Through the Portal

Jean Pierre Bakery in Durango, Colorado

Get in, get out. Go somewhere to get nowhere. Travel through the space that exists between you and places you’ve never been. Open the door to your cobweb-cluttered mind, welcoming a fresh breeze to disturb the mess within. Try to leave behind the nonsense you’ve been burdened with by expectations that are impossible to satisfy. Then, sit down to a meal of crispy hot knowledge where the shadows of ignorance will come under threat. When we embark on passing into new experiences where nothing is defined, we will likely find ourselves dining alone on the bitter diet of alienation, as who in their right mind would subject themself to introspection and uncertainty after finding cocksurety in the arrogance of all-knowing stupidity?

Southwest Colorado in Winter

We’ve been traveling in a counter-clockwise direction to unwind the spring that is designed to take us forward into expectations. Time is reversing to deny us our orientation with certainty. We revert to a previous mind, the one we carried as children when everything was still new. We are failing to respect convention and custom as we choose to find a new path; I am experiencing familiarity while Carlos travels into a multi-sensorial universe inconceivable just 72 hours earlier. We end up writing and rewriting our internal mappings that drive an operating system running on an auto-pilot setting that helps direct what our future narratives will borrow in order to take form. All the while, the inclination is to believe we are simply following a road that will bring us to something known.

Approaching Utah from Colorado

How could anyone have known the day would start in an authentic French bakery in a mountain town, followed by a slow drive through a snowy environment before being dumped back out in the arid desert? While you might think that, as the planner of this adventure, I would be in possession of that knowledge, the reality is that I considered roads to places separated by reasonable driving distances and then let the pieces fall into place. At any juncture along the way, we may have needed to deviate from the route due to weather, an accident, or even incompatibility between two forces of life that, in an instant found themselves living 24/7 side-by-side.

Carlos Guerrero at Utah State Line

Time to put Colorado behind us for a quick dash to Mexican Hat, Utah, where I hope we can check in early to our motel, dump our bags, and race over to the Navajo Welcome Center at Monument Valley. We have an appointment for 12:30 to meet up with Cody for a guided tour out on the Mystery Valley Trail. This is the reason there are but a few photos representing the first half of the day, though we passed dozens of beautiful snowy landscapes I would have loved to photograph. Believe it or not, this trip has nothing to do with my photography or what I might be looking for; it’s really about what Carlos might discover along the way. This was also a pivotal moment for him. Yesterday, before confirming today’s adventure, I asked him if he was able or willing to pony up his share of the cost for the hike I had in mind. It’s not every day we are confronted with a per-person cost of $180 to be brought into an environment where a good amount of time would be spent walking around through a desert landscape. Strangely enough, he opted to see what the pricey journey might entail.

Mystery Valley, Arizona

We are only slightly southwest of Monument Valley but simultaneously a world away in a place rather isolated. Tire tracks are common, although the sight of the vehicles that left have them will be hard to come by, so we take in the shadows as they stretch over the landscape and will have to imagine the footprints of those Iceage Paleo-Indian hunters that are said to have roamed here starting some 14,000 years before Europeans arrived. As for the shadows, they arrived with the return of the rising sun.

Mystery Valley, Arizona

The Grand Canyon sees about 12,400 visitors a day, and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park sees about 38,600 visitors per day. In this photo we are seeing absolutely nobody, and, should it stay this way, there will be no sad visitors to Mystery Valley today.

Mystery Valley, Arizona

Spoke too soon; here we see John Wayne because John Wayne is always near.

Carlos Guerrero at Mystery Valley in Arizona

In the 192 million years of Monument Valley’s history and with two people standing at this particular point on earth, this is the first time ever that photos were taken of one another. This will never be duplicated due to the impossibility of seeing the exact type and quality of lighting and sky that was rapidly changing here today or even knowing just where it was we were standing.

Mystery Valley, Arizona

On any given day, one might be looking at this scene and, on the very next day, believe they are looking at the same thing, but superposition says this isn’t exactly true. From one day to the next, something changed: a plant grew, grains of sand were blown about, a lizard shifted a thing unseen, and so while the unchanged part is seen, so are the changes though our ability to recall find details might not readily pick up on those differences. You, too, are in a superposition of yourself because you may not perceive how you changed from one day to the next; in the mirror, you will be gazing upon the two versions of yourself, the one that existed yesterday and this new one that gathered something different and has likely changed your trajectory and perception.

Mystery Valley, Arizona

When we are out in unfamiliar places, we are processing a world of differences as we read and learn about the environment. We are, in effect, taking steroids and building muscles, but while our brain becomes swole with the strength of this kind of exercise, we cannot see the bulging pecs of a mind taking on greater definition, and so we discount the value of these experiences.

Mystery Valley, Arizona

Play a videogame, and over time, a person will develop skills that allow the battles and puzzle solving to become easier, but what does one improve upon in their mindscape when considering a tree growing in a bowl of swirly sandstone? What skills are honed or strengths achieved when observing the world around us as an aesthetic body that might be embued with ideas of beauty?

Mystery Valley, Arizona

Prior to the arrival of the Navajo, the Ancestral Puebloans (Anasazi) roamed these lands. I grew up with the ugly manufactured idea that arose out of the Rousseauian concept of the Noble Savage, where white ethnographers romanticized the idea that the Anasazi simply disappeared as a kind of phenomenon. Creating a mystery is more exciting for the imagination than dealing with truths that point to marginalized people forced onto reservations and stripped of their ways of life. In many cases, their children were stolen to ensure they took on the attributes of the dominant culture, though they would never actually become part of that. With a fantasy created, the white inhabitants could reasonably claim that they weren’t corraling authentic people with real history. Those natives were now extinct, and the ones being forced into capitulation were savages intent on destroying opportunities for whites while also threatening our womenfolk. The people who lived on these lands a millennia ago were Ancestral Puebloans who continue to live spread out across the Four Corners Region of the Southwest.

Carlos Guerrero at Mystery Valley in Arizona

Being out here with Cody leading us through these red rocks is amazing in its own right, but I would love the opportunity to camp here for a number of days, leaving the truck behind while we simply walk about, sit for a while, watch and listen to the coming and going of night and day. The reality of our time here is one of a financial equation, a man gets paid so he can continue to exist on land he may have inherited, but the dictates of the modern economy have conditioned him to understand that money equals food and freedom, and if one only has enough for food, his freedom is effectively damned and time made precious and rare.

Mystery Valley, Arizona

The dominant culture of the United States might claim that Americans exist in an egalitarian society, but that’s nothing more than bald-faced lies, similar to those told to people surviving in the straights of poverty by a bourgeoisie protecting the wealth they are afraid could slip away. What happens when not only your inner wealth slips away, but your cultural wealth is torn from the group, and you are left with mythologies that don’t pay for a sack of flour and a hunk of meat? You despair and foment hate with a dose of resentment, or at least I would. I wonder how Americans would feel about their homes being taken in a big roundup while simultaneously forced to acknowledge that Jesus no longer exists and that they’ll be prosecuted and reeducated should they continue to hold on to such primitivism?

Mystery Valley, Arizona

The ironic thing is that the imagination and intellect of the lower socio-economic 2/3rds of the U.S. population have essentially had just that happen to them as they have been stripped of an education that would serve them well in an age of rapidly ascending technology they barely comprehend. Their overlords are creating a complexity using a technological language that relegates this majority to being that of savages and not particularly romanticizable savages. It is as though the modern American masses are becoming an indecipherable bit of rock art that reflects an ancient society lost in time. Humanity is being lost.

Mystery Valley, Arizona

People from between 700 and 2,000 years ago made this pottery, and as it lost its utility, it was left here. When the people of today die, they will leave behind nothing they created with their own hands; they will leave trash, while the memories they gathered from their participation in a media-driven society will leave no signs. Fortunately, these beautiful pieces of pottery that act as reminders of those who came before have so far survived the intrusion of outsiders who sadly, would pay upwards of $1000 for a piece of jewelry made with some of these fragments. We would steal the historical reflections of these ancestors in order to feed our ego and guts, caring not one bit about whose heritage we erase.

Mystery Valley, Arizona

This is a reminder to the future generations that would walk in the Ancestral Puebloan’s footsteps that others learned how to survive here. It is an important history lesson and a challenge for those who follow to learn how to live with less.

Mystery Valley, Arizona

I can’t really say I’ve seen a lot of pottery shards in my lifetime, but I’ve likely seen more than most. This, though, is the first time I’ve seen a piece with a small hole carved into it that I’m going to make the semi-educated guess was there in order to make carrying the vessel a bit easier by using a bit of leather or maybe a twined rope made of yucca. Should you ever find your way out in Mystery Valley, maybe you’ll spot this piece, too, as it’s still lying right where we found it.

