The notion of transplanting myself to New Orleans from the Bay Area – my home for 40 years – came while visiting my daughter and son last year.  Both love New Orleans – the culture, the music, the food.  She went there to teach poor kids how to cook the food they grow in their organic garden at school.  He went after living in a Zen monastery for a year to, as he put it, dance in the streets and sit on the porch and watch other people dance in the streets.  They’re part of the youthful, post-Katrina migration to New Orleans, thriving in their new home.

I’d been fascinated by the city since my first visit years ago.  I brought back stories and voodoo dolls for the kids, and cooked countless family meals out of Paul Prudhomme’s Louisiana Kitchen.  Our family loved music and good food and the offbeat and mysterious.  It wasn’t so surprising we ended up drawn to this most foreign of American cities.

But during a visit last year it dawned on me that major changes in my life – a traumatic divorce and career transition, with bonus heart attack – had actually freed me to change things up even more.  I’d vowed to write the novel that had been living only in my head for decades, a story partially set in New Orleans.  Two thirds of my kids were living there.  No mortgage or regular job or significant other tied me forever to California.  The birthplace of jazz was the perfect place to pick up my trumpet and start playing again.  So I decided I would move to New Orleans, write the novel, dance in the streets, and sit on the porch.

It took a year to get things in order.  But the deadline I set came, I took several deep breaths, and packed my truck for phase one – a road trip to explore other places where the novel takes place, making my way to New Orleans to find my new home.

I said goodbye to friends and family – especially my first-born son I was leaving behind in Oakland – and set out, alone, on a cold January evening.  It felt momentous and frightening and exciting.  Marking the change with a road trip seemed right.  It sparked memories of other parts of my own story that took place on the road.

Truckin’, like the do-dah man

Once told me “You’ve got to play your hand”

Sometimes your cards ain’t worth a dime

If you don’t lay’ em down.

 

I remembered another cold night in early March 1976.

Our psychedelically painted 1946 school bus had pulled into suburban Livermore for the first of many repair stops, just hours after leaving San Rafael, in Marin County across the Golden Gate from San Francisco.  At a top cruising speed of forty, it would take days and days before we reached our final destination, an empty, windswept beach at the foot of the Bahia de La Concepción in the Baja California desert, 600 miles into Mexico.  I was sixteen and on the adventure of my young life, along with twenty-five other kids from our free-form alternative high school.  The 60s did not give up without a fight in Marin County.

It was bitter cold as we milled about the gas station, shivering while the attendant reached out on his CB radio for truckers who might have the unusual tire we needed.  He eventually found it and we lumbered on.  By dawn we reached the first rest stop after Highway 5 takes a hard right towards LA.  A trip that normally took two hours had taken seven: a sign of coming trials we would face and overcome, or not, until we came home – changed – three weeks later.

But on the road to New Orleans this January night my truck was running like a champion.  Hurtling south, in Fresno County I passed “Pleasant Valley State Prison,” quite a name for a place surely unpleasant in all respects.  I passed four prisons in my first twelve hours – dark monuments to the Age of Incarceration, mostly hidden away in remote rural places.   Prisons have sprouted like poisonous mushrooms across California for the last twenty-five years.

Down the arrow-straight freeway the miles ticked off.  With the 18-wheelers limited to fifty-five, I passed them like they were standing still.

I thought of a driving lesson I once got from a former big rig driver, heading up this highway one night in 1979.  He was one of the adults on a vision quest trip for teenagers that my friends Steven and Meredith – leaders of the Baja expedition – had led for us in Death Valley.  Recreating an ancient Native American rite of passage ritual, we each spent three days and nights alone, fasting amongst the valley’s fragrant creosote bushes, circling vultures, jumping kangaroo rats, and braying donkeys – whose ancestors had escaped from 19^th century miners.  We camped at sea level on the valley floor, the towering Funeral Mountains rising up 11,000 feet to the west.

I was the oldest teen and had earned a degree of respect from Steven and Meredith for not being entirely irresponsible on the Baja trip.  So they partnered me with a sweet kid who today would be diagnosed with Asberger’s Syndrome or something like it.  He admirably made it through two of the three planned solo days before he returned, satisfied, to base camp.  I enjoyed helping him and had a fine time myself, writing for hours, nestled in my camp down in an ancient arroyo – not necessarily the best spot if a freak thunderstorm had caused a downpour in the distant mountains.  The sudden appearance of donkeys from time to time, staring down at me blankly, was startling.  But I understood their bewilderment and appreciated the comic relief.

After returning to base camp, we exchanged gifts and shared the stories of our experience with solitude.  Then we drove back home through the night.  I rode with the truck driver in his great white whale of a car.  He took a liking to me and asked me to take the wheel.  I was honored, and a little intimidated.  But it was the driving lesson of a lifetime.  He explained the etiquette among truckers of flashing your lights to tell a passing driver it was clear to pull back into the right lane, then for the passing trucker to flip his lights off and on to say “thanks.”  He taught me the cardinal rule of highway driving: never, ever, use the left lane except when passing.  I was only a 19-year-old kid, but he treated me with respect.  At dawn, our convoy from otherworldly Death Valley reached the lush green springtime hills of Marin County.

Having started late to New Orleans, after five hours it was one in the morning and I was approaching Bakersfield, in the Kern County oil and cotton fields.  I was stunned to see the population had grown to 363,000 people – just 15,000 fewer than New Orleans.  I’ve spent a fair amount of time in Bakersfield, visiting relatives.  There was nothing to do when we visited.  To me it was a dreary, sprawling, desolate place.

That night was particularly eerie as I rolled in through the dark countryside.  Dense ground fog enveloped me as I navigated unfamiliar country roads, clearing suddenly then swallowing me up again moments later.  Adding to the sinister ambiance, the thick air reeked of manure and strong chemicals.  As I got closer to town (now a “city” I suppose), the blackness abruptly gave way to large, brightly lit industrial facilities.  The massive parking lots were half full of parked cars, their owners working the graveyard shift.  As I drove into town it was quiet except for the never-ending stream of big rigs flowing up and down the freeway.

I had an early experience with Bakersfield.

At the tail end of the ‘76 Baja trip, a schoolmate and acquaintance from the neighborhood – I’ll call him Mike – and I somehow convinced our gullible parents to permit us to leave the organized trip in Orange County and hitchhike home together, stopping to visit a friend in San Dimas, somewhere in Los Angeles.  (Do not judge my parents harshly; we were adept liars and I generally avoided serious trouble, or at least getting caught, and survived to reach adulthood remarkably unscathed.)

