2004-03-30

Texas to New Mexico and on to Arizona

Ah yes. Texas.

40 k�zillion acres of (to them) nothing. Cows can only graze so much, there�s no water, and no place I want to put a house, so what�ll we do with it all? Ah! I know! We�ll pile all these dead vehicles up there! That�s the ticket! There we go! No one goes up in the Panhandle anyway so we�ll just pile �em up there. *sigh*

Ok I�m sure that�s not the way it goes but that�s sure the way it seemed.

Amarillo.

Lots of old and interesting houses are here, but all seem to be in depressed areas. People do move on.

In Europe, I�m told, old things like buildings are cherished. Here, if they�re still there after 50-60 years they become historic (see previous post). And they only last more than that if someone doesn�t� want to tear them down to �update� and �improve� things.

Unique, older and decaying old restaurants, closed, with dumpsters out front. Next door to the newer chains like Hooters, Chilis or Outback. WalMart, of course, and tons of boot places.

But out in the country. Oh my! Miles and miles of miles and miles. Brown and tan brush, dark emerald green crops, and pure blue azure skies with a few puffy white clouds � just like a child�s painting! Blobs of black and brown on the horizon that are presumably cows. You see a lot of horses, yes, but it�s all about cows here. No road gators like you see in Missouri and Oklahoma but that might be because most the trucks go down to Dallas/Ft. Worth or some of the other cities further south.

Still no armadillos, either.

And finally into New Mexico. Scrub brush, gnarly cactus that took me forever to figure out just what kind of plant it was. Yucca everywhere.

And Ravens. Ravens huge and jet black but so iridescent � so shiny � that at times when they�re flying high, the sun shines off their shimmery wings in such a way as to make them appear white. Legend says that Raven used to BE white, until he tried to steal fire. I wonder if this is what they referred to?

Myself, I take that to mean that all is not what it appears. There are two sides to everything, even Ravens. Especially ravens hehe. All through our trip, there seemed to always be a pair of ravens close by.

It broke my heart to see what we, as a people, are doing to the land. So much so out here where it�s so blatant. The runoff and small ponds are colored by the red rock and look like blood � Mother Earth bleeding where we�ve gouged into her flesh.

Then Santa Fe.

What can I say about Santa Fe? It�s beautiful. Most everywhere is the adobe style building and it�s very artsy. Prairie dogs on the square instead of the squirrels I�m used to. Partner said they were just regular squirrels, afraid of heights.

The food was excellent. We had a to-die-for wood fired oven pizza with roasted peppers, sun dried tomatoes, garlic and cheese and it was yummy. The place is very touristy, however. I expected that. We spent two days there and got a few interesting items. But what saddened me was that, here are all these people from all over, with art galleries and boutique shops, and very few are Native American. They�re all touting NA stuff in their shops, but the owners and operators don�t appear to be at all from the area. One shop we entered, chock full of �authentic� Native art, was run by a woman so definitely from New Jersey that I wanted to spit. And here, on the square, outside with blankets on the ground, are the real Natives, selling their wares and watching the critical yuppies go by acting like the tourists they are, trying to get a bargain.

We tried to kill them off, stole their land and drove them away when we couldn�t exterminate them, and now it�s all the rage! The Native American culture, art, religion. Everyone wants to be a part of it.

But the real Natives are relegated to blankets in the sparse shade, hawking their wares. And I doubt most of those were really made by them. I know the ones we saw at tables along the roads in Arizona were selling some of the same highly fired clay pots that were in Santa Fe. But for the most part, silversmithing seems to be done by the people selling the jewelry, and the pottery as well.

Monday evening we drove up to Taos. It was construction and squalor a lot of the way. The country was beautiful, when you could see it. We missed the sunset behind a mountain.

There is a place on the road from Santa Fe to Taos, called Embudo Station. It�s a micro-brewery right on the Rio Grande, and you can sit in lounge chairs right there, drinking fresh tapped beer and dangling your feet in the river. It was closed. Apparently it was only open on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Besides, it was too cold to be dangling feet in the river.

Taos seemed to be a lot like Santa Fe, although more spread out and smaller. We didn�t really see a lot of it.

Tuesday noon we left for Arizona and Monument Valley.

More about that trip in the next entry. My fingers are tired and I�ve typed way too long.

Walk in Balance

Mitakuye Oyasin