Mystery Valley, Arizona

This was home to at least a small handful of Ancestral Puebloans many hundreds of years ago. It was certainly not a dwelling the Navajo would have lived in as their pre-Western contact homes were hogans and sweat houses (sweat lodges) known in Navajo as k’eet’soo’ii.

Carlos Guerrero at Mystery Valley in Arizona

While I was scoping photography opportunities and contemplating silence, Carlos responded to the opportunity of climbing up the cliff face and carefully crawled through the narrow entryway into the long-abandoned cliff dwelling. While I would love to experience the view from above and within, my fear of heights combined with the steep exposure stymied me yet again; well, we can’t do everything, can we?

Mystery Valley, Arizona

Somewhere along the trail, Carlos points out how this is possibly the first time he’s been somewhere so absent of others. This wasn’t a lament; it felt enthusiastic that he should be having such an experience and seeing the world with the eyes of real surprise that might redefine the way he relates to the idea of what a desert is.

Mystery Valley, Arizona

Cherish these moments, Carlos, as over the past 25 years, Caroline and I have found these isolated situations are becoming rarer. The luxury of being in the quiet, open spaces where beauty can be found is disappearing, in large part due to social media and the #doitforthegram crowd. Once Instagram and its influencers take away some of the appeals of pristine places such as what’s happening to Iceland, Pedra do Telégrafo, the Cliffs of Moher, Macchu Picchu, and the Hooker Valley Track, aspiring influencers looking for fame and fortune must discover their own places that will inspire others to be cool like them.

Many Hands Ruin in Mystery Valley, Arizona

To stand here in silence and solitude with no one else present offers the visitor a moment to capture a sense of place taken out of a time prior to the advent of the camera and crowds. We are at The House of Many Hands.

Many Hands Ruin in Mystery Valley, Arizona

A picture is worth a thousand words, except when it’s not. There are four human-looking pictographs on this panel along with more than a few handprints, but I have no facility to decipher them but maybe I don’t really need to. Is it only my desire to solve the mystery that I want to imbue the figures with special meaning, as I think they may contain secrets that were meaningful to the Ancestral Puebloans? What if they were simply art for art’s sake?

Many Hands Ruin in Mystery Valley, Arizona

Hands that touch, hands that hold, hands that love. Hands that write, hands that draw, hands that paint. Hands that steer, hands that give, hands that take.

Mystery Valley, Arizona

Eyes that take, eyes that translate, eyes that wish to never forget.

Chimney Arch at Mystery Valley, Arizona

If a hole in the fabric of reality were able to be opened, would you be afraid to look within? If a gateway into knowledge were to be found in a book, would you read it? If a passageway into your soul was to be discovered in love, would you make the effort to throw off your indifference?

Tear Drop Arch near Gouldings in Monument Valley, Arizona

Everything hangs in the balance between potential and oblivion. The opportunity to gaze through Teardrop Arch near Gouldings Lodge can only happen because one makes oneself available to be here; this is the potential of our senses to find change. A small mound of the earth will someday give way and topple this 200 million-year-old rock perched above it, thus continuing the work of the past 25 million years in shaping Monument Valley. Right here, which was part of my right now while standing here on this late afternoon, I moved my perspective to be witness to a second carved out of a vast history where I’ll blip in and out of existence in the relative blink of an eye. We are afforded this rare opportunity to look through history while history has no interest in looking through us. Will you opt to be present to experience at least some of life with your own eyes, hands, and ears, or is the oblivion of crumbling under the force of time never to have been anywhere good enough for you?

Sunset in Monument Valley, Arizona

Before you know it, another day is gone, another week, month, year, and a life you held dear. That one chance you had to be available for your own life and the lives of others will have slipped by; history will forget you and those who once loved you will also accede to the demands of time, thus erasing your presence like so many clouds capturing the final rays of a setting sun letting go of the intense beauty they inspired upon an observer who happened to be at the right place at the right time to experience such a thing before our star dipped below the horizon.

Transition Zone

Motel 6 in Santa Fe, New Mexico

Nope, not today! We will try our best to offer assistance to the person being human trafficked while we turn a collective blind eye to the masses who are being intellectually trafficked by their lack of meaningful education and addiction to a way of life that keeps the average person nearly in chains of enslavement. These distractions, including news of child abductions, demon possession, drugs in our schools, and mayhem over our borders, are diversions created by marketing geniuses and are designed to lift the burden from individuals to learn, find truths, and consider their options when economic survival priorities dictate the direction and stress people must endure.

At any given moment, there are 580,000 up to 1.5 million people who are homeless, another 325,000 in transitional housing and homeless shelters, and an unknown number of people living in cars. We’re looking at over 1,000,000 Americans facing the grimmest living situations every day, but it was the 2,198 people referred to our justice system for human trafficking offenses that rose to the national stage. The feel-good insipidness that absolves us of real concern for anything is a great indicator of our obsession with the superficial appearance of things. The contradictions that occupy minds with rage is a national disgrace where, on one hand, people are indignant and angry at the government because every day they see the effects of what homelessness means to their community while human trafficking is an invisible crime, and if the government says the situation is improving we have no way of qualifying that. The dichotomy driven by the government that, on one hand, they seem to be doing something and, on the other, appear helpless on big issues helps maintain friction between hope and despair, vacillating in all directions and tearing at the fabric of society. And this is what I had to wake up to this morning instead of being allowed to remain on vacation.

New Mexico

Fortunately for me, the cliffs haven’t yet hoisted neon signs that alert passersby that the weather and erosion have stolen parts of them to traffic the grains to beaches in order for people to luxuriate on the rock-based carcasses carried away by the wind and rain.

Dead animal in New Mexico

Meanwhile, the scavengers of rotting flesh collect their free meal with no judgment as to whether they are stealing. Later, they will return to their trees squatting homelessly while letting their excrement soil our earth below, and while we’re at it, what’s up with treating human fetuses as fully-fledged people and calling abortion murder while those who use their cars to murder these animals are allowed to live free? Is life sacred, or only our own selfish view of what we want to claim is precious is embued with value? Yeah, I know this conversation is absurd, but that’s the point. Most everything is absurd, but we insist the inanities of it all have value, and so we take stupid shit seriously and ignore serious shit because we feel helpless, like a poor animal trying to cross the road, hoping not to be plowed down.

Abandoned gas station in New Mexico

Whoa, what happened to happy observations found on vacation? Look at your decay, America: you are dying but can’t see the rot all around you. If you are even slightly aware, you believe it is somehow the fault of a single individual or party in Washington D.C., but it is the neglect of your own internal (non-existent) dialog where you would ask yourself, what is your own contribution to the culture of not caring? This old gas station and the cafe next door did not close because of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or Donald Trump. It’s gone because you hate venturing out into your own country unless some level of generic conformist posturing opportunity is on offer, and you’ll gain credibility with your peers for being so fortunate to visit such an in-place that Instagram made popular. Meanwhile, I’ll tourist the corpse of your recent past and grieve your inability to celebrate the fine qualities and unique character of a land that was once held in reverence for the experiences it shared with those willing to traverse its vast spectacle of beauty. Today, we worship at the feet of grotesque wealth while things are supposed to bring us into self-realized entities on the verge of enlightenment, which will never be found in objects or trendy hangouts.

Carlos Guerrero at a Colorado State Line

Alrighty then, I need to leave New Mexico, leave the lament, and move onto new horizons as Carlos and I cross the Colorado State Line into the wintery environment found in the mountains.

Carlos Guerrero at a Colorado State Line

And what’s better upon visiting a new state than dropping into the snow and making a snow angel? We were halfway back to the car when Carlos realized he no longer knew where his phone was. To share with you that I was happy he realized it when he did would be an understatement.

Carlos Guerrero in Colorado

No worries, Carlos, I’ll go back to the gas station and grab a cup of hot coffee to help melt your connection to the folly of having to test your need for certain knowledge.

Snowy Colorado

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forest. When traversing places with someone of unknown quantities, we can lose the ability to read what the eyes are trying to take in as the chatter in our head overwhelms the visual aesthetic, and our inner voice distracts us from deciphering what the gap in communication is whispering at us. It is a distraction, preventing me from gazing as deeply as I might when traveling with Caroline because an inexplicable connectivity creates a symbiosis of sorts, linking the two of us while a telepathic language seems to be blurting out “wow” over and over again. Carlos, on the other hand, is elsewhere, in a place I cannot easily decipher, possibly overwhelmed, underwhelmed, or maybe nowhere. In any case, I find it difficult to understand his version of quiet.

Durango Silverton Train Station in Durango, Colorado

Trains take people places, cars, and bicycles too. When people lead the way, however, the journey is directed by the whims, curiosities, and knowledge of the guide. Giving over the itinerary to someone else absolves one from having to make the important decision regarding the destination. In this case, the journey is a constantly evolving series of impressions without end. We are taking a pause in Durango, Colorado, with my intention of sharing as much about the old steam trains that run through here as possible.