Mike was a personable guy.  He also had a hot temper and an unfortunate tendency to drink heavily and make threats – say, to a disgruntled neighbor – to “burn your house down with you in it.”  He also had a loose grip on the concept of personal property.  Introducing himself to Steven for the first time, he said – with a big smile, a twinkle in his eye, and a warm handshake – “Hi, I’m Mike.  I’m a thief.”  Not entirely surprisingly, I hear he may now be a guest of the State of California, perhaps in Pleasant Valley.

A winning personality can take you far, and I liked Mike and we were hell-bent on adventure.  Starting at dawn, we hitched without incident from San Clemente – Nixon Country – up to San Dimas (later famous as Bill and Ted’s hometown, starting point of their excellent adventure).  It took seven rides.  We spent three days there, eating ravenously to regain the weight we’d lost in Baja after the food fund ran low.  The “wake and bake” concept being well-entrenched in San Dimas teen culture, we stoked our appetites by smoking weed incessantly – which we’d grudgingly given up for the trip out of fear of Mexican prisons.

We also listened to the White Album over and over – part of the fine soundtrack of our excellent adventure.  The night we first arrived in the Mexican village of Mulege, an old shop owner sang us popular American songs from the 20s and 30s.  We sang “Me & Bobby McGee” and “Mercedes Benz” to an extended family of itinerant Mexican fisherman who befriended us on the shores of the Bahia de la Concepción.  They spoke no English and we spoke little Spanish, but we spent a memorable evening together, hiding in the bus from the relentless wind and happily trading songs into the night.  Crammed together in the bus, one of our fine guitarists serenaded us with “Dead Flowers” as we crept along Mexico 1.  On our last night in Mexico, we danced under a full moon to Santana’s Abraxas in the dunes along Baja’s deserted Pacific coast.

After a few blurry days in San Dimas, we were back to our fighting weights and ready for action, so we resumed our trek, this time on the much longer trip from LA north to Marin County.  Always polite, we followed our host’s recommendation to “take these whites to keep you on your toes.”  His last admonition as we stepped out of the car at the freeway entrance was, “And whatever you do, don’t get stranded in Bakersfield.”

Four hours later – after getting dropped off just past the huge billboard blaring the town’s dubious motto of “Sun Fun Stay Play,” we were stranded in Bakersfield.  For eight long hours we looked as charming and harmless as possible, without the slightest nibble.  When we weren’t utterly ignored, all we got were furtive, fearful glances and hostile glares.  We saw plenty of pickups with gun racks, but not a single VW microbus.  We Marin County boys were not in Kansas anymore.  Or we were.

After we nearly died of old age on the Highway 99 entrance, a big car suddenly pulled over and jerked to a stop.  We dashed over and leapt in.  The gregarious middle-aged driver was heading to Stockton, a travelling salesman tweaked on speed, making the long haul home from Phoenix.  He talked our ears off but got us closer to home and away from the dismal trap that was Bakersfield.

I’ve been from Tucson to Tucumcari

Tehachapi to Tonapah

Driven every kind of rig that’s ever been made

I’ve driven the back roads

So I wouldn’t get weighed

And if you give me weed, whites, and wine

Then you show me a sign

I’ll be willin’

To be movin’

 

My escape from Bakersfield this time, after six hours sleep at the motel, was far simpler.  Up before dawn, I filled the tank and hit the road for Arizona.  The empty highway snaked up through the Tehachapis, cattle grazing in the vast Tejon Ranch, the largest private landholding in California – a quarter million acre conglomeration of four Spanish land grants.  The first sweet scent of sage welcomed me to the dry side of California.

Descending into the desert, Frank Zappa’s southern California geography lessons made me smile as I passed Mojave.  Do she and Bobby still live there in that Winnebago?  Skirting Edwards Air Force Base, I passed dusty Boron, with its incongruous signs about mule teams and aerospace.  Somewhere around Barstow, I knew that – as a young man – the drugs would have been beginning to take hold.

Pushing east across the Mojave Desert, the Joshua trees and cactus appeared.  I’ve never found deserts bleak or barren, but beautiful and intriguing.  I have too many fond memories to feel otherwise: a family road trip from Indiana to Phoenix when I was six, along the course of old Route 66, exploring pristine desert full of giant saguaros with my cousins in still wild Apache Junction; vision quests with Steven and Meredith in Death Valley and the White Mountains; and many adventures in the Baja California desert and Sea of Cortez, camping and fishing and carrying on with my best friends.

But the side effects of coffee, the morning’s lackluster drug of choice, had taken hold so I pulled up in front at a rest stop.  After dashing in and out, I opened the tailgate, took out the propane stove, and treated myself to some Peet’s coffee.  Just because you’re on the road doesn’t mean you have to drink swill.

Time to fill up, my next stop was Needles.  On the Arizona border, it straddles the trickle that remains of the Colorado River after it’s been sucked dry so countless millions can live in a waterless desert.  At the gas station, my wallet was not in my pocket or in the slot on the dashboard where I’d had it earlier.  Getting more and more desperate as I searched, I came to the dreadful realization that maybe I’d left the truck unlocked when I ran into the men’s room at the rest stop.  If my wallet had been sitting there, it would have taken just an instant to open the door, grab it, and make a clean getaway.

After two thorough, cursing searches of the truck, front to back, I  raced back to the rest stop, an hour trip, in the exceedingly off-chance I’d dropped it and a Good Samaritan had found it – with my driver’s license, ATM cards, and $350 in cash.  No such luck.  At least my bank told me I could replace my card at any branch, and they had one up ahead in Flagstaff.  I’d brought more cash in my suitcase, so I wasn’t completely high and dry.  But my last experience in California hadn’t been a good one and I was ready to cross the once mighty Colorado, without looking back.

Interstate 40 starts climbing soon after the border.  Approaching Kingman, the rocky cliffs looked like long rows of giant Easter Island stone heads.  The yucca and prickly pear gave way to sage and cottonwoods in the creek beds, then to ponderosa pine forests as the road rose high up into the Kaibab National Forrest, south of the Grand Canyon.  A sign warned of an elk crossing, punctuated by the carcass of a massive elk on the shoulder, not ten feet past the sign.  Point taken and confirmation that elk cannot read.

