Oxygen
Taos in the early morning--skies clear as only mountain high desert can be. Magpies flash white tipped wings. Dropping a mile through the mountains in two hours. Like swimming in oxygen. Gasoline in Clovis, just before the Texas border.
The Texas Panhandle. The giant Azteca grain elevator in Muleshoe, silos arrayed and painted like a giant bag of cornmeal. Lubbock at 4:00 in the afternoon. Too early to stop. Who wants to spend hours in Lubbock in a hotel room watching bad television? Snyder, Texas. A miniature black and tan male dachshund standing in the middle of the red brick street, panting in the heat. Tehano on the radio.
Post, Texas. Driving south past oil wells, pumps bobbing, and miles of windfarms. Always seems that in the forest of giant white, three-bladed windmills, one isn't working.
East towards Abilene. 7:00 pm. Rock on the radio. Last chance for a hotel. A mile and a half lower than Taos. Still drunk on oxygen. Abilene, Cisco, Lubbock, Muleshoe, names from books made real.
South into the hills of Central Texas at Cisco. Speed limit 70 daytime, 65 night. If I can see stars, I guess I should slow down.
Rising Star, Texas. Brownwood. Lampasas.
Austin. 11:00 pm.
posted by Maureen McHugh at 11:44 AM
7 Comments:
Welcome home! Hope the workshop was good (despite the power outage.)
Yes, welcome home! Drink up the air and tell us all some Taos stories when you're reoxygenated. :)
You're home! Went to Bandelier and on the way back ate burgers at Dave's Not Here and got in the car just as the super rainstorm began. Saw accidents a'happening and streets flood real-time. Now we're lighting fires in our hotel room (they left out kindling).
How was Bandalier? Glad I missed the rainstorm and weather. I saw weather way off to the west when I was driving the panhandle, but it's hard to get a sense of how far away weather is out there in the Southern Plains. Now I'm reading The Worst Hard Times about the dustbowl. Or I will be. I spent today digging out of my email pile and getting groceries and all that mundane stuff.
we leave austin, you get back!
good news is, we found a good place, so we can really move now...in august
Taos to Austin in one day! Wow. Now if only I could get =my= little red cells to carry that much energy.
25 years ago, I used to make that drive in one day--- I remember those grain elevators at Muleshoe--- but I always arrived too exhausted to have any fun. I hope you're not required to have fun any time soon.
Umm . . . I didn't mean that quite the way it turned out.
I felt ready enough for fun after a good night's sleep--but I slept hard.
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