Carlos Guerrero at Durango Silverton Train Station in Durango, Colorado

The last train of the day had already pulled into the station, and tomorrow, we’ll be gone before the first one leaves Durango for its journey to Silverton, so the museum would have to suffice for this brief intro. Fortunately, Jake, the train enthusiast, was at the helm and offered Carlos and me an immersive deep dive into all things regarding the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, along with his dreams of spending a lifetime exploring trains around the world.

Durango Silverton Train Station in Durango, Colorado

With the whole operation about to shut down for the evening, we were able to gather a better sense of the history without the flighty crowds of cackling tourists. For a moment, it was just your average train station from 100 years ago servicing an outpost at the end of the track in the old west, and it was all ours.

Durango Silverton Train Station in Durango, Colorado

Growing up in places where seemingly everyone lived makes for a stark contrast to what I most love in places at this stage in my life: there should be only a few to no people. A train going to unknown places with no one else aboard, trundling over an infinite landscape day after day with nary a stop, offering an uninterrupted opportunity to read, write, think, and drift into nothing, is the description of a vacation I’d sign up for.

General Palmer Hotel in Durango, Colorado

So, this is how the other half lives? Our more typical accommodations do not feature a lobby, a library, or afternoon coffee and cookies. This is the General Palmer Hotel next door to the Durango & Silverton train station, and it has serious amenities. The deal wasn’t great, but it wasn’t horrible either, so I thought, let’s splurge and bring Carlos into some old-west luxury. Later in the evening, he spent a solid two hours down here reading and writing in the parlor that was his alone.

General Palmer Hotel in Durango, Colorado

The General Palmer was built in 1898 and has some real character compared to the formulaic franchise hotels that have become so popular. The crazy thing about this is that I can book a room for Caroline and me at the 900-year-old (Zum Roten Bären) Red Bear Hotel in Freiburg, Germany, for a cheaper rate (in season even) than this midweek winter rate in the southwest corner of Colorado. I know this is an old song here on my blog, but I feel like I can’t say it enough: America is moving further away from being an egalitarian society in the relative blink of an eye. Years ago, Caroline and I could move around the United States rather inexpensively, but those deals were more and more difficult to find. Sadly, I have to be the first to admit that the lower the socioeconomic status of my fellow travelers, the likelihood of wanting to be in their presence is greatly diminished as the poor are becoming increasingly belligerent, loud, and vulgar. While I didn’t share it following our night in Socorro, New Mexico, the cheap motel we checked into had a drunken party of linemen wrestling and acting the fools in the parking lot. Yeah, I know they were just blowing off steam from some days of hard work after getting paid, and they were hardly a major annoyance, but in general, the type of person booking those lower-end accommodations are no longer young families but the Andrew-Tate-type animals cultivating their inner troglodytes. The implications mean we have to isolate ourselves in progressively more expensive lodgings with a gentrified clientele.

Durango, Colorado

Maybe the sun is not only setting on the day but also setting on me. Was I really so undiscerning 10 and 15 years ago? Have I become more aware of noise when I still remember many a room we’ve left due to shenanigans in a nearby room or the utter depravity of what we checked into without first examining the room? Is this the grump of the old man? Well, at least the sunset found in the sky is still beautiful, while our dinner at Himalayan Kitchen was yummy perfection.

Gianni Coria featured at The Gallery in Durango, Colorado

A walk down Main Street was necessary if I was going to get to my desired step count, and who wants to pop back into a hotel too early? As Carlos went his way, I needed to fetch my fleece as the absence of the sun brought on a chill. Aside from Maria’s Bookshop, where I picked up a copy of Otherlands: A Journey Through Earth’s Extinct Worlds by Thomas Halliday, there wasn’t a lot more on Main Street that interested me until I arrived at The Gallery. Trying to offer you more info on this little treasure has proven impossible as there is nearly no information on the internet regarding it, even being in Durango.

Gianni Coria featured at The Gallery in Durango, Colorado

The pieces I’m sharing are from Gianni Coria and I only know this due to the tiny amount of data I did find on the interwebs. In the shop itself, there was nobody to be found. Had I been a climate activist intent on gluing my hands to a piece, there was little anyone monitoring the cameras in the gallery could do as I could have splashed Gorilla Glue all over my naked body and attached myself to one of these four-foot-tall pieces. Next, you might ask, what was I doing naked in this gallery after I just shared that I grabbed my fleece, and just what is gluing myself to a piece of art when nobody is around to witness it going to accomplish in my fight for climate change awareness? Come on, think about the headline, “Naked Arizona man found cold and hungry and glued to a painting in Durango gallery claims he doesn’t know how he got there.”

Freedom and Independence on the 4th of July

Independence Day out in a space that allows an extraordinary amount of freedom and independence to be had; that’s where we are. Nothing consumed, not a lot desired, and very little purchased is how we travel into this day, which in some way mirrors our lives at home. We comfortably find ourselves in a vast landscape, trying to interpret a horizon without easy markers or signs to guide us into the unfamiliar, and that’s okay.

Is Independence Day still a celebration of our freedom from tyranny or simply the faint recollection of historic events that paved the way for some idealistic notions? Certain declarations and amendments have come to stand in for whatever the thoughts might have been surrounding a collective sense of being free Americans, but are two or three fragments the extent of what independence means? Why do so many find our constitutional declarations ensconced in law to be tenuous at best and in need of constant anxious lament as though at any moment they will be ripped from the clutch of patriots who apparently are the only truly aware Americans? I’m afraid that this nervous energy and a constant refrain that everything America stands for is on the brink of being torn away is a toxic salve bringing infection to a wound exploited by hyperbolic political shysters, modern-day media snake oil salesmen, and pundit quacks who are not expert in anything other than terror.

People stuck in paradigms of the past appear most susceptible to fear and deception that exploits their unenlightened minds. Maybe they are broken and undereducated due to an indoctrination that made them slaves to a jingoistic and overzealous dogma from which they are now unable to break free. How, then, are those people free or independent? They are not; they are like this broken-down, rusting jalopy that is not going anywhere. Put a TV in front of this car, and you are effectively seeing many of my fellow citizens: frozen by gravity, useless, a relic from a past that failed to maintain any kind of momentum that might have allowed them to glide into the present and hopefully the future too.

I should offer up some details regarding this day that actually pertains to our trip from Utah that will take us home to Phoenix, Arizona, today. We woke in Blanding, a small town with a population of just under 3,600 people, and headed south. The sandstone bluff in the second photo is at the edge of the town of Bluff that we visited at the end of May; the car at the Cow Canyon Trading Post is also in Bluff. This wall fragment was at one time either part of a dwelling or maybe a storage area. I spotted it from the road, and it begged us to pay a visit. From here, we traveled toward Montezuma Creek and Aneth on our way to a special crossroads in the middle of nowhere.

Nowhere is where I live my best life, where nothing I own is strewn before or around me. All I can do is look upon the nothingness that embodies everything and has an intrinsic value exceeding the things that might be considered mine. When this wash is running it feeds into the San Juan River, which is the green spot out in the distance of this photo. For countless years, the rains have come and gone and, on occasion, left enough moisture that the streambed carved itself into the landscape. On this particular day, its path is evidenced by the green S curve starting in the foreground. The hand of nature out here has been employing the engineering forces of natural processes to build the most elegant of places that I will ever witness while standing at this particular place on State Route 162 located in San Juan County, Utah. So, now I’ve been everywhere and seen everything where nothing existed until I embued it with all the appreciation and value of someone able to find things meaningful while exploring the freedom of independence to do such things.

We had to stop here in Montezuma Creek, Utah, to admire the artwork of the students at Whitehorse High School who, when not exploring their creativity, are locked in classrooms being indoctrinated into believing that what they are being forced to learn will deliver them from the wretched poverty in which many of their parents exist. The cruel dichotomy here is that these kids are learning just enough to have them either conform or fail and likely relinquish themselves to systems that will exploit their incarceration. Without hope of further real education, they will languish in meager subsistence jobs not far from where they are growing up and never know the freedom of independence that the United States claims is a key part of our cultural DNA. Native Americans, like many minorities that can’t afford participation, are tossed by the wayside of something less than nothing, a place without hope or the ability to interpret what riches they might have if they were seriously knowledgable about truths. These truths are simply the idea that freedom is a state of mind afforded by removing oneself from the struggle of just surviving abject poverty, and this is where real education comes to bear.

I need to make clear here that my focus is not lamenting the situation of the poor, minorities, or other disadvantaged groups; the system is stacked against them, and they do what they can with the little they have. My real complaint is about those who have the means to be free and independent but are simultaneously deeply entrenched in their intellectual stagnation and being the loudest about their fear of what they claim is being stolen from them, which is absolutely nothing.