In Flagstaff, at nearly 7,000 feet, the air was frigid as I hurried into the bank.  They refused me a replacement card when I told them no, I did not have a photo ID since it had, of course, been stolen with my wallet.  I stormed out.  Feeling bitter and unlucky, I pushed on towards Winslow, Arizona as the sun set.

Jackson Browne’s “Take It Easy” got Winslow some notoriety – there’s a statue on the main drag called “Standin’ On A Corner” – but it’s still a small, sleepy high desert town.  Historically a railroad stop, Winslow got sleepier when the interstate replaced Route 66 and bypassed town.  My plan to soothe my soul with some good Mexican food was dashed, as the dining options were even more limited than I’d imagined.

Winslow did have a Motel 6, my cheap motel of choice, but I had to convince the young Navajo woman at the desk to rent me a room even though I had no driver’s license.  The unforeseen consequences of a stolen wallet just kept on coming.  I had a picture of my passport on my phone, which I waved desperately in front of her.  She called her boss at home and, after a little explaining, I was in, drowning my sorrows with a beer in my room before falling into bed, exhausted.

Kit Carson was a hero to some

With his poison and his flame

But somewhere there’s a restless ghost

That used to bear his name

 

Studying history at Berkeley, I did my senior thesis on the treaties between the Navajo Indians and the United States, between 1846 and 1868.  A fascinating, little known tale, I threw myself into the project and wrote it from an ethno-historic perspective, describing how the three clashing cultures – Navajo, Hispanic, and Anglo-American – played a critical role in what went wrong.  I loved the project, but I’d never been to the Navajo reservation.  This trip was the perfect opportunity.

Up long before dawn, I made my tailgate coffee in the freezing cold outside the motel.  Next stop was to refuel the car and myself at the massive truck stop – with classic greasy spoon – on the edge of town.  Starving, I ordered the Billy Big Rigger (known as The Lumberjack in wooded locales), with five kinds of meat, three eggs, hash browns, a stack of huge pancakes, and toast.  I had a big day ahead and figured if I drove into a ravine I could live off the calories for days while waiting to be rescued.  The waitress winked and called me “sweetie” and filled my cup after every other sip of coffee.  I was in the friendly, artery-clogged heart of America.

Minutes later, I was on Navajo land, climbing in elevation through rolling grass prairies.  The sky was getting colorful as I made my way northeast toward the center of the reservation, many miles ahead.

After yet another treaty failed, the Navajo endured a forced exile and 450-mile death march from their ancient homeland in the mid-1860s – the Long Walk – followed by years of internment in a pestilent concentration camp.  Their suffering was so deplorable that eventually even the U.S. government – not known for compassion toward native people – took note and agreed the Navajos could return to part of their native land.  Over the years the reservation has grown to more than 24,000 square miles, in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah – an area larger than nine states, more than twice the size of Massachusetts.

I was astounded by the striking beauty of the land as I drove for hours to the heart of the reservation, virtually alone on the roads.  Immense, fantastically colored mesas rose up in all directions.  Long valleys extended for many miles.  Each turn in the road brought unique, kaleidoscopic vistas.  The day was gloriously clear and the sky cobalt blue.

The people were scattered far and wide.  Many seemed to live as they had historically: raising crops, and sheep, cattle, and horses that grazed in open pasture land.  Their homes were small but well-kept, often accompanied by a hogan, a small five or seven-sided building traditionally made of wood and mud, now often built with modern materials.

I didn’t see the abject, grinding poverty that is so obvious on many reservations.  The Navajo people I saw might be “poor” by Anglo-American standards, but – perhaps naively – I thought they could be living a simple life, like their ancestors, doing what they have learned over thousands of years to make a sufficient living in their homeland.  The people I spoke to were unfailingly friendly, kind, and helpful.  I never got so much as a dark or angry look from anyone I encountered.

As I neared the center of the reservation I arrived in the town of Chinle.  Navajo and local pride was displayed on signs and posters around town.  Like the corporate endeavor to sell a bad diet through the few fast food joints I saw on the reservation, the religious effort to “save” the Navajo people – dating back to the 17^th century Spanish friars – also remains in full swing.  Little Chinle alone hosts Mormon, Seventh Day Adventist, and Jehovah’s Witness churches, among others.  I was told many Navajo people are members of the Native American Church, known for its ceremonial use of peyote – a practice surely looked upon with dismay by the rigid American sects still vying for Navajo souls.  Nothing is more threatening to dogma and orthodoxy than hallucinogens.

Chinle is the gateway to the vast Canyon de Chelly, a serpentine labyrinth of 700-foot deep sheer rock canyons fanning out many mile to the east.

I was unprepared for its magnitude and stunning beauty.  From scattered vantage points perched along the top rim the canyon, I could see the fields and orchards far down below, along a frozen stream.  Horses whinnied as they grazed along the valley floor.  The canyon is still home to many Navajo people, and the floor can only be accessed by outsiders on official tours.

Here and there, ancient Anasazi ruins of stone settlements were visible, built into the cliff-sides to give further protection from enemies.

The Navajo have lived in the canyon since the beginning of their time, raising crops, peach trees, and livestock in relative safety from their historic adversaries: the Apaches, the Utes, the Pueblo Indians, the Spaniards, the New Mexicans, and, most recently, the Americans.  It was considered impregnable by early American military forces attempting to subjugate the Navajo, who vanished into its deep recesses when pursued.

The canyon was the last refuge for the Navajos when the Americans came to force them into exile.  The Army enlisted frontiersman Kit Carson to root them out by any means necessary.  While in some regards sympathetic to the Navajo and other tribes, Carson nevertheless followed his orders ruthlessly and efficiently.  His troops systematically destroyed the fields in the canyon, chopped down the ancient peach orchards, and drove off the tribe’s livestock.  Wells were poisoned.  The impact on the Navajos of his relentless slash and burn campaign was compounded by an especially brutal winter.  Starving, all but a few who had fled to remote, distant parts were forced to surrender.  The Navajo aptly call this the Fearing Time.

The horrific history of the canyon stood in stark contrast to its astounding beauty.  I felt sadness, and shame, and awe.  I felt the greatest respect for the Navajo people, who survived a cataclysm and returned to their magnificent homeland, working ever since to rebuild their lives and adapt to the alien culture that overwhelmed them.

