Arrivals
Originally Published May 21, 2022
Thirty-six hours, two states a day, a dizzying experience. The landscape changes dramatically, softening as we move east. No longer the red bluffs, the impossibly blue sky, the stoic junipers, our eyes adjust from the desert to the emergent green of Colorado. We lumber up mountain passes, flying down the other side, RV's and semis speeding by. And then we are in Nebraska, soft, sweet, and dreamy.
The southwest landscape seems abandoned, largely uninhabited. A cattle ranch might signal a custodial presence, but human habitation is incidental. Small towns could blow away. Some nearly have. Gas pumps are gone, storefronts are empty, siding is missing. Nature is dominant. Civilization holds on dimly.
Eastward a cultivated landscape appears, boundaries are delineated, planting patterns weave across gentle drumlins. Hills are cut, filled, and moved as convenient. Signs of human presence are everywhere, largely in the trace of large, agricultural equipment.
As we cross the Mississippi, suddenly all seems tired, plowed under one too many times. Signs of abandoned nineteenth century industry remain. Roads maneuver through more complex land holdings. We move from town to town, sprawling industrial suburbs to city centers, counties no longer matter.
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We spent our first night in a sprawling Walmart Parking lot, next to a truck stop. Peering out the window. Are they moving toward us? The next night another Walmart, this time off the highway, a bucolic view out our window as we have our morning tea and depart for the next ten hour drive. Our last night, in western Pennsylvania, parked in the Amish horse and carriage area, we emerged into the evening humidity of spring. Like stepping off the airplane in the tropics in the middle of winter. The west is so dry and dusty that on our last days our noses blew red, our eyes ached, our skin felt like sandpaper.
The sunset in the west is long and the sky infinite. The afterglow extends 360 degrees around the horizon. Cool blues and purples complement the setting sun. As we move east we see the soft yellow light of the setting sun against a warm cloudy sky. All seems historical, like a Thomas Cole or Fitz Hugh Lane painting.
Familiar again.
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Our trip home was all anticipation. We arrived late Saturday night to surprise Jess and Carter, expectant parents, who then headed to the hospital the next morning to give birth to young Augustus "Augie" Byron Roberts.