We cannot contain the ocean, the sun, or the wind, and we are fairly adept at controlling the river, bringing light to darkness, and giving ourselves the ability to move quickly over the surface of the planet, but we are absolute masters of bringing totalitarian enslavement upon the minds of the masses who are terrified to lose their shelter, sustenance, and social standing in a broken community of lonely souls drunk on the desire for out-of-reach riches that never offered real happiness to anyone in the first place. Love is the water that is supposed to flow down the river of life and through our communities, but we’ve created a drought by selling false dreams to people who will likely never know better and must endure the suffering of unfulfilled lives while we who have it all always get more. For us, the river is a deluge that welcomes us to grow more, secret away these precious resources so they may always be there for us; all the while, we pity those who supposedly won’t help themselves as we are oblivious to how systems are stacked against the ill-educated.

Aneth, Utah, is indicative of the disappearance of hope and opportunity, a place where the freedom to survive on ancestral lands is bulldozed by the allure of a fake image of life delivered by TV, the internet, and video games. In the past 20 years, Aneth has seen its population shrink by 139 people, and while that may not sound significant, consider that this means the town went from 598 people down to 459 for a loss of 1 in 4 Anethians. This is obviously a tragic situation for the local Navajo population since a town that is disappearing from the map has to support an elementary school that pays its senior teachers $80,000 a year and is apparently only working to catapult their children to places elsewhere.

With the intrusion of sham dreams of wild success that can be easily had in America’s big cities, the traditions of a community are shattered as fresh transplants crash into the cold reality of life in the uncaring environment of the metropolis. The broken young souls either fall to the wayside or return to the old town, contributing to its decay and their own dissatisfaction. This is not independence or freedom; it is planned disenfranchisement, obsolescence, cultural obliteration, and oppression. Aneth represents just 1 of 110 Navajo communities that are likely in similar predicaments. Now consider that by land area, the Navajo Nation is as large as the Netherlands and Belgium combined, but the GDPs of these two countries add up to almost $1.5 trillion compared to just $12.8 billion of economic activity on the largest Indian reservation in the United States; this is not an accident.

Sure, this is a poor comparison when one thinks that in Belgium and the Netherlands, the combined population is 29 million people strong in contrast to the Navajo Nation’s anemic 173,000 people, but in a country like the United States that has intentionally worked to disadvantage Native Americans, one might think we as a country could do better to honor those who have paid so much by suffering near total annihilation. Stop a moment and think of this: in Texas, 3.3 million people receive state aid, and nearly 2.8 million in Florida do too. Are we really a country of people who love independence and freedom that helps foster healthy communities and citizens, or are we a bunch of gun-loving nutjob individualists afraid of a tyrannical boogeyman created by marginalized megalomaniacs who become wealthy on this dissatisfaction, thus monopolizing another part of people’s vulnerability?

So, let’s all just look out on the horizon and refuse to see what we don’t want to see anyway. We are, after all, free to do exactly just what we want to do, even at the expense of sustaining a thriving nation. At one time, we were a union, not only that, we were trying to form a perfect union in order to establish our nation of the United States. Today, we are millions of individuals oblivious to our real role as neighbors willing to defend each other, help one another, and stand together. But the blue skies of optimism have been clouded over not exclusively by those in power but by all of us, the “We the people” part of all of us, because we are no longer we. This is a country of us and them. So on this 4th of July, which should be a joyous moment recognizing the accomplishments of a great country, we should bow down in respect of a dream that is dissipating like so many thin clouds on a hot day.

But that is not the America Caroline and I choose to live in. Our America is one of dreams and ideals where we’ve carved out just enough and seized the opportunity to find our way into a dream, though I’m not sure it resembles the idea of the bigger American Dream. You see, we are selfish, greedy, and maybe a bit isolated. We are selfish because we no longer buy into needing things like large homes, expensive cars, a vast wardrobe, or the other trappings of conspicuous consumption. We are greedy as we save money, predominately cook at home, set our thermostat higher, and save from not participating with subscriptions to frivolous services. We are isolated due to being avid readers, not owning a television, not playing golf, or rooting for sports franchises of any sort.

We’ve chosen our own path that recognizes our limitations to earn more and more. We’ve seen that those with more of all and nearly everything are rarely living profound and joyful lives. We understand that a chance encounter with someone less fortunate will likely offer us a more meaningful experience than listening to someone feeding us details about some celebrity, indignation regarding a politician of any persuasion, or their latest acquisition they believe enhances their position in the hierarchy of accomplishments.

We stand mostly alone with our ideals carrying dreams from a bygone era that if you ventured out into your country and into yourself, you might find experiential riches that would define you as a real explorer, a real American, a person living a life well lived. We still adhere to these ideas towering overhead as aspirations that are meant to be embraced. Caroline just recently became an American citizen and did so with tears in her eyes as she knows firsthand what is possible, but sadly, it is only because we had to separate ourselves from the masses defined by a lot of nothing, masses who don’t know the real American Dream and are angry that they are living in dystopian nightmares of their own creation.

Just stop a second and look at this: we are living the adage extolled in the Declaration of Independence regarding Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. We are free under our current system to find just those things; nobody is trying to take anything from us, but we must be willing to give to ourselves and adapt to a changing world. Our founding fathers never envisioned a day when people would travel at 60 mph over land in air-conditioned vehicles, take photos of exquisite detail, and call ahead to a restaurant in the middle of a desert to verify their hours, but that’s what we do, and all that’s required is to continue changing with the times.

These bags of flour will not make themselves into a cake, bagels, or the Navajo frybread it is likely destined to become. Someone else will have to transform it; the flour will be altered by the addition of other ingredients, be they savory or sweet; the point is that these constituent parts will see their chemistry changed but still won’t be done until they find their way into a transitional form of having been cooked. And though the flour and that which was added will become food, it will then need to be consumed to act as nourishment. Maybe a grandmother made a cake, a dad made his kids pancakes on a Sunday morning, or a husband and wife are making frybread next to the road and loading it with roast mutton for passersby, such as my wife and me. This act of change and preparation is what will sustain those who benefit from the efforts of a community. This parable is what a nation, a people, a country of united souls does for one another, but we’ve lost sight of the basic ingredients right in front of us. Instead, we are pissed off when we must deal with the investment of effort to transform things on our own because the 20-layer cake isn’t being spoon-fed to us when we want it.

Do not be a petulant bulwark against your own motion forward, happiness, or accomplishment. Nothing is really standing in your way besides yourself. Your intransigence to see your way around minor obstacles blinds you and steals your vision to find what is just beyond the rock called self. Caroline and I are not perfect examples of growing beyond limitations, but in these moments of exploring our own freedom and independence, we get to take sight of the astonishing vistas of our vast country and consider how fortunate we are to have broken free of the shackles of unattainable lives of perfection sold by those snake oil salesmen, quacks, charlatans, con artists, and cheaters who have sold far too many Americans nothing but anguish by blaming others for what they are missing.

Nothing has been stolen from you aside from what you gave away. If you look into the window of the TV screen and witness the magic of incredible perfection, maybe you are already selling yourself on self-delusion. The horizon is not painted in gold, but it is embued with riches of wonder if you know how to see what you were never told was valuable. America is the dream; our freedom to venture into ourselves has never been denied, but the fortitude of the pioneer requires us to surmount obstacles, and in a modern age, that means we must clamber over our own ignorance and fear of failure.

Initially, the road may not be paved, and we might struggle to determine the direction we need to take if there is no one to guide us; such is the task of the relentless fighter intent on carving a way forward. When the destination is not obvious, we are presented with our own wherewithal to make decisions and choices that might harm us as well as deliver us.

It’s bumpy out here, and what if you can’t easily find what sustains you? You keep going forward and shut up, as being a stoic is at the heart of being American. If you believe you deserve to be called a citizen of the United States, a real American, you push forward against the odds that will feel stacked against you, but in this age, it is no longer the brute force of strength that will propel you, it is what you’ve fed your mind, your education, and the opportunity you must work hard at to empower you. The easy way is for losers, they stay behind and wait for others to pave a trail instead of making the arduous journey themselves. We do not choose to stay at home watching the game, firing up the barbecue, or tossing back a beer today; we venture out to explore unknown spaces and risk learning about something that may not be initially obvious as to what value it gave us. Still, we seize the moment and embrace our radical freedom to be everywhere, anywhere, and nowhere.

