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.
The bathroom is the most private room in our house.
We don’t invite people over to have a beer in our bathroom and it isn’t the first part of the house we show guests.
On the walls of Freeman’s restaurant bathroom ,between Hermit’s Lake and Creede, Colorado is a collage of wisdom.
Thoughts, like roses, have allure, and thorns.
I am careful with thoughts.
I tend to support ideas that support how I think and how I think is not always good for me.
In one of our most private rooms, we often have some of our most private epiphanies.
Creede was established in the late eighteen hundreds.
At the north end of town is a silver mine that has become a museum. Running through the middle of town is a river that carried mining sludge into the valley below that is now being reclaimed by environmentalists. Main street is a Historical landmark with old red brick buildings turned into shops, restaurants, museums, and a repertory theater. The two cliffs on the north side of town look the same as they did when our family came to vacation here in the 1960’s.
While Richard fills out a police report on the deer that ran into us on a highway turn last night, I take a walk about.
In its prime, this town would have been filled with dusty miners who cleaned up in the cold stream and put on Sunday clothes for a chance to dance with dance hall girls in local saloons. Their picks and shovels would be leaned in a corner of the cabin they shared with other boys and a silver dollar would have bought them dinner and drinks all night.
The people who founded this town were tough, rough and ready.
Out here, in the West, you keep your powder dry, your mouth shut,your ears open.
Why that deer turned, and ran in front of our van, haunts me?
When Richard exits the police station with a copy of the police report, he says the insurance company is taking care of damage to our rented truck.
On our way back to his cabin site, we both watch both sides of the highway extra hard.
Deer don’t have insurance and they make mistakes too.
These mounted animals look down at me like judges ready for my sentencing.
Hung over the aisles of rods and reels, shotguns and rifles, fishing tackle, ammunition, these guys are frozen in their final moment of life.
Hunters have always stayed close to their prey.
In New Guinea, deep in jungles, hunters wear shrunken heads of enemies around their waist. Plains Indians danced under the moon at night wearing buffalo robes with horns hooking the air. Ancient Incas wore feathered head dresses. Seafaring whaling men carved walrus tusks with designs of ships and harpoons. Oceanic islanders wear shark teeth around their wrists.. Texans put cow horns on car bumpers. Sportsmen hang calendars in their garages that feature big game animals and buxom women. Presidents pose with one foot on the body of a downed lion.
Nature’s variety is on display here and, fortunately,for these trophies, our eating habits have changed. Most of us urban folk don’t dine on deer, raccoon, llamas, opossums,alligators, snakes or geese.
Human consumption of alcohol, ironically, saves more of these fine animals than the Sierra Club can dream about saving.
Even in death,these animals seem too regal to be stuffed and hung on a grocery store wall.
If this was ” Twilight Zone, ” I’d be hanging up there on the wall and an elk would be buying his hunting license and talking about two legged trophy humans who are easier to shoot than ducks on a pond.
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.
In a hallway to the tv room, on a wall in front of the boy’s dorm, is a tree with kid’s photos hanging like fruit.
These photo’s were taken some years back and the children have long since outgrown their photos, each day becoming something new, their emotions taking them on minute by minute roller coasters.
For businessman, kids are future buying customers or part of their future labor force.
For schools, kids are society’s future mom’s and dad’s and bring money from the state.
For politicians, kids are future voters who will have to pay for current policy mistakes.
For Jesus, children are to be nurtured.
At Ms. Sue’s, children give this home its life. They run down halls, swing on swings on the playground, sharpen pencils at school, recite devotionals, watch Disney movies before bedtime, do their chores with only a little complaining.
It takes a long time for human fruit to ripen.
Yesterday’s photo’s don’t do justice to today’s faces.
It is, I’m observing, time for some new portraits.
There are competing perceptions of Haiti.
There is the portrayal, in its art, that Haiti is a rural place of simplicity, order, old ways, peaceful, a collage of beautiful colors, shapes, and sounds. This is the Haiti that Gauguin would have painted had he sailed to Haiti instead of Tahiti.
There is the reality of Haiti, in a drive thru Port Au Prince, of collapsed concrete buildings, lingering fires in the street, pigs eating garbage as people sift through it next to them, street shops made from sheets of tin and plywood, hands shoved in your car window selling bottles of water.
The difference between the imagined Haitian paradise and the real fallen city is stark.
Would we rather accept a sentimental vision, or adjust to gritty reality?
Is our glass half full, or half empty?
Haiti is a pot of spicy soup with ingredients we savor, and ingredients we spit out.
When you travel, you meet reality.
Haiti shares its island with the Dominican Republic. Haiti speaks French and the Dominican Republic speaks Spanish. Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the western hemisphere while the Dominican Republic is a tourist mecca with white beaches, all inclusive resorts, stunning landscapes.
Haiti was discovered by Columbus, claimed for Spain, ceded by Spain to the French, and became an independent country when Toussaint L’Overture, in 1804, led half a million slaves in revolt.
In 2003, Voodoo became an official Haitian religion.
There have been 70 dictators here since their Independence Day.
Unemployment is around 80% .
The 2010 earthquake that hit Haiti was a 7.0 magnitude with over 300,000 Haitians killed and property damage that has never been rectified.
There is too much Africa and Europe here, and not enough opportunity and freedom..
Being kept a slave, by your own countrymen, is hard to fathom.
Where all the money donated to Haiti went, after the earthquake, is in someone else’s Swiss bank account.
It is Sunday morning.
Sun squeezes through delicate spider webs by an old stump.
Water seeps through screw holes in the tin roof of the guest house.
Children sing songs at Ms. Sue’s.
When you have little, you are happy with what little you have.
This tunnel is well lit.
Some tunnels are rabbit holes, some filled with pack rat vaults. Some tunnels are underground, dark and womb like, leading to gold and silver leprechaun caches. Some tunnels are constructed with giant boring machines, go under seas and through mountains to large impressive cities. Through some tunnels we enter this world, and through others, leave.
This horizontal escalator is a metaphor for our times. Pampered, we need to walk, but aren’t forced to.
Two girls pass me, in a hurry. One lifts her phone and takes a selfie.
This gleaming tunnel moves us all steadily forwards. We go where we are told,are put where we are wanted, are entered on flight lists, and ring up charges on our credit cards in a debt-centric world.
I think I’m in a rabbit hole and, like Alice, trying to find real and valuable isn’t always easy.
This flat escalator, if I stayed on it, could roll me right off the edge of our Earth.
When I come to the escalator’s end, I pick up my little suitcase and get back to walking like i was designed to do.
Recent Comments