Day 13 - Laundry

May 8th, a Monday, and our last day in Santa Fe. We are both feeling overstimulated from nearly two weeks on the road. All the different landscapes, towns, and people - lots to think about. So, a quiet day of laundry, washing the bugs off the car and stocking up the cooler was a welcome pause before we head east again.

A low-key day is a good time for reflection, for digesting the sensory overload. We wake up in the night with our minds racing with images of the road and the people we have met there. We are also both struck by how the landscape has become a partner on this trip.

Ivan Doig talks about the essence of the west and how it became character in his books. Here are a few words from his seminal book, This House of Sky: 

I glance higher for some hint of the weather, and the square of air broadens and broadens to become the blue expanse over Montana rangeland, so vast and vaulting that it rears, from the foundation-line of the plains horizon, to form the walls and roof of all of life’s experience that my younger self could imagine, a single great house of sky.

Montana is still to come on this trip, but we have seen more than a few scenes that brought Ivan's words to mind.

Having been born in the west, this landscape is a part of us. However, living in the city does not truly expose you to the land out there. Driving through the Mojave Desert, the Painted Desert, and Navajo country while still in the car was visually stunning. Getting out of the car was another thing altogether. When we opened the door to get gas in Seligman, the wind nearly ripped the door off of the car. Wind became an action, a verb. The many descriptors we use for wind – buffeting, pounding, beating, ripping, pummeling – all seem thin and pale in the face of the real thing.

I think of our parents and grandparents on the farm or ranch working out in that environment and I am staggered by their achievements, although financially they barely scraped by. I think of my little Grandma Hemstock working the garden, feeding animals, and accomplishing a variety of household chores, during the 1930’s no less, in that climate. Once more, I am humbled by their feats. We now head on to the unknown country. Spaces that we have never seen, and we wonder about how the landscape will affect us.

... and did we mention the stars? Is it possible they can be so clear and so numerous. The landscapes we've been through give us the same sense of awe as gazing a the stars on a clear night. At lunch today we heard Louis Armstrong singing Wonderful World, and indeed it is.

License plate count - Alaska, Arizona, Arizona Navajo Nation, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee. Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming, and the US Government. And from Oh Canada - British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Quebec. And from Mexico - Sonora.

Expanding on the landscape theme, I was reminded of a book I read a few years ago, called Bold Spirit. It is the story of a woman, a mother of eight, who walks from Spokane, WA to New York city to win a $10,000 wager and stave off foreclosure of the family farm. I suspect she saw a lot of landscape!

Today's little ditty, 22 The Eagles Farewell Tour 1 Dirty Laundry - YouTube