Ah, the proverbial cake is served in the form of a roast mutton sandwich on frybread. We have pulled into Chinle, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation, and it is here at an anonymous dirt lot where it might not be apparent to those driving by that a loose grouping of trucks and a few trailers is actually a small flea market. Hoping I’d get lucky to find what my deepest desires want right now, I creep over the bumpy lot, slowly driving past tables and vehicles until my eye caught a truck and trailer looking like they were offering hot food. While Caroline grabs the last dish of roast mutton deluxe with corn on the cob, potato, and green chili (which I’ll help myself to), I opt for the roast mutton sans frybread (it’s a diabetes thing) and am now being delivered to a state of sheepy nirvana.

What wasn’t at the market but was found in the parking lot of a gas station was a husband and wife selling pickle dillies, which we’ve also seen offered as picadillies. Salty, sour, and sweet isn’t everyone’s cup of yummy, but my wife isn’t everyone, so the idea of having a snowcone of tiger’s blood, banana, and black cherry syrup with layers of pickles is the perfect summer treat for her. As for me, yeah, that diabetes thing again. I’ll hold out for the possibility I might find more roast mutton further down the road. If you don’t try what you don’t know, you’ll never know what you didn’t know, and you’ll only have yourself to blame for a life not lived well.

Freedom and independence are choices in a land where they are guaranteed, but you’ll have to muster some resolve to risk your sense of certainty and put away your biases. Are your mind and imagination open like the sky on a summer day, or are you locked in the dungeon of hate and resentment that others are living the life you believe you deserve yet are unable to budge from your obstinacy to grab? I’d like to reiterate that Caroline and I are not special; we are simply willing to go out, look, savor, and participate in things that are not a normal part of our routine. We give ourselves permission to step out of our comfort zone, and yet we keep finding great comfort in discovering something new and exciting where others might find nothing.

I need to stop a moment and consider things I don’t know, such as the thoughts that might arise here at the Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site. This building is here because 158 years ago, the people of the Navajo Nation were force-marched over 300 miles from their native lands to a small reservation in eastern New Mexico. This act of human cruelty left deep scars on the Diné (Navajo), and why wouldn’t it? Forces representing the United States, along with disease and famine, killed more than a quarter of their population. So I can’t tell you how I might see the world and my opportunity in it if I came from an oppressed people. Regarding this trading post, it’s here because after the Long Walk, as the forced march is known, and the people returned to this land, trading posts were opened across the Navajo Nation as the U.S. government tried to support the Navajo in getting back on their feet.

This idea of trauma hindering the ability to move lives forward is obviously a touchy one that various ethnic and religious groups have had to contend with throughout time, but I can’t help but take inspiration from Jewish people, especially those who survived World War II. Roughly 33% of the global population of Jews died between 1933 and 1945 at the hands of the Nazis while their history of persecution for centuries prior is well known, and so their resilience to bounce back following the 2nd world war is nothing short of admirable. Tenacity to get past adversity seems to pay dividends, and while not all people are alike, there’s a lesson to be learned from not only people of the Jewish faith but maybe the Mormons, too. But I’m not here to dissect the minutiae of persecuted and oppressed people or to bring into context the barbarity of various societies over the course of history; I’m more interested in the valuable lessons learned. The most important of those lessons seems to me to be that bad, horrible, atrocious acts of cruelty are perpetrated on people from all walks of life, but the ability to stop the victimization thinking and lingering in despair is key to moving forward.

This positive way ahead applies to all of us as it seems that some relative majority of humans have suffered at the hands of neglect, abuse, lack of opportunity, bullying, condemnation, or some other bias that has negatively impacted lives. You see these Navajo woven baskets hanging upside-down here at the Hubbell Trading Post? This is considered bad in Navajo lore as baskets are used to hold important things such as food, and hanging them up in this way means they cannot serve their purpose and act in the capacity for which they were created It doesn’t always have to be this way and maybe someday they’ll be removed from the ceiling and restored to a position where, even if they never act as working baskets again, they’ll be on display and respected as what they were intended to be. People have to take themselves away from a position of remaining empty and restore their purpose. We are containers of important things such as knowledge, experience, and love, we should work together to develop our carrying capacity. We cannot relegate our function and utility to forces that only desire the sea of humanity to fill the role that brings fortune to a select few and not ourselves.

Think of this display as the face of humanity: we are pictures, baskets, pots, vessels, clothes, books, and rugs, things that all have great value, treasures if you will. When all these things are brought together, they are impressive in their magnificence, and we can easily recognize their collectibility. All of these things have something in common: someone with specific skills labored over each object to imbue them with form, particular characteristics, knowledge, artistic qualities, and every combination of those attributes that lends beauty and purpose to them. People are exactly the same, but we’ve lost sight of that as we’ve reduced individuals to being merely a thread, a particle of sand, a piece of wood pulp without real value, as though they were only a tiny constituent part of something bigger. This is plain wrong as we are all potentially fully formed artworks, fonts of wisdom, inspirations for others, and beacons of light that will lend skills and aesthetic grace to the next generation who can benefit from sharing if we don’t forget that we all have something worth offering each other.

The land is the surface we all dwell upon; the tree shares its durability and strength to give us shelter, comfort, tools, food, and heat. In the case of this hogan, the earth is also the roof that protects us from the elements. With basic sheltering needs cared for, we can turn our attention to our other needs, such as growing food, but in modern society, that is often available as a convenience at a nearby grocery store where the variety exceeds almost anything we might produce for ourselves. If those necessities are the minimum that is met, we must turn our attention to decorating ourselves and our environment. In earlier societies that meant painting and adorning ourselves, embellishing the walls of our dwelling, filling the air with our song and the music of our instruments. In modernity, while many are still occupied with the brand of clothes, makeup, size of a television, type of car, or cult objects turned into fetishized commodities such as phones, bikes, or handbags, the real element of total importance is how we enrich the internal world of our mind.

The exterior of your home, the entryway into that space, and the things that accentuate the appearance of places all carry little weight when it comes to what you bring to how you will see the world when standing before the multitude of situations you are ill-equipped to understand if you are willing to venture into the liminal.

Two-hundred forty-six years ago, in 1776, humanity required a document to express the need for freedom and declare independence as the greed and brutality of a ruling class that was busy owning other people in various forms of servitude or had yoked their subjects in rules and taxes that proved that souls and bodies had been conquered reached a breaking point. It would be 90 years after that and only after a civil war that those who might otherwise claim enlightenment were vanquished, and their ideas of slavery would start to be arrested. One hundred years after that and only one year after I was born, the Civil Rights Act was signed into law. With this knowledge of the glacial pace of change, I suppose reluctantly that the recognition of the importance of the freedom of mind space and the necessity of knowledge acquisition won’t be a larger issue of societal imperative before 2065, when I’m long dead. It’s tragic how slow we are to come full circle.

The human is but a vessel. It is this idea of us carrying the dreams, aspirations, inventions, covenants, tools, traditions, and love that we should honor this maxim instead of trying to squash it, which I feel we are doing at this time. While we cannot know with any certainty who our distant relatives were 10,000 years ago, I believe that although life might have been fraught with quite difficult struggles, they understood freedom and independence in ways that transcend anything we believe we know. Circumstances would have dictated radically different approaches to survival, but reliance on family, community, and the wisdom of those with life skills would have been paramount. Today, we proverbially throw the weak to the wolves; we cast them to the street and into existences that bring such despair that the only way to survive is through substance abuse, violence, and ultimately an early death. Our compassion for one another is less than we might place on rare and valuable objects such as this old Navajo basket.

Please do not correct me by giving examples of those who help one another, the individuals who succeeded against the odds, or the various programs designed to alleviate these issues. We know full well that ignorance locks the unfortunate in systems and paradigms they are unable to escape from. It is only with concerted efforts to pry them free of their own darkness that they have a chance at finding greater value from within.

Take these three clay vessels of Navajo creation and design; today, they are likely worth more than $20,000, but sitting on this shelf, their value is merely theoretical. Someone must fall in love with them and recognize what they represent, and then if they are so fortunate, they might find a way to acquire them for their own home, but if they are truly magnanimous, they will donate them to a museum for all of humanity to enjoy into the future. Imagine if society as a whole was so generous.

The three Diné women offered a generous and friendly embrace in taking the time to share in our enthusiasm for the native culture out here in Ganado, Arizona, and the history of the Navajo Nation as an outpost and container for the traditions of their ancestors. Caroline is once again sworn in as a Junior Ranger, but this time, it was after learning more about the lives of Ganado Mucho, who was the 12th signer of the U.S.-Navajo Treaty of 1868 that ended the captivity of  Navajo following the Long Walk. We learned of John Lorenzo Hubbell (known as the “Old Mexican”), who in 1878 started this trading post whose success in part relied on the friendship of Ganado Mucho. Hubbell, who had learned to speak Navajo, had the distinct advantage of being able to better share and communicate with the survivors of atrocities that risked erasing the people of these lands, and with that ability and knowledge, he helped establish trade in Navajo crafts that allowed the post to remain an important location into the 1960s when the National Park system took over operations. Had the Fred Harvey company taken over Hubbell, it might very well have been turned into a tourist attraction similar to the “Friendly Indian” places along historic Route 66, selling imported “hand-made” jewelry and plastic tomahawks. Today, we had an opportunity to peer into history and understand a little more about the changes our ancestors wrought upon the indigenous people of North America due to the empathy of a governmental body responsible for preserving not only nature but knowledge too. If you wonder if I’m contradicting myself, nothing is ever black and white, as people, governments, and cultures should all be evolving if they are to remain healthy. Just because mistakes are made every day, this doesn’t imply they can’t be rectified as our knowledge grows.