It was time to move on.  My next stop, the town of Fort Defiance, on the New Mexico border, could be reached either by backtracking then following another two lane highway, or by dirt road directly from the south rim of the Canyon de Chelly.  Since the weather was dry and the high desert scenery so captivating, I decided to take the scenic route and explore.  I’d been told the road could get muddy, but it was clear and cold enough that the snow along the road was frozen.  Reaching the end of the pavement I was pleased to see a smooth, dry dirt road heading southeast.  I was able to drive at thirty-five miles an hour comfortably as the road gradually descended toward Fort Defiance.

Five miles later, I came over a crest and the road instantly turned muddy except in narrow tracks.  I tried to stay in them and slow without hitting the brakes suddenly, which would have sent me sliding off the road.  Coming to a white-knuckled stop so I could turn around, the back end – in slow motion – fishtailed slightly to the right and came to rest in a slushy gully on the shoulder.

Taking a deep breath, I gently gave it just enough gas so I could, with luck, move forward the three feet I needed to have all four wheels on solid ground.  (Four wheel drive would have done the trick, if I had it.)  But the rear wheels just spun.  I unsuccessfully tried not to think about how remote the road was and that I had not seen a single car on it, or that there was no cell service and it was probably eight miles back to a place that might have a phone.  I tried not to think I was cursed or, more likely, stupid.  Feigning calmness – for my own benefit, since no one else was around – I gathered sage brush and fallen wood and stuffed it under my rear wheels to give them traction to stop spinning in the mud.  It was the right approach, but for all my efforts I got perhaps two inches of forward progress, and was afraid I might instead get the front end into the ditch too.  At least I’d banked up calories at breakfast for this scenario.  I stood there, forlorn, in the middle of the road, my shoes encased in thick red mud, wondering how they said “you’re fucked” in Navajo.

Five minutes later, a big, new truck suddenly appeared, coming over the crest of the hill.  I waved it down and saw it was a Navajo family with a couple of kids.  The young father got out and kindly agreed to pull me back onto the road.  He politely told me to “Go get your tow chain.”  A tow chain – something else to put on the list for future trips.  Maybe they could at least take me to a phone so I could arrange the $500 tow.  I felt more stupid than cursed.

We scratched our heads for a while, then I remembered I had heavy tire chains.  They were long enough and might be strong enough.  I was able to fasten the end of one to the front of my truck, but we couldn’t figure out how to connect it to the back of his.  After some rummaging he found a piece of metal we used to connect a loop in the chain and get it attached.

One slow, steady pull later and I was back on the road.  Thanking them profusely for saving me, I offered him money for his trouble, which he refused with a smile.  Off they went down the road.  I was struck by how these complete strangers treated me so kindly as I blundered my way across their country.

After making the slowest, most careful three-point turn of my life, I was back on the dry stretch of the road, gladly backtracking to Chinle, then on to the eastern boundary of the reservation.

I passed through Window Rock, the tribal capital and a bustling small town, in an area the Navajo originally called the Center Of The World.  A few miles to the north was Fort Defiance, a place that figured prominently in my Navajo Treaties.  It was a beautiful place the Navajo considered sacred, where they had grazed livestock for hundreds of years.

In 1851 the Americans established their first fort there, in the heart of Navajo country.  They provocatively named it Fort Defiance.  It became a flash point, where troops killed Navajo cattle after the Army prohibited grazing – except for its own cattle.  The fort was attacked twice by large Navajo war parties.  It was abandoned during the Civil War.  Later, after the Navajo were allowed to return home, the Bureau of Indian Affairs put offices there.

Of the towns I’d seen on the reservation, Fort Defiance had a very different feel.  No sign said “Welcome to Fort Defiance,” or even told you that was the name of this place.  Nothing of the old fort remained and the BIA buildings appeared long-abandoned.  Even on a bright clear day, this seemed like a gloomy place, with none of the vitality I’d felt in Window Rock and Chinle.  I could only think that the specter of the Americans’ defiant fort, thrust upon a Navajo sacred place, still hung over the town like a shroud.

Leaving the main reservation, I crossed into New Mexico and rejoined the interstate at thoroughly tawdry Gallup.  Driving through the beautiful high desert toward Albuquerque – incredibly long freight trains running parallel to the freeway – I crossed the Continental Divide and passed through ancient lava flows and Indian reservations.  I could always tell I’d entered a reservation when the screaming billboards and garish roadside attractions suddenly disappeared.  The kid in me was still tempted by every sign hawking “Last Chance Fireworks!”

In Walter White’s hometown of Albuquerque, a lawyer’s billboard advertised his specialty – suing drunk drivers – surely the easiest slam-dunk in the law.  I headed north, making the short run up to Santa Fe, my evening’s destination.

Native people began living in what is now Santa Fe a thousand years ago.  Six hundred years later – the same year Jamestown was established and thirteen years before the Pilgrims landed – the Spanish founded modern Santa Fe.  Sitting at a crossroads of native, Hispanic, and American cultures, Santa Fe is rich with history.  It has preserved much of its legacy and historic style and has been an artistic center since the early 20^th century, home to the likes of Georgia O’Keefe and D.H. Lawrence.

It’s a romantic city too, as I knew all too well, having once spent a glorious time there with a woman I loved.  Her love died – another story for another day – so Santa Fe is, for me, a sad and beautiful place.  But I didn’t linger over old wounds.  I still had red mud to wash off my shoes and I was tired and hungry.

It may be remote, but Santa Fe is a good place to eat.  Crunching through snow on the sidewalks, I headed to the Cowgirl, a lively place where I feasted on New Mexico yak meatloaf and a Belgian style ale made in a local monastery.  From my spot near the front door, I watched the colorful parade of locals pass by.  Santa Fe reminds me of Marin County, in adobe and cowboy boots.

Pat Garrett rode up to the window that night

And the desert was still and the moonlight was bright

And he listened awhile as the Kid told his tale

Of shooting the guard at the Las Cruces jail

 

Awaking to another clear, cold morning, my first stop was down the street at The Pantry, a seventy year old coffee shop.  The Navajo Taco, with homemade chili and eggs, was just what the doctor ordered.

