Sitting on a public bench along the River Trail of The City Different, a soul muttered as writing in a note-book,
“You . . .
pretty, pink, and perky. You . . .
secret, intimate, and hospitable. You . . .
Fe, Santa, and Fe.”
The town’s mood covers people like a throw-blanket warms a couch-potato on a cold day; time after time, narrow streets carry folks in placid rambles, blocks after blocks, shades after shades; everywhere, to enchant sights, contractors had applied gallons of adobes, expressing newborns’ blushes, and fine hues. For boundless alibis, everybody adores Santa Fe of beloved New Mexico.
Next, I had to stretch the rig toward the Queen City, the Banking Town, the Panthers Den; appeared the time for drifting back in Charlotte of North Carolina, at my Sweet Harbor — to prepare our next route across new US Vistas!
Music by Jack Waldenmaier - Music Bakery Publishing.
I saw forming grottoed chimeras; I saw emitting aeons and eras; I saw figures performing eternity — I groped among grace and pace in caverns, Carlsbad Caverns of New Mexico. Nevertheless, walking in spooky darkness that shroud gaps between major stalactites underlined by few spotlights, holding cold metallic rails that secure paths so as to avoid falls in faults, I dimmed in stress until returning at the surface, and on the road again, and safe. In life, I lug two serious drawbacks; one is claustrophobia, and the other is being enslaved into it.
Music by Jack Waldenmaier - Music Bakery Publishing.
Climbing a desert's huge dune at White Sands National Park lent me the feeling of being a snowball rolling on a stream of lava. Fast, I took a few pictures and my "flee."
Whence, a long and quasi-nonstop ride occurred: I deserted the piles of ablaze sands of New Mexico, heading to my scheduled next step, Carlsbad Caverns, also located in New Mexico, but chose a long detour via Texas onto more or less prairie roads to round the mazy path over a range, to bypass El Paso, and further on to adopt a straight line to the forever-faraway-caves, but a detour dragging to deal with stout storms, low sights, and high floods, some odds delaying and forcing to take breaks on waysides, but for my sake, urging to adjourn the planned goal, thus to pull the rig at the bottom of Guadalupe Mountains National Park, in Southwest Texas, where an all-year-long-opened RV-parking-lot greets worn out stagecoaches-and-crews.
The rain stopped, and a rare double-rainbow faded in, and (while looping in my mind a cue by Nux shouting at a furious Max, "What a day! What a lovely day!") I breathed some fresh air. . .
Then, before dusk, followed by sorry snores, and in delight, a bed was climbed.
Music by Pierre Gerwig Langer.
Music (c) All Rights Reserved
Horny planet! . . .
“I effused, I flowed, I stained,” said Vulcan after laying his sheet of semen on that land which later earned the epithet: Valley of Fires.
Music by Amotz Plessner - In The Hat Publishing.
Time leads to life; life leads to death; death leads to gem.
Music by Pierre Gerwig Langer.
A scar on Arizona recalls stigmas, specters, and nauseas of massacres from “how-a-west-was-won”; Canyon De Chelly witnessed Navajos resisting against dress-blues, white pursuers, Kit Carson’s troops; this sanctuary knows that History’s heaves still ooze through the red Rocks In The Canyon — also known as Canyon De Chelly— and speculates, are healed the scars?
Music by Ariel Blumenthal - In The Hat Publishing.
I met heart, help, and true peace in West-Colorado; I met “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” in the area of Ouray, Colorado, and Ridgway; Ridgway, Colorado, where John Wayne used to daily booze after his daily act on the True Grit movie set, shot in downtown Ouray; Ridgway, where the Duke used to daily plant his genuine grit into what thence became the True Grit Cafe, and to dive into the dialogues learning of the scenes for the next day shooting, or to drown into the eternel memories of behind the scenes with endless dialogues. That is truth; In Colorado, in Ouray County, I met true grit and friendship spirit, and John Billings, the dude who cast the Grammy Awards, somewhere in Ridgway, CO.
Music by Amotz Plessner - In The Hat Publishing.
Dizzy, the hiker thought, “This is a fascinating question of timing; Earth is round, and winds swirl, and the Earth turns, and the winds carve the Earth, and mold it, to be bridges, at the tempo of the time’s tic tac.” Happy, but tired, but insane, but dizzy, I, the hiker, left the Delicate Arch and the coarse crust of the Arches National Park of Utah, to return to Colorado. Hiker. Tired hiker. Driver. Happy driver. Me. Dizzy eye.
Music by Pierre Gerwig Langer
Little figures climb a dark surface, and all around, the sun dries the mud, or the rain caresses the cliffs, or both at the same time. The buttes and the mesas pop up the land, and the rivers meet and shape the canyons, shaping the Canyonlands National Park. Marks show our ancestors stood there, as the presence of the little climbers populates the skin of a cliff modern scholars named “Newspaper Rock”, proclaimed it a State Historical Monument. The climbers build a mysterious wall around miniatures, around small modern guests.
Music by Yuri Sazonoff.
Many miles later, I stepped at Mesa Verde National Park to admire the sublime alliance of nature with perennial genius in Amerindian architecture and culture.
Music by Gerald O'Brien - SSI Music Publishing.