So there isn’t “nothing” out here in the middle of nowhere. There is everything that embodies the potential of people to find what they don’t yet know, to discover that freedom and independence emerge from wide open spaces that encourage people to learn what they’ve not found. First, people mustn’t be afraid of the apparent emptiness that their ignorance casts as something evil, hostile, or in need of being conquered by force; it is simply the unknown that, with time, is knowable. It is the wandering in open spaces that speaks of the greatest freedom and begs visitors to fill that apparent void with the truth of reality that exists everywhere.

The ideas regarding freedom and independence might seem like a rock impervious to the folly of fools, but it is precisely the fools that erode the structures that hold together the mountains of society and culture. Humanity is at a juncture on the map of our future to harness the potential of people to do good, or we can turn and do bad and erase all the beauty we could preserve if we chose to understand how fragile the most important things are. Happy 4th of July! On this day, we celebrate our opportunity to experience freedom and this incredible independence while being stewards of such important ideas.

Escaping Nothing

From Craig, Colorado, the Wyoming border is maybe 30 miles away, and while we were offered a beautiful sunrise, it was going to be short-lived as rain was on the horizon. Until that point, we’ll try to see as much of our environment as possible. Before we reached the border we had to contend with a stretch of road that I was happy we didn’t attempt to drive last night. Five miles of dirt with a few deep ruts from heavy trucks taking the trek were dry by this morning, letting me sigh in relief that I didn’t chicken out and turn around for a long-haul detour.

I’m in love with these bucolic scenes and ideas of pastoral life, but beyond the terrific landscape, people are living angry lives right now. Funny how decades ago the problem was damage being done by DDT; today, it is DJT (Donald J. Trump).

Always trying to avoid the highways that, while fast, offer little in the way of scenery and, of course, little opportunity to stop for a photo of curiosities and sights of interest.

Then again, on a highway, you’ll never run into a single-lane gravel road regulated by a red light, and you get to drive through a trough where a new bridge is being built out in the middle of nowhere.

After our nearly 6 miles of bumpy, slow driving, we encountered paved road again and maybe 10 miles after that, we reached the Wyoming state line. This is looking back into Colorado at that spot.

What have we escaped by leaving Colorado and entering Wyoming? The same things we left behind in Arizona and New Mexico, just about nothing. Everywhere, there are things to discover unless you’re one of those who feel trapped and cannot see the opportunity all around them. The state line we are crossing is where road number 13 turns into the 789.

We have a lot of miles to cover today on our way up to northern Wyoming, but easily distracted by nearly everything, we’ll stop again and again. These distractions are known as pronghorn antelope.

Looking west, we are near Interstate 80, which we’ll have to contend with as there’s no way to avoid it. But if I turn around…

…and look east there was a train approaching far in the distance. So, we waited about 10 minutes for this multi-engine, nearly 2-mile-long train with an additional engine about two-thirds of the way back to reach us here at the bridge. Jessica commented that she couldn’t remember ever seeing a train from above, come to think of it, I don’t know if I ever had either. I should add when those diesel engines pass right below your face, the power they are exerting feels quite intimidating.

We only had to cover a 20-mile stretch of the freeway before reaching Rawlins, Wyoming, where we could reconnect with Highway 789, also known as the 287. It’s raining off and on out this way, leaving few opportunities for photos. Even though we are far away now from Interstate 80, nothing slows down the impatient on their way somewhere other than where they are. So I just try to mind our safety, and when a car in the rearview mirror is closer than about a half-mile, I pull over and wait as where we are going will still be there whether we arrive sooner or later.

It was just one such stop that I noticed a sign of roadside interest, but you couldn’t see it from the main road, so I turned down a street, and we walked over to read this. Welcome to the modern ghost town of Jeffrey City that sprung to life in 1957 as a uranium mining town but less than 30 years later would lose thousands of residents. A biker rode up to collect his mail from a central mailbox still operating for the few who remain and told me that there are still about 20 people living there.

Another 50 miles up the road, we finally stopped for a proper coffee in Riverton at the Brown Sugar Coffee Roastery on Main Street. Taking a few minutes to sit down away from the car and write in this small town is a great luxury celebrated with grabbing a pound of coffee beans and a little snack. With our goal to get to our next destination earlier than the previous two days, it’s time to hit save and get moving again.

Another 22 miles north, and we have arrived at our destination, Shoshoni, Wyoming, but something looks amiss.

Shown our room, we weren’t the least bit pleased as not only things don’t look like the brochure they mailed us, but we’d asked for a room with two queen beds. Management at the Shoshoni Motel was unrelenting in insisting they had a 24-hour cancelation policy and wouldn’t refund our money. So, Jessica slept in the chair, which was probably a better deal as she didn’t have to rest her head on that filthy pillow.

Of course, that motel was NOT where we were staying. But nothing is at it seems out here. The river in this photo is the Bighorn River, while the area is called Wind River.

This is my daughter’s look of confusion as she was trying to solve the puzzle of exactly where she was, though it might have also been the latent effects of that wicked, powerful joint we bought yesterday in Colorado, where weed is legal for recreational use.

I have a soft spot for granites and schists.

Pulling into Cody, Wyoming, with a few hours of daylight remaining, the draw of Yellowstone National Park was too much to ignore. Fortune struck on two counts for us: first of all, we didn’t have a reservation for tonight; secondly, after calling Old Faithful Inn, I was able to tack on an extra night a day early. So, instead of waiting till morning for the drive into the park, using a park entry I’ve not driven before, we’ll be heading in under gray skies this early evening.

Here we are, cruising ever closer to Yellowstone, passing through Wapiti, when I spot a lone Bob’s Big Boy statue standing guard in front of the range. That’s some loving care out there as someone gave this nearly forgotten icon a beautiful home, mounted it on concrete to thwart its theft, and is keeping it painted so it looks as fresh as ever.

We passed through the entrance of the park but skipped the crowded entry sign as the selfie-a-gogo party was in full effect. So instead of our smiling faces noting that we’d dropped into Yellowstone, I present you flowers and water.

I smelled this bubbling hot spring before seeing it; it’s not a smell I find awkward at all; as a matter of fact, I quite love the reminder of where I’m at.

This unnamed hot spring was our welcoming thermal feature, and though it’s no Old Faithful geyser, it was perfect for me this late day.

Ran into our first traffic jam caused by gawking at wildlife with a small group of elk standing next to Yellowstone Lake. It was dark as we arrived at Old Faithful Inn and found the parking lot packed full. Over near the gas station, we were able to find a spot and hauled our stuff up the short incline. Not that short, though, as at 7,300 feet of elevation, this old man was huffing and puffing, trying to drag everything up in one go. At the iconic red doors of the inn, signs were added yesterday that required everyone entering to wear a mask; back to this routine as things seem to be spiraling out of control in America.

Out Finding The Road

Here we are in the San Juan Mountains, heading towards Telluride. This should have been one of the more beautiful drives in America, with mist rising off the forest and streams, wildflowers, bursts of summer growth, and soaring mountains, but the path through it all is a utility not intended as a corridor of exploration and appreciation. There are just not enough pullouts to stop and enjoy the glorious views. Couple this road with the aggressive nature of those in a hurry to get to their destination as they’ve grown so accustomed to the sights that the scenery means nothing to them, and I’m left feeling that we are on a road to nowhere.

Signs used to be limited to pointing towards directions and upcoming conveniences such as hotels, food, and restrooms, but nowadays, we also must contend with a politicized thoroughfare where perpetual campaign slogans are seen every so many miles instead of being able to enjoy the birds and trees. This long drive that should have led into the wonderful becomes a maneuver through the psycho-consumptive mental illness that is modern America.

My love affair with the grand wide open spaces I was so fond of on previous visits is being crowded out by the anger of a populace that is growing disenfranchised and their mantras affirming their disillusionment. The vistas still rise majestically, but I can’t help but feel that the morass of stupidity is accumulating like molasses around the ankles of those who wish to move freely.