Ten miles east of Santa Fe, I pulled off the interstate in Apache Canyon, site of a Civil War battle known – with a bit of exaggeration – as “the Gettysburg of the West.”  Along the side of the road was a ramshackle private monument to the fighting that took place there over three days in March 1862.  Confederate troops from Texas had invaded the New Mexico Territory, including present day New Mexico and Arizona, initially driving out the meager union troops.  Their objective was to take the area and move on to take California and its gold and, even more importantly, its Pacific ports.  But the union forces quickly regrouped and returned.  The Battle of Glorieta Pass – of which the fighting at Apache Canyon was a part – spelled the end of the doomed Confederate adventure.  While the actual fighting was largely a draw with significant casualties on both sides, a group of union troops – led by a New Mexican officer who detested the Texans from their previous attempts to wrest control of New Mexico – made an end run around the Confederates and surprised their supply wagons in the rear, destroying everything and scattering the pack animals to the winds.  In that distant place, without hope of re-supply, the Confederates had to beat a hasty retreat back to west Texas.

Just after sunrise, I had Apache Canyon all to myself.  Climbing a barbed wire fence, I wandered down through the battlefield area, along frozen Deer Creek.  It was hard to imagine a tumultuous battle in this quiet, empty place.  A railroad track ran through the canyon and I found pieces of hard coal along the tracks, from the long-gone days of coal-fired steam engines.  I also came upon the remains of the Santa Fe Trail, first created by the Spaniards in the late 1700s, then used by the Americans until railroads reached Santa Fe in 1880.  One of the most important east-west arteries, it connected Independence, Missouri with Santa Fe – facilitating commerce and immigration across the continent.  But all that remains now are faint, overgrown traces, crisscrossing the railroad tracks that made it obsolete.

My next stop, a few miles farther into Glorieta Pass, was the Pecos National Historic Park.  I had the place to myself, except for a few surprised cottontails darting across the trail ahead of me.  I walked through piñon, juniper, and ponderosa pine forest to the ruins of the ancient Pecos Pueblo.

Set on a hill in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, between the Pecos River and Glorieta Creek, the pueblo began in the 14^th century.  By the mid-1400s, it had hundreds of structures, reached five stories tall, and was home to 2000 people.  Strategically located in a pass leading east to the vast plains and west to the Pacific, the pueblo was a major trading center.  With the residents as the middlemen, Apache and Comanche Indians of the plains regularly came to trade with Indians of the far west.  Later the Spaniards joined in.  When trading, the plains Indians camped out in a large clearing below and outside the walls of the pueblo, where rings on the ground from their tepees are still visible.

Before the Spanish arrived, the pueblo’s residents had led a rich spiritual life, in part centered on underground kivas, some of which have been restored at the park.

The people initially welcomed Spanish conquistador Coronado in the mid-1500s.  Later, they permitted Spanish friars to build a large church and, to some extent, included Christianity into their spiritual life.  But, weary of the Spaniards’ demands, the people at Pecos Pueblo joined an Indian revolt across New Mexico in 1680 that drove the Spanish back to Mexico for decades.  The pueblo’s Catholic priest was killed and the church destroyed by the Indians who had been forced to build it.

In 1838, tribal warfare and, more significantly, diseases brought by the Spanish forced the last remaining residents to abandon their ancient home and flee to another pueblo 80 miles away.  Only the haunting ruins of Pecos Pueblo remain.

At the visitor center they invited me to tour the major part of the Glorieta Pass battlefield, a few miles down the road behind a locked gate.  Armed with the combination, I headed over through thick forest and had it completely to myself.  The battlefield site was silent except for the sounds of birds and the crunching of snow beneath my feet.  The snow cleaned the last red Navajo dirt from my shoes.

Here, Union and Confederate troops met in close combat, intermittently falling back to regroup and tend to their casualties before resuming the fight.  A thick forest now, in 1862 it was a clear battlefield, largely deforested for ranching and fueling Santa Fe.  Below a hilltop command position stood the remains of Pigeon’s Ranch, around which the fighting had raged.  An extensive adobe complex built in the late 1840s, by the 1850s and 60s it was the largest stage stop on the Santa Fe Trail, housing dozens of guests and hundreds of horses and mules at a time.

Once again, it was hard to imagine this tranquil, beautiful place enveloped in pitched battle, in a war that mostly raged a thousand or more miles to the east.

Crossing the upper Pecos River, I headed east and then south toward my next destination, Fort Sumner, where the Navajos had been imprisoned after the Long Walk.  Leaving the mountains, the landscape suddenly changed to barren plains.  The survivors of Carson’s campaign of destruction had been driven mercilessly over hundreds of miles of inhospitable land like this – attacked while they were defenseless by New Mexicans and enemy tribes along the way.  Already weakened by Carson’s bitter campaign, those who could no longer walk were left behind to die, or suffered a more immediate fate at the hands of the soldiers.  This bleak place was so different from the country of the Navajos, who must have believed they were being forced into another world.

The small town of Fort Sumner was appropriately grim.  Its advertised claim to fame is being the final resting place of Billy the Kid – outlaw folk-legend and, in reality, sociopathic thug.  Turning down Billy the Kid Road, I had no interest in visiting the grave site roadside attraction.

Much more significant historically is Fort Sumner’s role as the internment camp for the Navajos and their mortal enemies, the Mescalero Apaches – who were also rounded up at the point of a bayonet and driven to this God-forsaken place.  Given the infamy of what was inflicted on these tribes, I was surprised to find a sprawling, handsome memorial and museum acknowledging and documenting the terrible crime committed there against them.  Virtually the only visitor, I got a personal tour of the entire museum from the memorial’s historian.

I wandered the grounds along the banks of the Pecos – a place known as the Bosque Redondo when it was the Navajos’ prison.  At one point, near the banks of the river, I came upon a small, solitary headstone in the grass, marking the precise spot where Sheriff Pat Garrett had rid New Mexico of “Billy the Kid.”

The effect of four years’ incarceration at the Bosque Redondo was devastating to the Navajo.  The plan had been to force them to become sedentary farmers like the Pueblo Indians.  But the tribe’s agricultural efforts all failed: the crops of 1864 and 1865 were destroyed by worms and those of 1866 and 1867 were destroyed by hail and floods.  Demoralized, they did not even plant a crop in 1868.  The nearest source of abundant firewood was twenty-five miles away.  The water made the Navajos sick and was described as “black and brackish, scarcely bearable to the taste.”  The Bosque Redondo was wracked with disease, including a smallpox epidemic that swept through the tribe.  Navajo women were aborting most of their pregnancies.  On top of the natural disasters, the Navajos – who were shot if they left the camp without a pass – were repeatedly attacked by Comanches, Kiowas, and other hostile tribes while imprisoned there.

