A drive north

My family decided to head up to Denver today. It was a lovely day for driving. There were a few cumulus clouds, so we hoped for rain, but it never did where we were. Haze from forest fires made a brown layer; as you looked into the distance, you could see the line where clear air began.

In a desolate, arid plain on the border of Colorado and New Mexico, there were odd white volcanic-looking rocks, set up in lines and circles on either side of the road. An occasional dolman jutted up. It looked like the druids came to New Mexico and gotten bored. About half an hour south we had passed a commune or development or something called “Dragonwycke Ranch.” I wonder if the dragonwyckers had been setting up rocks. Oh that the sacred-circle people would worship Someone worthwhile.

In Antonito, just over the Colorado border, we stopped at a tiny “Tourist Center.” It was in a modular building that turned out to be bigger inside than outside. On the left were bathrooms, a TV blasting the weather channel, a table covered with maps, a stand of brochures, a vat of coffee, and a stuffed bear almost as tall as I am, entitled: “DO NOT PET THE BEAR (more than once).” On the right was a museum kind of like the antiquities museum in Cairo of the 1880s, as Amelia Peabody described it, full and unexpected: old newspapers, bits of machinery, booklets informing me in red and blue ink that it was my patriotic duty to write to the troops, Mexican iron pyrite, crystals, other rocks, pins saying “ALF FOR PRESIDENT,” antique housewares, and a large wooden sign for the Antonito Buddhist Temple, complete with its address, all jumbled together on full shelves and in glass cases, somewhat grouped by thing but with hardly any labels. Against the front wall was a painted educational mural of the type beloved by national parks, with stuffed mountain goats behind a little fence. A nice, talkative lady asked us about our trip and where we were from and where we were going and what we meant to do when we got there. She recommended the water park; she said her son-in-law worked there. The tourist center was very clean, but extraordinarily random. It would be fun to stop there again.

Then we headed up to Alamosa for lunch. There we stopped at Mrs. Rivera's Restaurant; it was in the Triple A guide. The building was not terribly prepossessing sitting as it did across from an ugly Exxon-Mobil structure, next to a noisy railroad, and being very plain outside. Inside it was dark with yellow-overlaid lights like Tomasita's in Santa Fe, and decorated with festive paper chains and ads for Corona and Cuervo. The bathroom, of all randomnesses, was decorated with artificial greenery and pictures by John William Waterhouse, which had been torn from a calendar: Ophelia by her lake, and Arthurian and classical illustrations, all of young women with firm chins. We had three different waitpersons who stopped by our table to make sure we'd been taken care of. The tea and enchiladas were so incredibly good, I decided I was in my happy place.

We continued north. Emily used the binoculars for bugspotting, and actually made bug points that way. She got way too many bug points, in my opinion. She ended with 45 1/2 today, to my 10.

We passed through the tiny town of Mosca and thoroughly discussed the Latin and Spanish meanings of the name. It sported a dead hotel called “Sand Dunes Motel,” and sure enough, I looked east and saw the Great Sand Dunes against their mountains. I have many fond memories of the Great Sand Dunes. If you go at just the right season, the creek will still be running so you can make sand castles, but the snowmelt will have warmed enough not to give you frostbite. When I was very little, we went camping there with our church and some of my friends and I threw rocks in the air, and one of the boys hit himself on the head with one and cut open his scalp so his mother had to run him to the hospital.

But we only saw the Dunes off to the east. We kept heading north. By this time, the desolate brown of the southlands had given way to actual greenery. We wound up into the mountains. Streams and rivers ran along the side of the road, and ponds began appearing in green meadows, and we found a lake where there was no lake on the map. Dad showed us a place where he hunted rubies with his geology class in high school. We went up and down mountain passes, through pine forests and broad meadows. I can't do it any better justice than to say the mountains were New Mexican and the fields like Virginia, and water ran everywhere. Snow still slept on the highest peaks, showing white above the tree line. Houses were tucked back in valleys and snuggled on hillsides.

Roadcuts towered two hundred feet high, some in their multicolored and upturned-layered and jagged glory, red and gold and black and brown and raspberry, some covered with metal netting to keep bits from falling onto the highway, and one actually bricked up with stones like a fireplace, in levels like a rice terrace. I don't think all roadcuts ought to be civilized like that; while I'm all about dominion over nature, there's something honorable about leaving a foe its dignity; but that particular bricking was pretty cool too.

It was a beautiful drive.