Pullouts are few and far between. Picnic benches are non-existent. The speed limit is 60, with most drivers pressing 70. I try to mosey along, barely maintaining 40; I am the hazard. It’s summer here at the end of July, and while the temperature is a pleasant 53 degrees before 9:00 this morning, my opportunity to listen to the silence between bursts from the songbirds with rushing water below is limited. Massive pickup trucks with a single occupant, windows rolled up tight, occasionally with bass thumping from a quarter-mile away scream past, letting me know that we are in different universes. Nature is no longer here for poets, writers, composers, hikers, and explorers; it is either a financial resource or an impediment to arriving at a destination where money is to be found.

Moving through Telluride but not stopping for more than a photo at the end of the road, I’m struck by the contrast of those walking and riding by and the Goethe’s walk along the Lahn River to the Rhein River. Goethe walked for three days to cover the 70 miles, and after his arrival back in Frankfurt, he wrote a book that led to a new era in literature. Today, people have to have the right LuluLemon tights, the best namebrand shoes, $10,000 carbon fiber bikes, kitted-out Jeeps with all the popular accouterments, and water bottles that speak to their brand loyalty. They do not move; they present.

Walking, hiking, or biking without style and the display of conspicuous consumption is for the commoner. Being mentally present for the sake of doing something of any particular meaning is passe when Instagram pages are waiting to be filled, and likes are accumulated for simply going to the place everyone believes holds a kind of cache not found in places not branded as “hip.” And what is going to lend that air of importance to a location besides the beautiful setting? It is the expensive nature that can be brought to the destination to maintain exclusiveness. Why should the poor experience “our” beautiful places when they can go to their local lake?

There’s a conundrum here as I fully understand what places like Daytona Beach, Myrtle Beach, and Atlantic City attract concerning tourism and how the exclusive natures of Jackson Hole, Telluride, and Sun Valley maintain their dignified airs. The real problem is a lament I’ve shared here far too often: America cultivates a vast underclass so that at any given time, it has massive reserves of expendable bodies to fight whatever conflict it wants to enter. As long as America’s lower and middle classes have lakes, sectioned-off segments of the coast, and places like Branson, Missouri, that are referred to as “Family Vacation Destinations,” this divide will continue to exist. I’m comparing this to Europe, where in places such as Vienna, all the economic classes of Europe mingle with the cultural attractions on offer.

Damn, this is a line of writing that I’ve grown tired of, but here I am in western Colorado, being confronted with the American reality that the haves and have-nots should remain as far apart as possible, and this makes me seriously uncomfortable.

I am on vacation with my daughter, and I can’t let go of the built-in, inherently unfair structural elements that define this country. I resent that we no longer want to do better and build a solid society but instead are cozy with our ugly mediocrity, bias, racism, and classism.

Just as I gaze out on the profound nature all around me and want to be lost in the moment within the environment, I cannot shut off the hostility pulsing through this country.

And then I realize that part of my problem for experiencing anxiety today is that I’m catching glimpses of the conditions that are leading to the re-masking of America due to the pandemic going out of control again. As the Delta variant of COVID has been ravaging corners of America, especially the unvaccinated, I’m watching people go about as though nothing is wrong. I feel like it’s the end of February 2020 all over again, where Caroline and I had already stocked up on masks, sanitizer, and food while the majority of the population seemed to think nothing much at all was going to happen.

Had you given me an all-expenses-paid vacation to Anywhere, Earth, last February or March, I would have turned it down, but here in Colorado, on our way to points north and then southeast, it’s business as usual. While my daughter and I are among the vaccinated, it’s obvious that at least half of everyone out here is not, while social distancing is nonexistent. Hopefully, when we finally start in on some hikes, we’ll find some solitude where the pandemic can, for a few days, be put out of my head.

The rainbow should be the perfect metaphor for what lies ahead, as the darkness of stupidity can’t loom over my head forever. True, I’m not out of the woods yet, and I can’t say that I’ll be able to escape the malignancy overcoming the landscape of the United States.

Here we are, America. We’ve lost our way, and our dreams no longer exist. The corpse just continues to wither away, and remnants of what was once an elegant creature are left by the side of the road, unseen by those on their way to suffering the same fate. We are now redefining our flag with various colors or trying to live with archaic symbols of an age long gone. We are pledging allegiance not to an idea but to a man some would like to be seen as all-powerful. This is the empire and body politic in decay. Sadly, I can no longer glide over the landscape without smelling the putrid stench of the rot.

Will the clouds dump their cleansing waters of enlightenment and clear our minds of the rampant hatred, or are we doomed to live in perpetual night?

Well, the sun sets over this day, too, and maybe tomorrow, the glimmers of something new will rise with our nearby star, but I will not hold my breath as while I may wake to witness beauty another day, as long as I’m within these borders I’m afraid the storm of our mediocrity will continue to rain down.

Katharina – Colorado

Canyon De Chelly National Monument in Arizona

We are back up on the plateau above Canyon de Chelly, but this time, we’re on the north side as we head in the direction of Tsaile.

Canyon De Chelly National Monument in Arizona

On our way to the Antelope House Overlook, Caroline hears cicadas and spots two of them on some barren branches. We are almost never able to find them up in the trees because when we approach, they shut up. Today, though, was different as Caroline went right up to one, put out her hand, and while still buzzing, one of the cicadas crawled out onto her hand. One of the first things she remarked about this insect’s markings is how they resemble patterns used in Navajo rugs.

Canyon De Chelly National Monument in Arizona

No time for a jeep tour of the canyon today as we have a lot of driving to do. By the end of the day, we’ll have driven the equivalent of the trek from London, England, to Prague, Czechia, during the past two days. This is a concern because our guest is prone to motion sickness. To combat this, we have her in the front seat, and so far, she seems to be doing okay; still, the long drive is obviously taxing her constitution. I’m sure our form of travel abuse will break her in.

Canyon De Chelly National Monument in Arizona

The Antelope House is down towards the bottom right of the photo, but it’s still in shadow, so it’s cropped out. Oh well, the canyon looks great.

Caroline Wise and Katharina Engelhardt at Canyon De Chelly National Monument in Chinle, Arizona

If only you could hear the sounds coming out of the canyon. Cows are mooing loudly behind the ladies, and the echoing walls amplify their deep bellows, changing the typically bucolic sound into one of monsters screaming in anguish from the depths below. After a few minutes of this, it became comical, as though their peculiar sounds were entertaining them too.

Katharina Engelhardt at Canyon De Chelly National Monument in Chinle, Arizona

If you can’t find real horses in the wild to photograph, bring your own and fake it.

Northeast Arizona

Red sandstone cliffs on our way from Lukachukai to Red Valley.

Northeast Arizona

What’s not to love about the extreme contrast between red, green, and blue?

Northeast Arizona

Our overview of Shiprock in the distance is from Buffalo Pass in Arizona at a height of about 9,400 feet  (roughly 2900 meters) or nearly the same as the peak of the Zugspitze Mountains in southern Germany. By now, you might be wondering why I’m making all of these comparisons to places in Europe. It’s because our niece, being from Germany, can make quick references to places she’s more familiar with.

Caroline Wise and Katharina Engelhardt at Red Rock Trading Post in Red Valley, Arizona

Time for an ice cream and cold drink pitstop at the Red Rock Trading Post in Red Valley, Arizona. We are very close to the New Mexico border at this time and are still on the Navajo Reservation where we’ve been all day so far. From this bench to Frankfurt, Germany, you’d have to travel 5,346 miles or 8,603 kilometers, and walking or driving wouldn’t be an option. Okay, I’ll stop with the comparisons that seem to be getting more ridiculous.

Northwestern New Mexico

The road to Frankfurt 🙂

Northwestern New Mexico

Shiprock in Navajo is known as Tsé Bitʼaʼí or “rock with wings.” The towering formation is the remains of a 27-million-year-old volcano and is also known as a monadnock. Back in the year 2000, Caroline, Jutta, and I stayed at Kokopelli’s Cave in Farmington, with a spectacular view of Shiprock.

Northwestern New Mexico

This is a house we cannot own because it is on Navajo land. Some may wonder why such a place with nearly nothing around it might be appealing. There is quiet out here most of us do not know. There is a darkness that allows people to see the night sky in ways many have never seen. You must listen to yourself and find peace in that if you are going to endure the perceived isolation. Television is not your friend on the reservation as it shows you a side of life that is nothing like your reality, but then again, those who watch television in big cities are seeing a parody of life that is not their own either. Nothing out here is convenient and readily accessible except wind and sunshine, so what you venture out to acquire had better be cherished. Native Americans knew this life and how to live it but had it robbed from them when they were taught they were simple and unsophisticated and should act more like their new masters. After 250 years of oppression, they lost some of their survival skills and didn’t exactly know where to look for them when there was nobody to mentor them in the ways of life that allowed them to be their own masters. So, if you see tragedy in this image, it is the work of all of us who don’t care enough to celebrate our Native American brothers and sisters.