Between the Long Walk and the four-year internment, a quarter of the entire Navajo tribe died.  Another quarter were held as slaves of the New Mexicans – part of a dark, centuries-long tradition.  Between enslavement by the New Mexicans and death from exile and internment by the Americans, the Navajo people suffered a relative population loss comparable to, if not greater than, what the world’s Jewish population suffered during the Holocaust.

With a heavy heart, I moved on, heading west across a perfectly flat plain, a few mountains to be seen in the farthest distance.  The prairie grasses were covered with snow; massive cattle grazed here and there.

My plan was to stop for the night and eat in Socorro, in the Rio Grande Valley.  Dining at the top-rated place in town, in the bowling alley, the Mountain Man Burger – an elk, bison, antelope, wild boar, and venison mixture – was delicious.  But my mood soured when the flea bag Days Inn turned me away because my cards had been stolen.  Disenchanted with Socorro, I kept moving and eventually slept in my truck outside the entrance to my next destination, the ruins of Fort Craig.

Out in the West Texas town of El Paso

I fell in love with a Mexican girl

Night-time would find me in Rosa’s cantina

Music would play and Felina would whirl

 

After a fitful night’s sleep in the frigid truck, I walked through the Fort Craig Historic Site at dawn, the bracing cold stinging my hands.  Mountain ranges rose up in the distance in all directions.  The smell of creosote bush brought back memories of Death Valley.  I had the ghostly place all to myself.

Seven miles down dirt roads and a few miles west of the Rio Grande, the ruins of the fort stand alone in the high desert landscape.  Built in 1852 – after the United States had taken New Mexico as spoils of the Mexican War of 1848 – Fort Craig was used for thirty years.  Before the Navajos were subjugated, it was a base for military operations against them and the Apaches, in whose traditional homeland the fort had been built.  After the Civil War, it was at times manned by the buffalo soldiers – African-American cavalry brigades.

Just a few miles from the fort, the Civil War Battle of Valverde had been fought in 1862.  After heavy fighting with high casualties, the Confederates opted to leap-frog past the Union forces and head north toward Santa Fe.  A month later, they were defeated at the Battle of Glorieta Pass, and retreated to Texas.

Back on the road, I headed south, following a route the Spanish conquistadors called the Jornada del Muerto: the dead man’s journey.  It was a particularly difficult and parched 100-mile stretch heading up the Rio Grande Valley toward Santa Fe.  It was home to the Apaches and their leaders, Geronimo and Cochise.  Turning west up out of the valley, I climbed through rocky foothills, imagining Apache war parties moving along the ridges.

The road snaked up into the mountains.  The landscape changed from juniper to pine forests as I climbed to 8000 foot Emory Pass.

Descending, I suddenly came upon the vast gash in the earth that is the Chino Mine – one of the largest open-pit copper mines in the world.

Once again crossing the Continental Divide, I pulled into my next destination, the old mining town of Pinos Altos, above Silver City, New Mexico.  Rambling over pine-forested mountains, Pinos Altos was founded when two California 49ers discovered gold nearby. A year later, Apaches led by Cochise launched a major attack on the town, which was defended by Confederate Arizona territorial militia.  The colorful character Roy Bean – later self-proclaimed “Judge” Roy Bean – operated a store in Pinos Altos that supplied the miners.

Going east again, I headed for the site of the Cooke’s Canyon Massacre.  During the Civil War a 100 warrior strong Apache war party had ambushed and laid siege there to a wagon train of American immigrants.  Literally circling the wagons, the Americans managed to prevent being overrun, but several were killed on both sides and the Apaches made off with the livestock.  Unfortunately, since now on private ranch land, I could only get to within a mile of the actual site.

Two days after the attack at Cooke’s Canyon, Confederate Arizona militia forces led by Capt. Thomas Mastin surprised the Apache fighters in the nearby Florida Mountains, along the Mexican border.  Most of the livestock was recovered and several of the Apaches were killed.  The Apaches later killed Mastin in their attack on Pinos Altos.

As I descended back into the southern Rio Grande Valley, the jagged Organ Mountains loomed beyond Las Cruces.

Pulling into old Mesilla, I walked through the quiet town square full of adobe buildings and a large church.  One adobe had served as capital of the New Mexico Territory.  Later it served as the courthouse where Billy the Kid had been tried, convicted, and sentenced to hang.  He escaped and fled to Fort Sumner, for his fateful encounter with Pat Garrett.

La Posta de la Mesilla restaurant – my dinner objective – was in a building from the 1840s.  During the 1850s, Roy Bean and his brother Sam operated a transit line from the building, connecting Mesilla with Pinos Altos.  A sign said Kit Carson, Pancho Villa, Billy the Kid, and Douglas MacArthur had all stayed in the building.  The food was nothing special, but the historic adobe building was stunning – as was the long-legged hostess – so I was happy.

Texas was just minutes away.  El Paso seemed sprawling, but it was hard to tell, driving through at night, where El Paso ended and Juarez, Mexico began.  When I reached the far side of town, the speed limit – for all vehicles – jumped to 80 miles an hour.  It helps for making good time in the vast state, but a highway accident in Texas could well be your last.  I finally understood all the Texas billboards I’d seen for lawyers specializing in big rig accidents.

Entering Jeff Davis County, I knew I was crossing from the West to the South.  In Pecos County scores of gas flares from oil wells spread, flickering, across the dark horizon.  By the time I reached Bakersfield, Texas, the stench of sulfur and oil got intense and lasted a full twenty miles.  The smell took me back to my childhood in New Jersey in the 60s, my little brother and I holding our noses every time we passed polluted, industrial Elizabeth on the turnpike.

I pushed past the stench to find a non-toxic rest area where I could get some sleep, finding it as I entered Crockett County.

Te gusta mucho el baile

Y bailas al compass

Te vas hasta Laredo

Y quieres mas y mas

 

After a decent night’s sleep, I drove through vast West Texas.  Hours later I reached the beautiful Hill Country.  The Llano River was full of water; the Little Devil was dry.  Clear spring-fed creeks gurgled along below brilliant white limestone outcroppings.  The hills rolled off in every direction, forested with oak and cypress and pecan trees, interspersed with grasslands and prickly pear.  Deer were plentiful – as were exotic African species grazing behind tall fences, brought to Texas for hunting but now often surviving in greater numbers there than in their native lands.

