” Tumbling Tumbleweeds” is a Roy Rodgers cowboy song, sung around the campfire with fellow cowhands on a starry night, with a crackling fire, when the herd is quiet and coyotes are howling harmony.
The song’s lyrics are plaintive as the western landscapes shared by cowboys, Indians, outlaws, and cattle.
” See them tumbling down/Pledging their love to the ground/Lonely, but free, I’ll be found/Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.
Cares of the past are behind/Nowhere to go, but I’ll find/Just where the trail will wind/Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.
I know when night has gone/That a new world’s born at dawn/I’ll keep rolling along/Deep in my heart is a song/Here on the range I belong/Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds… ”
The last lines of the song crawl into my tent and bite me.
We all have songs to sing, but tumbling is what I like to do the most.
My last conversation with a skeleton was at an Albuquerque Starbucks, on Halloween.
Before that, I shared a sidewalk bench one sunny afternoon, with a man of bones in Tulum, Mexico.
Today, outside the Kaktus Brewing Company in Bernalillo, New Mexico, another set of bones greets me.
I wouldn’t swear to it but I believe this skeletons right toe is tapping to the music in perfect four four time.
Good blues can bring back the dead, but they often make us feel like we want to die first.
It’s always bad luck to walk past a skeleton without tipping your hat.
This rock, more than a stone but not a boulder, in Embudo Canyon in the Albuquerque foothills, has been moved onto the trail, by something other than wind, water or wishes.
It appears to have been lifted from a nearby mound of dirt. Where the rock used to be, on the mound, is a small hole that matches it’s size perfectly.
” Let’s move it back, ” Alex laughs.
If we move the rock back will some cosmic order be disturbed? Has moving rocks become against the law in an open space monitored by cameras and posted signs? Maybe the rock likes it here closer to the trail and doesn’t want to go back to where it was?
We keep walking quickly through this crime scene.
This situation has man’s dirty fingerprints all over it and I’m not putting things right.
Not wanting to get involved is a perfectly normal thing to do these days.
Part of the Albuquerque Botanical Gardens ” River of Lights ” package, for $110.00 per couple, is cleansing souls.
After the train ride, those who participate, write bad memories from the past year on a piece of paper, fold the paper, and toss it into the fire. They also write positive goals for the New Year ahead, on another piece of paper, and toss them into the flames too.
This isn’t as dramatic as the burning of effigies in Cuenca, Ecuador, but it has the same catharsis..
Joan and I throw our goods and bads into the fire and head to the Shark Cafe for dinner.
A big lesson I learned in Belize, is that it is better to eat shark than get eaten by them.
The big task tomorrow is figuring out how to wrap this night up and put it under the Christmas tree.
Starbucks in my city are ubiquitous.
For a couple of bucks for fresh coffee I can mingle with tech savvy people who lean towards globalism, free healthcare for all, living wage checks from Uncle Sam, electric cars.
This morning, in my local Starbucks parking lot, a horned toad occupies a Toyota car hood waiting for his chauffeur to bring him a Frappe.
The truck has a locked security cover over its bed because Albuquerque is a “Breaking Bad ” city and wise people here lock their doors, always.
Crime, these days, is on all our lip’s but the conditions that breed crime here won’t be fixed soon. Crime was once a morality problem but it is now talked about as an economic/social problem. Our Mayor assures us that If we pump enough money towards our crime and homeless issues, and do better with rehabilitation, things will be hunky dory.
This little guy doesn’t nod at me as I go by. He reminds me of a green gecko I once glued to the hood of my painter’s truck, a synthetic stuccoed Mitsubishi ” Mighty Max. ” He reminds of the beautiful green gecko on the front porch screen door of my quarters in Ms. Sue’s Haiti Children’s Home.
Why, I keep wondering, do I keep running into the same things, the same people, the same ideas, in different places, across time?
I’m sure this horned toad has an answer, but this morning he doesn’t share it.
If a horned toad likes Frappes,though, I’m believing I should give them a try.
Trying to get through the day without coffee, for horned toads and humans, is fraught with disappointment.
Some sculptures exhibited are behind glass, others are open to visitors to peer at closely, peek at the small shadows in the creases of the faces. Some of the work is utilitarian, made to ornament balustrades and pillars. Other works stood in temples before kneeling worshipers and burning incense.