Caroline Wise and Katharina Engelhardt in Colorado

The road we took into New Mexico had a “Welcome to New Mexico” sign but from the bullet holes, stickers, and graffiti on it, we didn’t bother to stop for it. Here at the Colorado sign, we just had to get a photo of Kat entering the state for the first time in her life.

Southwest Colorado

The landscape is starting to change dramatically as we continue our drive north.

Southwest Colorado

In the distance, we can see snow, while the lush environment around us is certainly a lot cooler than the lands we left not long ago.

Caroline Wise in Colorado

Stopping roadside for Caroline to step into a creek, but this time with a twist. She’s wearing these sock puppets to show off her latest creations that are soon to be sent to Croatia to our river guide Ivan, who, in addition to Petar, showed interest in a pair of handmade socks. So, in a sense, Ivan’s new socks have been “on the river” in Colorado before he’s able to wear them on a river somewhere in the Balkans.

Caroline Wise and Katharina Engelhardt in Colorado

Now for the truth: Caroline wasn’t here just to model socks; she’s the assistant to Kat, the Photographer who is setting up a river shot with her horses, seeing we couldn’t find any willing live horses that would run through the water on command for her. Caroline is the splash wrangler who is being directed as to when and where to toss pebbles in the general direction of Phar Lap while Rags To Riches runs the other way, afraid of being hit with stones. Fortunately for us and our travels here in the southwest, Kat only has nine horses with her while the other 100 or so are back home (in their stable, I mean her bedroom), and yes, they are all named.

Horse in Colorado by Katharina Englehardt

This is one of the photos that Katharina took that I think turned out spectacular. Of course, it was the expert splashing that Caroline added that made it just that much better.

Southwest Colorado

The first week of July, the snow lingers on.

Southwest Colorado

Slowly, we move into the mountains, and slowly, we get to know a little more about our niece.

Southwest Colorado

Couldn’t ask for more, as it’s just perfect up here. While I don’t have a lot to say about every photo, I had to include so many to act as reminders of how lucky we are as they stare at us into the future.

Southwest Colorado

If you knew what I was standing on to get this shot, you might be surprised. I was terrified by the metal grate built well over the cliff jutting into open space where looking down allows you to see river and rocks, so it might as well be glass that I’m standing on. I got my photo and quickly left the platform before my vertigo fully loosened my center of gravity if you know what I mean.

Southwest Colorado

The Uncompahgre River raging down the mountain roars as it passes by.

Southwest Colorado

We’re not far from Silverton, and all along this stretch of the Million Dollar Highway are signs of Colorado’s mining past.

Caroline Wise and Katharina Engelhardt in Colorado

Trying to get to know a 19-year-old is never easy, and a somewhat quiet one makes for other challenges, but here we are, spending 24 hours a day together trying to make it happen. Maybe this is more awkward for us because we don’t have any practice with how to communicate with a teenager, though we’d like to think that there’s a part of both Caroline and me that is still in touch with our inner-teen. Then we meet a real teen and realize that we’re actually some pretty seriously old people.

Southwest Colorado

After this spectacular sunset, the last leg of our drive into Durango, Colorado, was under the approaching cover of darkness. Dinner was at the Himalayan Kitchen, where Kat had the best meal of the three of us with her choice of Matar Paneer. Once in our hotel room, I don’t think we were awake for more than about 10 minutes.

Overall, I think the day was successful, with a wide variety of sites for our niece to take in and likely overwhelm her senses. Over time, I hope she’ll learn how to share her impressions and offer us some feedback in her own words on what the journey into the lands of Native Americans meant to her.

Yampa – Day 4

Yampa River in Dinosaur National Monument, Utah

Well, this is an unmitigated disaster as it is now NINE years after this trip was taken that I’m sitting down to post something, anything, about the last two days of our rafting trip down the Yampa River through the Dinosaur National Monument that started in Colorado and is approaching the confluence of the Green and Yampa Rivers just ahead, still in Colorado. The giant rock face is part of Steamboat Rock. Back in 2018, I left a note on Days 2 and 3 that something went wrong in 2014 because after posting about Day 1 soon after our whitewater adventure, something interrupted my blogging, leaving a four-year gap between posting Day 1 and the next two days. The problem is, after pulling those two days out of the air with a promise that I was about also to include Days 4 and 5, I apparently fell off the raft and floated down the stream of oblivion until May 11, 2023. Now, I have a lot of nothing aside from these photos that documented the visuals of our journey; the details are long gone, and I curse myself for it.

Yampa River in Dinosaur National Monument, Utah

The fact of the matter is back in 2014; I had already embarked on another adventure that involved a deep dive into virtual reality. Things were likely moving fast around raising money, and I never had time to look back. Then, in 2018, I was gathering distance between that VR project and its failure when I turned to repair some long-neglected aspects of the blog, but before I could get very serious about things, Caroline and I were on our way to Europe for a few weeks. Obviously, I then faced the daunting task of blogging about our jaunt into Germany, France, Italy, Slovenia, Hungary, and Austria.

Look attentively at this photo, and you can see the line delineating the merger of two rivers with the muddy Yampa on the right and the relatively clear waters of the Green River on the left.

Caroline Wise on the Yampa River in Dinosaur National Monument, Utah

Well, here we are with shareable information, as what is known is that Caroline took out an inflatable little kayak-like boat called a Ducky. There’s no doubt I would have been terrified that she’d crash into some major whitewater and be eaten by the river; obviously, that never happened. With the Green River being dominant, the Yampa has reached its conclusion as a tributary and is now but a memory.

Yampa River in Dinosaur National Monument, Utah

These types of views will forever remain in the realm of nearly incomprehensible as to how the uplift, folding, and movement of our planet’s crust works over time. Intellectually, I have some minor understanding of this area of geology, but the fluid nature of rocks and their reorganization at the surface doesn’t mean it all makes perfect sense.

Yampa River in Dinosaur National Monument, Utah

Though I ponder the jagged, almost labyrinthian nature of these forms through a filter of uncertainty, I’m no less enchanted with them as I am with the ocean, the sky, or the forest.

Willie Mather on the Yampa River in Dinosaur National Monument, Utah

This is the Scotsman William “Willie” Mather, a friend of Frank and Sarge’s who’ll become a friend of Caroline and me too.

Yampa River in Dinosaur National Monument, Utah

There are 23 distinct exposed rock layers here in the Dinosaur National Monument, and I can’t easily identify even one of them; this is what happens when you tune out, don’t take notes, and then let eons pass before tending to excavate memories.

Hiking off the Yampa River in Dinosaur National Monument, Utah

We’ve left the river at Jones Hole Creek and are out for a hike. We also entered Utah just minutes before our arrival on this beautiful day.

Hiking off the Yampa River in Dinosaur National Monument, Utah

Our hike north along Jones Hole Creek will take us about 2 miles upstream.

Pictographs off the Yampa River in Dinosaur National Monument, Utah

According to one post about these pictographs along the creek, they are thought to be nearly 7,000 years old.

Pictographs off the Yampa River in Dinosaur National Monument, Utah

Information is thin regarding the area so take this with a grain of salt.

Caroline Wise on a trail off the Yampa River in Dinosaur National Monument, Utah

A little-known fact about Ely Falls is that if there are a number of people in your group, there is a spot above the falls where a bunch of you can lay in the water and block the flow until it starts to go over you, then, everyone leaps up simultaneously and a rush of water spills over the falls absolutely drenching the person leaning against the rocks. Due to a bum knee that was slowing me down the entire trip, we didn’t arrive in time to witness Willie losing his pants as the water rushed over him.

Hiking off the Yampa River in Dinosaur National Monument, Utah

And the hike back to the river.

Yampa River in Dinosaur National Monument, Utah

More river miles before pulling into camp for the night.

Caroline Wise on the Yampa River in Dinosaur National Monument, Utah

You may not have known this about Caroline, but she’s a Class-A tent-putter-upper.

Frank Kozyn on the Yampa River in Dinosaur National Monument, Utah

Along the way, we were talking with Frank, Sarge, Jill, and Willie about our trip down the Alsek in Alaska a couple of years before, and on this afternoon, after Frank and Sarge had taken the bait, Frank hurt his big toe proving to him and Sarge that they’d have to work on Sarge’s wife to let him chaperone his Marine buddy and after much consideration, we all felt that something like this was just the kind of convincing that would work on her. Five years later, for Sarge’s 70th birthday, that’s what we all did.

Boatman on the Yampa River in Dinosaur National Monument, Utah

The challenges (shenanigans) the guides come up with for entertainment are not always cultural, historical, or scientific, at times they are inexplicable. Interpret this fun game any way you desire.