Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 22
IN THE MORNING, the weatherman on the TV said that a “frunnal system” was about to
dump many inches of snow on the Rockies. This seemed to please him a lot. You could see
it in his twinkling eyes. His map showed a band of unpleasantness sitting like a curse over
almost the whole of the West. Roads would be shut, he said, a hint of grin tugging at the
cornersofhismouth,andtraveladvisorieswouldbeissued.Whyaretelevision weathermen
always so malicious? Even when they are trying to be sincere, you can see that it's a front-
thatjustunderthesurfacetherelurksapersonwhospenthischildhoodpullingthewingsoff
insects and snickering whenever another child fell under the wheels of a passing vehicle.
Abruptly, I decided to head south for the arid mountains of New Mexico, over which the
weather map showed nothing much in particular happening. I had a niece at a small, exclus-
ive college
in Santa Fe whom I hadn't seen for a long time and I was sure she would be delighted for
all her friends on campus to witness a slobby, overweight man pull up in a cheap, dusty car,
leap out and embrace her, so I decided to drive straight there.
I headed south on US 285, which runs along the line of the Continental Divide. All around
me was the most incredible natural beauty, but the landscape was constantly blemished by
human intrusions-ugly trailer parks, untidy homesteads, even junkyards. Every town was
mostlyacollectionoffast-foodplacesandgasstations,andallalongtheroadformanymiles
stood signs the size of barns saying, CAMPGROUND, MOTEL, RAFTING.
The farther south I went the more barren the landscape grew, and after a while the signs
disappeared. Beyond Saguache the wide plain between the mountains became a sweep of
purple sage, interspersed with dead brown earth. Here and there a field of green had been
snatched from the scrub with the aid of massive wheeled water sprinklers. In the middle of
these oases would stand a neat farmhouse. But otherwise the landscape between the distant
mountain ranges was as featureless as a dried seabed. Between Saguache and Monte Vista
lies one ofthe ten ortwelve longest stretches ofstraight road in America: almost forty miles
withoutasinglebendorkink.Thatmaynotsoundsuchalotonpaper,butitfeelsendlesson
the road. There is nothing like a highway stretching off to an ever-receding vanishing point
to make you feel as if you are going nowhere. At Monte Vista, the road takes a left turn-
this makes you perk up and grip the wheel-and then there is another twenty-mile stretch as
straight as a ruler's edge. And so it goes. Two or three times in an hour you zip through a
dusty little town-a gas station, three houses, one tree, a dog-or encounter a fractional bend