Antiquity never quite leaves us, though we try to leave it.
Conserving the past, especially if it is someone else’s, is precious.
Palo Duro canyon isn’t far from Amarillo.
If you head east from Amarillo you hit the Texas Palo Duro State Park where you can drive down into the canyon and access its visitor center and exhibits. On road cuts in the canyon below Alan’s home we look for Indian arrow points lost in ancient hunting miscues. When we drive into the deep canyon to fish we take his 1950’s Willy’s jeep so we don’t get stuck.
From this bench, the new morning is quiet spectacular.
Light comes to our side of the planet as the other side turns dark. This switch from dark to light comes quickly. Within thirty minutes sunrise goes from a point where I can’t see the creek in the bottom of the canyon to a point I can see the entire creek, as well as homes and houses on the rim of the far side of the canyon.
I hunker down in my light jacket waiting for the sun to start warming the planet.
On Thanksgivings, when I visit, I always fall asleep in my chair while football players try to kick a pigskin through goalposts.
Having just one day a year where we are thankful and celebrate just doesn’t seem enough.
Texas, where my dad was born and raised, not far from here, feels like home right now.
On some bench, just now,around the world from me, someone is watching our sun go down.
I hope they are content too, to live,and let live.
Llamas are an important working animal in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and other high Andes South American countries used to transport goods where vehicles can’t go. This llama,far from its home and relatives, is boarded at Dave’s daughter Kim’s house in the country near Larkspur, Colorado.
” Kathy, my ex, rents them out to back packers, ” Dave once told me in one of our conversations. ” She just finished a month long backpack trip in Oregon …..”
Some men talk about their ex-wives with disdain. Dave was different.
This llama gives me a look of disdain and I trek back inside with the rest of the mourners.
A slide show on a television shows high lights of Dave’s life; his marriage, the birth of his children, his life as a young man, photos of his father and mother, pictures of him smiling. Dave would be pleased with the turnout, not pleased with the preacher, pleased with Kathy and Kim. He would be back in the kitchen tasting treats if he was still with us. His dog, Chaco, has lost weight and acts anxious as he sniffs for Dave but he can’t find him.
When I get home I’m going to dust off my walking shoes and take a trip to Mexico, a trip Dave and I talked about for the last two years but didn’t get around to doing for his health issues, which he rarely talked about.
When I get to Mexico I’m going to smoke a stinky cigar for Dave even though I don’t smoke, and have a drink of Crown Royal even though I hate blended whiskey.
Dave will be pleased.
These crowns are made from paper with printed jewels on the side. They adjust to fit all heads and there are plenty to go around. Customers can take them for free and kids are not the only ones that wear them.
Kings used to be in short supply, one to a country. In this age of mass merchandising, mass consumption, collective thought and identity politics, kings are no longer protected or worshiped. Now,with social justice warriors on the warpath, we must all be kings.
If you were King for a Day, what edict would you have your scribes put on a scroll and tack to telephone poles around town? Would you start a new holiday? Would you erase everyone’s debts? Would you let everyone out of prison? Would you throw a party? Would you ride the streets in a carriage and wave at your adoring subjects? Would you open your palace doors to the common folk?
Even with our lofty rhetoric, America is still run by royalty.
Congress will never take their crowns off and our President will never be allowed to put his on.
These days the only reality and royalty we follow lives in Beverly Hills.
Some photographs resonate.
This photo, hanging on a restaurant wall in an Albuquerque Olive Garden, resonates. It is a black, white, and gray ode to old age.
These three old men have seen history and are sitting on a bench watching life pass them by. Old men often have histories that are burnished and worn like rocks going through a rock shop tumbler. Their rough edges have been smoothed and now they lean on each other as they watch glorious young women flaunting the latest designer clothes, their trim bodies moving against skirts and blouses that can barely contain their curves.
These old men sit and their conversation moves from wars,to divorces,to children,to politics,to sex, to money.
Growing old is unavoidable but sitting on the right bench, in the right place, with the right people, is, in my mind, still a few years off for me.
Fooling myself,however, is something I have experience with.
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