Jan 4, 2012. Stop breakin' down

I've set off down that road, the one behind my eyes, with the top down and the Stones on the radio. There's nothing but desert in every direction. Along Rt 66, the old spine of America, somewhere in the New Mexico high country, there's a train wreck waiting to be cleared. The cars are stacked side by side, as if an immense child may soon return to play with them. They've taken on the colors of the mountains. Red clay. Burnt gold. Blood on the sand and snow on dead buzzards. Ghosts of '58 Buicks and Airstream trailors pass me doing 80. Something far older, airborne, shadows my ride. Something birthed from the very stone of this place. As I pull into Grants, in the old uranium hills, it begins to snow. A squall has come to scrub the desert clean of my traces. 

Comments

[Azul]

Love this one.

Grants is my hometown. I was born and raised there. You've captured the spirit of the southwest perfectly.

[Charlie]

Thanks! I've been thru Grants twice, in 1995 and in 2008. Sadly by the 2nd trip the Uranium Café had closed. We'd stopped there for a bite in '95. In '08, I remember coming off 66, having driven thru Thoreau and San Fidel, and watching the BNSF roll thru.