and Son Going to Buffalo, NY – Day 1

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

New Mexico

This series of 15 blog entries that will follow me and my mother on a cross-country road trip was long neglected and not published for too many years. My mother would have argued that this was my modus operandi regarding her. You see, she was aware that by 2005, my mother-in-law Jutta Engelhardt had been to America nearly half a dozen times and that on each visit, Caroline and I would take her out to see a new corner of the United States. Yet in the ten years since we’d moved from Frankfurt, Germany, to Phoenix, Arizona, we did very little with my own mother. The truth is she could be a difficult person to spend time with and was the reason we started traveling out of state every Thanksgiving to avoid the inevitable drama that would unfold at those dinners.

I’d carved time out to take Auntie and Grandpa to Florida back in March, and by mid-May, Jutta was returning to America for her longest visit yet of two months. With my mom strong-arming me into taking her to Buffalo, New York, for what she was telling me could be her last visit ever to the place of our birth, I reluctantly acquiesced. It turned out that the timing was going to work in Caroline’s and my favor as my mom wanted to leave before Caroline’s mom was set to return to Germany, and this would mean that Caroline wouldn’t have to be in a car with my mother and me for two weeks nor would she have to sacrifice any more valuable vacation time for a trip we both had reservations of making.

This would end up being the only vacation my mother and I would ever make together. In March 2018, my mother passed away after suffering a stroke in October 2017, and this trip to Buffalo was indeed her last time in New York. The difficult nature of our relationship will likely unfold over the course of these blog entries. I’m telling you this upfront as it is nearly 2020 now that I finally sit down to commit the two weeks on the road with her using the notes I took during that trip, which are far from comprehensive. I’ll be taking a look back with the help of the 11,585 words that I did write back during those days but there are giant gaps in the record that I’ll be trying to write to. It is due to my mother’s and my at times, cantankerous relationship that my focus on not wanting to remember what should have been important impressions were being intentionally neglected. So, through the filter of time and with no small amount of bias, I’ll do my best to convey my perspective, which will likely display a certain animus. I will chronicle the dysfunctional relationship between a mother and her firstborn because that’s the way it was. The following two paragraphs are from my original notes and are nearly verbatim; after this, that line will blur.

Texas Sunset

I depart once more as a guide across America, but this time it’s with my own mother, Karen Goff, formerly Wise, formerly Kurchoff. The absurdity that we might get through two weeks together is not lost on anyone who knows us. I’m starting to feel I should adopt the nom de guerre “road-sherpa.” Once out on the road, my mom remembers that she had forgotten a bag of food on the counter at home she wanted to bring along. An hour later, she’s thinking about lunch. Fifteen minutes later we are talking about what we’ll be eating in Buffalo. Moments later, the conversation turns to dreaming about eating Walleye. My mom thinks about food a lot, all the time, according to her. Besides our conversation about things gastronomical, the rest of the day is uneventful. By the time we are in Albuquerque, we call On-Star-O-Line (Caroline, who earned that title while helping me with online services back in March during the Florida trip) for help finding us some New Mexican cuisine. She directs us to Sadie’s – a winner.

Onwards, the road becomes our drive into a grim terror. Blue skies give way to heavy looming gloom that pushes Mom into hallucinating her worst fears. No, not a lack of restaurants on the road ahead. Not earthquakes, either. She thinks she is seeing three simultaneous tornados falling from the sky. Wake up, Chicken Little, they are clouds; that is Virga. Return to thinking about ice cream, Mom.

For a few hours, we drive through intermittent rain and lots of lightning before the real storm hits. Just outside of Dalhart, Texas, Mom accuses me of the impolite act pertaining to particular bowel issues. I insist that there’s no deluge in my pants and even demand of her, “How dare you accuse me of that?” To prove it to her, I roll down the windows, which overwhelms the interior of the car with a powerful stench that simultaneously temporarily blinds her and brings her to retching. These are the farmlands where America’s cattle are fattened up before slaughter. On nice warm and humid nights like tonight, the fog we were seeing is actually the visualized effluvium of beef fattening madness. Take a big lungful, Mom, and please don’t attribute that to your son again. Through tears of laughter, she says she’s certain she is gonna vomit if I don’t immediately put up the windows and leave this godforsaken corner of Texas. In Stratford, hopefully, far from the cow stink after having driven 765 miles, we grab a $38-a-night motel with an air conditioner mom wants to believe will mask my snoring. Get ready to feel the pain; your ears ain’t heard nothing yet.