Henry David Thoreau got tired of his rat race in the 1800’s and retreated to Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts to live a simpler life.
As a transcendentalist, he believed getting close to nature would get him closer to truth, wisdom, God, and peace. He built himself a little cabin on Walden pond, took daily walks, observed nature, documented his thoughts and daily chores in a book he called ” Walden, or Life in the Woods. ”
My road trip mission is to help Chip and Lori get a start on their simpler life in the middle of Nowhere, in Arizona, not far from Saint John.
With 80% of Americans living in cities these days, the things you can’t do, in a free country, are astounding.
The 20% of Americans who live outside city limits are an independent breed.These folks move to a different drummer, value individual liberty, work, helping your neighbors, keeping government at bay, They used to be everywhere, be your neighbors, go to your church, run for office. Now, they are scurrying out of the city as quick as they can get their backpacks together.
When all Hell breaks loose, do you really want to live in a city, anywhere?
Henry David Thoreau’s book is still resonating, a hundred and fifty years later.
I’ve heard, though, that even Henry would sneak back to town to have dinner with sympathetic readers and talk shop with Ralph Waldo Emerson over a glass of wine and a big piece of the widow Smith’s award winning Angel Food cake.
The LaFonda Hotel has been a fixture in Santa Fe going back decades.
The current hotel was built in 1922 on a downtown site where the first Santa Fe hotel was built in 1607 when Spaniards came to town. It is on the register of the Historic Hotels of America, was once owned by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad, and from 1926 to 1968 was one of the famous Harvey Houses that took care of train passengers riding from back East all the way to the Pacific Ocean.
In the 1900’s this was the favored haunt of trappers, soldiers,gold seekers, gamblers and politicians. The hotel, in the 1920’s, was designed by Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter and John Gaw Meem and is still a favored watering hole for New Mexico state legislators and government officials who populate Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico, affectionately called ” The City Different” by those of us who live in our state.
Santa Fe itself has long been a refuge for writers, artists, movie stars, and the local newspaper, ” The Santa Fe New Mexican ” is the oldest continuously operating newspaper in America. The world famous Santa Fe Opera is close by as well as Canyon Road with a gallery every other mailbox.
Up to Santa Fe for the day, Joan suggests I visit Boston. I’m thinking the Boston Tea Party Ship and Museum would be my cat’s meow.
While the LaFonda Hotel is super comfy, charming,historical, quaint, revolutions always ring my bells.
Joan misses some ambiance, on the phone, fixing who is watching her kids , and when, with an unaccommodating ex in Boston.
Fortunately for me, I haven’t fought in these kind of revolutions, and divorce and wedding bells, remind me of cannonballs whizzing by my ears.
This home on wheels was originally owned by a couple from Louisiana who traveled from town to town with a carnival. They sold kewpie dolls and prizes, and, as far as we know, lived as happy as the Old Lady who lived in a Shoe.
Inside, it is roomy enough for a couple that gets along.
For a couple that doesn’t get along, there is no house big enough.
Sometime last night this homeless statistic rolled her shopping cart onto Ronald McDonald’s premises and parked it.
The Albuquerque homeless problem is ubiquitous even if un-employment is low and jobs are rumored to be everywhere. Most intersections in the better parts of town have panhandlers holding ” I’m Hungry ” signs right under City Hall notices that tell you not to give them a dime.
When McDonald’s opens at five this morning, Javier will come out and shoo this squatter off but she will be back tomorrow unless she finds a better place under a freeway overpass where homeless people’s cell phones, at night, look like bedroom night lights as they lean against overpass stanchions and surf the net.
This country has wealth but people are evenly divided on whether we should steal from the rich to take care of those who have and give nothing, or whether people are entitled to keep what they have worked for if they have broken no laws to earn it.
This cold morning, our squatter will come into McDonald’s and slump in a booth. We will buy him,her, or he/she a coffee and burrito. Even though we talk tough about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, we know bootstraps are not always handy.
Using band aids to treat cancer isn’t the best strategy but to leave a homeless hungry, with change in our pockets, would be criminal.
The Armijo hacienda began as one of the first homes in Albuquerque, but was long ago resurrected as the popular Old Town restaurant, ” La Placita. ”
Haciendas were self contained economically, spiritually, emotionally.
Several generations of family lived, worked, sustained themselves in these compounds where they farmed, herded livestock, made clothes and tools, used medicinal plants, entertained themselves at night on back patios under the stars. There were haciendas within yelling distance all the way from Mexico City to Santa Fe, nestled in the Bosque cottonwoods by the Rio Grande. Skirmishes with Indians and bandits were always part of their landscape.
In the 1700’s, this would have been a hard but peaceful life, far from the treachery of Europe and Old Politics, the power of the Catholic Church, the restless marching of armies across continents,flags of discovery and conquest planted on beaches around our planet.
Having lunch in a La Placita dining room, open ears can almost hear the animated dinner conversations of these early settlers.
Their conversation would not be much more different than ours today with family, friends, community, politics, religion, and gossip the main concerns.
The difference, between then and now, is that then, families lived, ate,worked, and talked together.
Five o’ clock a.m. comes early and us boys head to the McDonalds at Lomas and Juan Tabo in Albuquerque most every morning of the week. Some of us read the newspaper, others do crosswords, some eat, most drink coffee, most tell jokes that are occasionally funny, and I catch up on travel posts.