The visit to a wasteland where four States meet—Four Corners Monument—gave me the hazy belief of trampling on a map at scale one. I hastened to go back on the road, heading toward Colorado.
Music by Gerald O'Brien - SSI Music Publishing.
I rode in a dream, leading my three hundred twenty-five horse-drawn carriage across Monument Valley Navajo Tribal park, the gold set of the Western genre. My cherished childhood moviegoer joy came true. The American Dream exists.
Music by Francisco Becker - Sonic Desktop Publishing.
Sand, stones and shrubs, mesas and buttes reign over The Valley of the Gods, a scene for actors called creators. Respect the wise silence, thus release good spirits — gentle wraiths.
Music by Amotz Plessner - In The Hat Publishing.
On the way to Monument Valley, I stepped for glancing over the Lake Powell, then the Horseshoe Bend. Both sites were beloved at first sights. Forever, filled with wonderment, Arizona.
Music by Chris O'Brien - SSI Music Publishing.
In the Bryce Canyon of southwestern Utah, the land whispers, “We are a family of hoodoos, natural sculptures, creations of a God who wanted you to be able to brush the museum of Earth’s beauty. Your God is an impish artist.”
Music by Chris O'Brien - SSI Music Publishing.
The driving-in-summer drives me happy until the Yellowstone National Park route doesn't need to be driven.
In 2015, I wrote this: "The Yellowstone National park hosts unnumbered loads of visitors warping the roads and the trails like divisions of tanks on parade onto a crystalline meadow."
Then, 2017...
Mourning each last beat of joy at Grand Teton, and after having chosen to target the north via the unavoidable southwest passage through the Yellowstone, that morning I early took the road, expecting to shun the rush hours and the common traffic jams of the glorious landscape. Soon, despite the so-called early time frame, a jam ran down the tar. A weird one. Dozens of bison families were keeping their right on the road, toward the south; in the opposite direction and heading to the north, I was able to cross the herd without delay; yet, behind the confident wild families, hundreds of vehicles carrying crabbed characters were stuck, glued, pinned at the asphalt -- for hours!
Did I tell you that I scorn human-droves early in the morning?
Darn; Jams in the wilderness, or crass nonsenses.
Music by Drew D'Ascentis and Sterling Campbell - Yes My Friend Publishing.
Sleeping ground in dreaming wrath. The Yellowstone National Park hosts unnumbered loads of visitors warping the roads and the trails like divisions of tanks on parade onto a crystalline meadow. A tedious, and eerie, and magic tour.
Music by Richard Band - Sonic Desktop Publishing.
“Erotic horizon!” agreed the 17th Century French fur trappers upon discovering the three tallest peaks of a majestic mountain range, that one of the men hastened to baptize as “Les Trois Tetons,” and the extent of which became the body of the National Park "Grand Teton," or “Great Nipple”—Sacré français!
Music by Amotz Plessner - Sonic Desktop Publishing.
On the map, the path-of-the-day displayed a thick timeframe, severe slopes, many shifts . . . Leaving Montana and Little Bighorn under Milky Way, heading the South West of Wyoming under a full moon, passing Dayton’s Crazy Woman Saloon under sunrise, riding hours through breathtaking landscapes under sunshine, then arriving in Grand Teton National Park under infinite joy, that day, I piled on 400 miles of happiness onto grandeur. It has been rare hours. Beautiful ones.
Music by Yuri Sazonoff.
The site contradicts any possibility of bloodshed on its soil due to the astonishing vastness and peacefulness. In 1996, at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, 120 years after the most meaningful clash in America History between two dissimilar cultures, a memorial to honor Native American warriors was built, at last.
Music by Pierre Gerwig Langer - Dynamedion Publishing.
At Devils Tower, the scents of meadows and pines melt; the daylight murmurs of the casual hikers resound; the winds want serenity. I discovered the secret door to access the center of Devil’s Tower reaching the altar of Wyoming’s sacred heart; do ask me to share the key—I will.
Music by Pierre Gerwig Langer - Dynamedion Publishing.
Through the Black Hills of South Dakota, I saw bright giants, frozen ghosts in a dark green landscape, gigantic homages to History: Mount Rushmore (sculpted by Gutzon Borglum and his son, Lincoln Borglum) and the Crazy Horse Memorial (desired by Henry Standing Bear and Korczak Ziolkowski, and still in progress). Gazing at these characters, I felt a spirit of great memories and a goodwill toward the country.
Music by Richard Band - Sonic Desktop Publishing.
Filmed in Colorado, the motion picture Badlands, a masterpiece by Terrence Malick, finds its resolution in South Dakota. Why was this movie not shot at the right place? Perhaps a budget issue. I imagine that the scenery is too dramatic for the purposes of Malick, and it would have mashed the characters and their tale. Badlands National Park is an alien planet’s creepy crust lain on South Dakota.
Music by Lisa Bloom Cohen - Night After Night Publishing.
In Iowa, I made several quick stops at Winterset, Madison County: The John Wayne’s birthplace, the sets of a famous movie by Clint Eastwood, and a café where a friend of mine (a young artist named Ethan Pro) exhibited his portraits of our hero, John Wayne. Heading “Wild West” from East (North Carolina), I had to begin wandering around Winterset, IA.
Music by Richard Band - Sonic Desktop Publishing.