Twenty miles west of Fredericksburg, I came upon a plaque marking the site of a Kiowa attack on a homestead in 1865.  With troops off fighting the Civil War, conflict with native tribes increased.  In this case, two homesteaders were killed and a number of the women and children were captured.  The captives were taken all the way to Oklahoma before they were eventually found and ransomed back.

Fredericksburg is a well-preserved old town, with street signs in English and German, evidence of the heavy German settlement in the Hill Country.  German bakeries and restaurants dotted the main street.  Traveling south, I took the Old Kerrville Highway, which ran along the Pedernales River, and crossed the Guadalupe River at Kerrville.  On the road to Bandera I went up meandering Verde Creek Road.  After a mile I reached the marker for old Camp Verde.

Established by the U.S. government in 1855, a year later Camp Verde became home to the Army’s “Camel Corps” – an experiment in using camels as pack animals to cross the inhospitable Great Basin and western deserts.  Coming to Texas with Lebanese handlers – starting a wave of Lebanese immigration to the state – the camels were well-adapted to the task.  But between the onset of the Civil War, and the fact that the camels frightened the other pack animals and were intensely disliked by their American handlers, the project was scrapped in the 1860s.  The remaining camels were sold off, some to the Ringling Brothers.

I drove through scenic ranch country along the Guadalupe River, through tiny Center Point.  In keeping with the Hill Country’s eclectic animal history, a roadside marker commemorated an armadillo farm that had been there for decades, supplying the previously unknown armadillo basket market.

Picturesque Comfort, Texas was established in 1854.  A welcome sign said it was also the “Home Of The Fighting Bobcats And Deer,” an unusual combination of fighting animals.

In the center of Comfort, I stopped at the “Treue Der Union” monument.  Within the first decade of immigrating to Texas, the Germans were suddenly faced with Texas’ secession from the Union and the Civil War.  Not owning slaves, and not having come to America simply to break away from it, most of the Hill Country Germans opposed secession and supported the Union.  A detested stance to most of the Anglo population, mass hangings of pro-Union German immigrants took place in central and north Texas.  In 1862, sixty-eight mostly German men and boys headed south to try to reach Union forces by way of Mexico, but were intercepted by Confederate home guard forces.  In the “Battle” of the Nueces that followed, forty of the Germans were slaughtered.  Others drowned trying to cross the Rio Grande.  Their remains were left unburied.  At the close of the war, Hill Country Germans went to the site of the massacre, gathered the bones they could find, and buried them in Comfort.  They marked the spot with the “Loyalty to the Union” memorial, surely an unusual monument in a former Confederate state.

Once past the Hill Country, I made good time heading east to Houston, my evening’s destination.  Checked into my motel, I waited to hear whether my former love – now friend – who lived there could meet me for dinner.  She could and we had a fine time, as always.  But her offer to let me stay in her guest room – as opposed to her bed – was too hard to bear, so I headed back to the motel with a familiar heartache.

Along the way, I recalled another heartache, to my much younger heart.

During the high school Baja trip, I quickly paired up with a vivacious, adorable girl one year older than me. Debbie and I had been attracted since we met, but it took being on the road, away from home, to get things going.  My diary was detailed for the first three days of the trip, then abruptly stopped cold after I wrote the words: “Debbie and I conserved our body heat together last night on the bus.”  At the Bahia de la Concepción, we built our own structure a slight distance away from the main group.  We hitchhiked to the closest town, nearly forty miles away, to explore and sleep together on a bed in little guest house.  She was on a faster track than I was – reputedly living with a 30 year old.  But I was touched when she looked deep into my eyes one evening and told me I was the first – “the first guy I’ve ever been unfaithful with.”

But my adolescent dream come true soon came to a crashing halt.  A divide between the haves (who could bring some spending money for the trip) and the have-nots had developed.  Debbie and I fell into the haves category.  People had also started losing things in the great pile of stuff that filled the bus – a bus with no seats, so we sat on our packs.  There may have been some jealously because she and I had taken ourselves out of romantic circulation.  Then someone started a rumor that Debbie was the secret sneak thief of all missing items.  With little else to do in the howling wind, our fellow travelers had plenty of time to play telephone with the rumor, which gained traction among the more conspiracy-theory prone.  Later, one of the supposed victims of the thefts announced his stolen money had miraculously reappeared in his wallet, thanks to the “Great Spirit.”  It was a colorful group.

Debbie’s attention quickly shifted from me – where it rightfully belonged – to dealing with her former friends’ malevolent whisperings.  One evening, at a meeting called around the campfire to address the rumor, she confronted every person in the group, one-by-one insisting they honestly tell her what they thought about her, while looking her right in the eye.  I could tell I was losing a strong girl.

The next morning, she and her best girlfriend disappeared.  We found them a day or two later, when our fishermen friends reported the angry girls were camped on the beach near their fishing camp.  My good thing was over and I was miserable.  I was ready to go when Mike suggested we get off the bus as soon as we crossed the border.

Tipitina tra la la la

Whoa la la la-ah tra la la la

Tipitina, hoola malla walla dalla

Tra ma ti na na

 

After sleeping in for the first time in a week, my sadness had lifted as I drove away from bittersweet memories in Houston.  Just past Texas mile marker 881, I finally entered Louisiana.

Eating at the bar at the Blue Dog Cafe in Lafayette, young Jackie – a petite dark-haired beauty – was my bartender/server.  The gumbo was delicious and Jackie was charming and funny.  We talked about the books we were planning to write.  She told me her boyfriend had broken up with her that very morning.  I told her he really fucked up.  She laughed and said that made her feel better.  To complicate matters, her mother had married the boyfriend’s father.  It had been all the talk of Lake Charles.  I was sorry to leave, but the end of my journey was in sight.  I could feel New Orleans’ gravity pulling me.

Crossing the immense Atchafalaya Basin – the largest wetland and swamp in America – I could be nowhere else but Louisiana.

Once I fought my way through the typical Baton Rouge traffic, I was only an hour from New Orleans.

There’s something profound about nearing home – even a new home – after a journey.  Perhaps it resonates with the mythic hero’s journey and return.  My return from Baja California with Mike when I was sixteen was no exception.