Art and Robert are looking up the age of Martina Navratilova for a newspaper brain challenge while John waits for an answer to his latest question. J,B, buys coffee and Claudia serves up another morning like the last. Mario and Sid will come in around six thirty.
Having coffee every morning, at the same time and place, with the same people, gives me the feeling that the world is stable.
Claudia gets paid to be here, and, bless her heart, she puts up with us.
By tonight we more than likely won’t know much more than we think we already know.
If we could find cheaper coffee and a place closer to our homes, we would probably go there.
At a certain age, compromise is what you settle with.
Home bases take different looks.
They can be hotel rooms, bungalows, RV’s, tents, apartments, houses, townhouses.They can be overlooking the Atlantic in Uruguay, lost in the Andes, on Caribbean shores with palms and yachts, standing on stilts in a Louisiana bayou.
Scott’s newest home base is a townhouse in Albuquerque, the ” breaking bad” city.
In view of the Sandia Mountains,my landscaping is very low maintenance. The two car garage has room for storage. There is an extra bedroom and bath for guests. Covenants prohibit inoperable cars parked at the curb, red front doors, loud parties, Pets are allowed and H.O.A. fees are a couple hundred a year. There is no clubhouse, golf course, swimming pool, or security gate.
There is nothing eternal about a home base. Plains Indians used to drag their homes behind them to the next camp, following herds of buffalo so thick you could walk on their backs.
Living out of a suitcase, as liberating as it seems, is never as free as it appears.
Now, I hang the key to my drawbridge by my coffee maker on the kitchen counter.
Why I’m getting ready for another trip is a question I can’t answer with one post.
This wind sock, inflated early this morning, has flailing arms and an ambiguous smile on its face.
Creede hasn’t awoken yet, but June, the lady who lives in her parked Tiny House and sells food from her trailer cafe, is cooking already, at eight in the morning.
” I like your house….. ”
” It has everything I need, ” June says as she sips her morning cup of hot chocolate, turning on burners and slicing onions, looking at me like a suspicious pirate.
She has a big pickup for pulling her home away in a month when the first snow hits Creed, Colorado. Her truck plates are Texas but she volunteers to me that she will pull her rig to Florida and sell smoothies to tourists in swimsuits and bikinis, wearing hippie bracelets around their wrists and ankles.
You can see this blue sock from blocks away and it has big black eyes and long Ichibod Crane fingers snapping the air.
Big multinational corporations sell using Madison Avenue advertising agencies packed with employee’s with MBA’s and degrees in Psychology, Sales, Marketing and Sociology. Once they turn us into cookie cutter people and make their products our choices,their job becomes easier and more profitable. In Creede, and most of Main Street, where we live,this wind sock is more than enough advertising to get the point across.
Inside June’s Tiny House, there is room to stretch out, fix dinner, watch her big screen television, read a book, have special people over, clean up, curl up on the couch, let sunlight crawl through the window blinds.
A home base doesn’t have to be anchored to be a home.
A chalkboard street sign on Creede’s Main Street reminds us all to, ” Follow your soul! It knows where to go.”
June follows her soul, and the wind sock, this morning, says her soul is open for business but heading to Florida as the first snowflakes fall on the windshield of her big Chevy truck.
Leaving Antonito, Colorado, it is not hard to see two gleaming towers off to the east, the sun glistening off silver spires made out of hub caps, flattened beer cans, wire, window casements and whatever other material comes into the hands of it’s builder.
You drive a few blocks to the east, off the main highway, and, in a residential neighborhood, you come to temples created by a Vietnam vet who came back home after the war.
Dominic Espinosa, who prefers to be called ” Cano”, lives nearby the castle, in a little trailer, and tends to his garden, living off the land as he did when he was a kid with eleven brothers and sisters, his mother a cafeteria worker at a local school. There are interviews where he explains that ” Jesus lives in the castle, ” and that ” God built it. ”
Besides Jesus there are two crossed arrows at the entry to the yard that warn that alcohol and tobacco are poison, but marijuana is the best answer to many things.
It is normal to wonder about people, but the fact that one man would so consistently pursue a goal most others would label eccentric, causes me to think about personal obsessions.
On a personal level, Scotttreks not far from Cano’s castle.
Cano uses metal and wood while Scott uses words.
Back in yesteryear, a school assignment, in English, was to compare and contrast apples and oranges.
The assignment was dropped on us to develop critical thinking, stimulate observation, and bring order to our primitive minds. The assignment proved that apples are not oranges and oranges are not apples but they do have things in common, and liking to eat either is not a bad thing.
This snail and tortoise have things in common.
Both, on this day, are sticking heads out, coming out of their shells, testing waters, seeing if the coast is clear, checking weather, on the prowl for morsels.
The snail is on Alex’s front porch and moves slimy, leaving residue on the tile as he moves. He peers over the edge of the porch,seemingly oblivious as I bend down to take his photo.
The tortoise is on the backyard path I follow to feed Charlie and Sharon’s adopted deer, who come to their back yard in the Albuquerque foothills for snacks, water, and rest .Their tortoise sticks his head out for a moment, but he pulls it quickly into his shell as I step over him on my way to fill the deer’s tub with cracked corn and chicken scratch.
Sticking one’s head out is dangerous.
When you are comfortable and safe in your shell, why would any living being ever want to stick their head out?
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