Day 5: Tuesday, June
4th, 2013
As we drove through New Mexico and into Colorado for our
next destination, it’s hard to realize how high you are steadily climbing, so
that by the time you reach 8000 ft, you have no idea how you got that high! So
in the wise words of Lloyd Christmas, it seemed very appropriate to agree that
“Yea, that John Denver’s full of s***.” J Yet, thankfully, we didn’t drive thousands of
miles “IN. THE. WRONG. DIR - ECTION!” But goodness gracious, my body felt the
effects of being at 8 – 11K ft high when we hiked, but more on that later…
We left Fort Worth, Texas at about 7 a.m. CST and arrived in
Pagosa Springs, Colorado at 8 p.m. MST. It was a LONG day, but goodness
gracious the Lord knew how to make it an enjoyable fourteen hours when He creatively fashioned this landscape!
It may sound silly, but I truly had no idea to expect the astonishment I felt
at the immense beauty of that arid part of the country. We took almost 1,000 pictures
just from driving that route, so for those of you who are taken aback at the
number of pictures I’m uploading on almost a daily basis to Facebook, just know
that the chosen pictures have been significantly filtered to be a “manageable”
amount. My dad said it really well in one of his comments on my pictures: “Hey,
look, there’s a horizon instead of a tree line!” Certainly the East Coast has
its own beauty, but it seems incomparable to the vastness you experience out in
the West when you can see literally for miles. Derek and I even tested it
mathematically to figure out that we could see roughly 10 miles away.
As you look out, you see a range of colors – the layers of
red and orange earth, spotted with green brush; the crystal clear blue sky
covered with puffy cotton clouds; the black asphalt stretching for miles upon
miles; the white, brown, tan, and blacks cows and horses grazing in the fields.
In a way that may seem strange to others, I even find beauty in the metallic
silver structures – windmills, buildings, and fences – which so starkly
juxtapose the landscape that demonstrates the infusion of humanity and
untouched nature. It makes me wonder why so many other people find this area of
the country as so ugly and boring. Perhaps beauty really is something that you
have to choose to see, and it’s a good reminder to us to take time to see the
beauty of our own area, because it’s so easy to get caught up in only seeing
the ugly, the boring, and the seeming meaninglessness of wherever it is we call
home. I wonder what things about Georgia I’m missing on a daily basis…
New Mexico has a lot of character, and I’m sad we didn’t get
to spend more time here. I think Albuquerque would be a really cool city, but
we didn’t make it quite that far. I’m looking forward to stopping in Carlsbad,
NM on our way back home, and I hope that it has similar character. We stopped
in the first rest area upon entering New Mexico, and it was the most
interesting gas station I’ve ever seen. This little hub was a gas station, a
sit-down restaurant, a Subway fast food restaurant, a bathroom – with showers!,
a convenience store, and an antique car museum. But I guess when you’re not
going to see any other buildings for another 100 miles, it makes sense that they would pack so
much under one roof.
My favorite part of this little stop was seeing the people.
I’m a big advocate of not judging individual people by stereotypes as much as
possible, yet it’s quite true that “stereotypes come from somewhere!” I wish I
could’ve sat down and had an extended conversation with the people at this
store. We saw a LOT of older bikers and Native Americans in pajamas. While I
was in the bathroom, I saw a leather-skinned, skinny biker woman – maybe 50s or
60s, it was hard to tell – who was wearing flower-patterned cloth on her bottom
half (I’m having a really hard time deciding how to categorize that particular
article of clothing) that was so short that her saggy butt (and I mean that in
the nicest way possible) was literally hanging out the bottom of the clothing.
Now, I’m a middle school teacher, and given our modern laxative stance on dress
code, I’ve seen my fair share of unwanted butt cheek sightings, but this
woman’s choice of clothing really took it to a whole new level. And I now have
a whole new appreciate for Ron White’s famous saying: “Things that make you go
… ugh!” If there had been any way possible, I would have taken a picture on my
cell phone because it was just that fascinating of a sight, but it would’ve
been too obvious. But at the end of the day, the difference in colors seen in
this state – both in the landscape and in the faces of the people – is what
made it such a cool place to visit!
We lost cell phone service as we turned off I-40 and headed
toward Santa Fe, New Mexico and started climbing the mountains. We saw
abandoned houses, run-down reservations, and monstrous pillars of smoke
emanating from the mountainside as we passed (at a great distance) the
news-worthy forest fire outside of Santa Fe. We witnessed a beautiful sunset
atop the base of the Rockies and passed acres of rolling green farms with
adorable little mountain cottages and barns. At one point, as the sun light
streamed over the mountains and highlighted some of the fields with a lake, I
thought of the ending of The Land Before Time when Little Foot and his
friends find the valley where the rest of the dinosaurs migrated and were blown
away by the beauty and fruitfulness of the area, and Little Foot is reunited
with his grandparents after the untimely death of his mother – which makes me
want to cry more now as an adult than as a child! (The closeness of my
friendship with you may be adequately tested by your knowledge of my love of
dinosaurs!)
I’ve only been typing during our drives in between places,
and that’s been nice because it helps me reflect over the last few days of
traveling. But it certainly makes it hard to keep up and do justice to the
things we’re learning and the memories we’re creating! But while I’m enjoying
reliving these moments, I feel like I have
to build up the mental stamina for writing a blog post to include everything I
want to say about the places we’ve been. So with that being said, I think I’m
going to save my thoughts on Colorado for another post because there’s just way
too much to include here right now.
I hope the Lord continues to slow me down and take in the
beauty around me, and I hope you’ll be encouraged to do the same wherever you
are now.
Love,
Derek & Catalina
No comments:
Post a Comment