The travelling salesman in the great white whale took us as far as gritty Stockton.  There we caught a ride with two partiers in a van who were high as kites.  They got us as far as downtown Sacramento.  Waiting for our next ride, we met a pretty girl about our age – also hitchhiking to Marin County – who was coming home from a coke deal at Lake Tahoe.  We joined forces and eventually, around midnight, got a ride to Vallejo – just two counties shy of home.

It was freezing cold as we walked along deserted Highway 37, hoping to find some traffic.  We parked ourselves along the road outside the Josey Wales Country Western Saloon, a honky-tonk where the music was still blaring.  Our traveling companion gave us more whites.  We waited and shivered and ground our teeth.

After an hour, the music stopped and a big car weaved out of the saloon’s parking lot, lurching to a stop just past us.  Two guys were in front and an attractive woman sat in back, all about ten years older than us, in their late 20s.  Mike got in front with the guys and I slid in next to the woman in back, with our new traveling companion next to me.  Fresh from a night of drinking at the saloon, they were friendly and hammered.  They lived in Vallejo but would happily give us a lift all the way to Marin – 30 miles away.  To some, their drunken state, erratic driving, and irrational offer to go so far out of their way might have set off alarm bells.  But to a couple of teenaged fools, they seemed like a Godsend. We could not believe our good fortune.

We did exchange concerned looks when, rather than head to Marin, they suddenly veered off the highway into Vallejo, a rough town.  But once we understood they just wanted to party before heading to Marin, we relaxed and once again realized how lucky we were.  We drank and smoked with them in an apartment for a while, the stereo blasting away.  Then the police came, responding to a well-founded noise complaint.  Somehow the police overlooked the cloud of weed smoke, and the egregious contributing to the delinquency of several minors, and let us off with a warning.  The 70s may have been the last decade for getting away with murder in America.

The party spoiled, we got back in the car to head to Marin.  The alcohol began having its usual effect on Mike, who started needling the guys about being so loud the cops had shown up.  He was a wise ass and expert button-pusher, but his charm was still compensating for it.  Barely.

Meanwhile, the lovely older woman next to me was getting friendlier and friendlier.  When she stirred her drink with my finger, then put it in her mouth and very slowly pulled it out, the pain of my earlier heartbreak disappeared; the world, once again, was a beautiful place.  Sixteen year old boys have short attention spans.

They surprised us again when they pulled in to a 7-eleven before going to Marin.  “We need more beer.”  A valid point, we waited in the car as the guys went in.  While my attention was primarily focused on the miracle woman who couldn’t keep her hands off me, I did notice out of the corner of my eye that something was amiss inside the store.  While the guys stood at the counter loaded down with beer, the Southeast Asian shopkeeper seemed to be yelling and jumping up and down and shaking his head violently, pointing at the clock, which indeed confirmed it was too late to buy beer in California.  Since he would not sell it to them, the guys simply walked out with the beer, jumped in the car, and we took off.

I did not appreciate this intrusion into the romantic moment I was having there in the back seat.  Mike was not happy either and started a steady flow of not-so-thinly veiled insults about the stupidity of robbing a 7-eleven.  We drove on across the marshes of the North Bay, towards Marin.

At four in the morning, we stopped in San Rafael at another convenience store, this time to lawfully purchase cigarettes.  We chatted with the gregarious garbage men who were there, getting ready to start their morning runs.

Other than sensing some tension had developed between Mike and the guys, things seemed to be going well from my lust-addled perspective.  We arrived in Kentfield and dropped our hitchhiking partner off at her house.  Then we headed back north to take Mike and me to our neighborhood in Lucas Valley.  The eastern sky was just beginning to lighten.  The driver asked if we knew a good place in our neighborhood to stop and smoke a joint.  Of course we did, in a secluded spot along a creek at the end of a cul-de-sac, close to Mike’s house.

We got our bags from the trunk.  She didn’t want to smoke, so I had to say farewell to my new love, getting a long, passionate kiss from her as she slipped a note into my hand.  I dreamily followed the other guys down into the creek.  To my astonishment, one of them suddenly pointed to the other and angrily accused me of “fucking with his old lady.”  I’d assumed they were just friends, or maybe siblings, out for an innocent night on the town.  Caught by surprise, Mike and I got a short but severe beating.  My misunderstanding about the woman was the official reason, but they went after Mike much harder.  People did tire of his sharp tongue.

Having better protected my most vulnerable parts, I was up off the ground as soon as our former friends struggled up the hill to their car and drove away.  But Mike was knocked unconscious and starting to have an asthma attack as he lay in the dark creek bed.  I woke him up after a few panicky minutes and his asthma attack stopped.  He was furious as he came to his senses, saying we would be going to Vallejo to find them and burn their house down with them in it.  I assured him we would do that right away (thinking that at least I could call the phone number she had slipped me).

Back on the street we got to our bags.  Mike bent down and picked up several unfamiliar items, held them over his head triumphantly, and announced, “At least I stole their shit!”

After leaving bleeding Mike at his house, I had a half mile to walk to mine.  The sun was just starting to rise, like the welts on my head.  It had been a twenty hour ordeal to make the seven hour trip from LA.  We’d been stranded in Bakersfield, and beaten within an inch of our lives and a mile of our homes.  The whole trip to Baja had in many ways been a slow-moving disaster of hunger, wind, strife, and heartbreak.  But as I walked home I was profoundly happy.  Not because I was going home, but because I had a true adventure and came back more of a man.  Despite formidable adversity, I had survived, and adapted, and loved, and been a useful member of our group.  I had experiences that would be part of me as long as I lived, experiences that make life rich.

My trip through the Southwest to New Orleans, where I now live, was a simpler affair.  But it also marked a profound transition, from personal and professional upheaval to the promise of creating a new, truer life for myself in a new place.  My journey felt like the opening chapter in a book that is yet to be written.

 

Copyright © Daniel W. Hager, 2015.  Quoted song lyrics: “Truckin,” by Bob Weir, Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, and Robert Hunter; “Willin’,” by Lowell George; “Kit Carson,” by Bruce Cockburn; “Billy the Kid,” by Woody Guthrie; “El Paso,” by Marty Robbins; “Ay Te Dejo En San Antonio,” by Santiago “Flaco” Jimenez; “Tipitina,” by Professor Longhair.