The West

The urge to travel. Insidious, relentless urge. Impossible to suppress once it surfaces. I first experienced this desire in my early teens. (Early teens seem to be a ripe time for many strong first desires... But that's another story!)  Images of snow-capped jagged mountain peaks, wide open spaces, deserts and grassy plains stirred the great roaming beast. Coffee table books with glossy color photographs and magazines with stories about the Continental Divide, Death Valley, The Great Plains, big sky country, and massive, thundering herds of buffalo. The West.

There's no horizon on the east coast. It's all great buildings, dense forests and rolling hills. For a boy living in Maryland, that long flat distant horizon meeting an unbroken sky was a foreign concept.

One day, I came across a copy of On The Road.19 years old, no life direction and now stoked by Kerouac's depictions of new wild places and of people "mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars..."

Not long after, I looked up an auto delivery company in the Yellow Pages (remember them?) and asked if they had any cars going to the west coast. It did not matter where. I wanted--needed--to see the sun set on the Pacific Ocean by week's end! With little more than 500 dollars in my pocket, an old Nikon F2, and a single green canvas rucksack stuffed with underwear, t-shirts and jeans, I was off. I stayed in youth hostels and crappy roadside motels. Ate fast food and drank gallons of coffee. Harsh, bitter, burnt coffee from diners and mini-marts... not the gourmet fresh roasted beans you can pretty much find anywhere today. It was great.

I made the trip 6 more times after that. And then that was enough. Sitting for hours at a time behind the steering wheel watching the yellow stripes zip by eventually lost its appeal. The love of the West still burns, though. So I get out there when I can. It's not often enough, of course... but I know it's there, and that is comforting.

 “Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.” – Jack Kerouac

Gotta go!

Then and Now.

So, I was riding the range back in '57 when I came along this stretch of dirt road leading from the Village of Oak Creek toward Sedona. That's my buddy, Buddy, in the distance there with his cattle.

A recent return to the area shows off the "progress" made since then.

It's still beautiful, of course. Just a little too dang civilized, I tell ya!

(Of course, since I wasn't even a glimmer in my momma's uterus in 1957 the upper part of this story suffers from a severe case of fiction. The B&W photo is by an Arizona fellow named Bob Bradshaw. The color shot is fer sure mine!)

Cheers.

Be It Ever So Humble... etc.

Good to be back. As usual, sifting through many images. Deleting lots. Yes... deleting! Something you should all practice more of.

By the way, did something happen while we were away? Everybody seems to be walking with a lighter step, humming a tune and smiling a lot. Hmmm. I must look into this.

Meantime, here's a small taste of the southwest. More to come.

Peace. Paz. Shalom.

On The Road.

I read Kerouac's seminal book in my late teens. It had its effect. Free flowing, free-form prose about his travels across the United States. Driving, walking, riding the rails, sometimes hitchhiking his way through a nation full of hope, dreams, sex, dope, poetry, jazz, craziness. I myself made that trip to the Pacific and back again to the Atlantic a number of times after that. A little bit of doe, a medium-sized backpack, a handful of underwear and a camera was all I required.

Famed National Geographic photographer, Chris Johns has been quoted as saying, "Photography is one of the greatest pleasures of travel, and travel is one of the greatest pleasures of life." Somehow, somewhere along the way I was consumed with that spirit. It has not lessened a bit these last twenty-five years or so.

Tomorrow my beloved and I head out for--actually, return to--a place of genuine grandeur. Uniquely explore-able and eminently photographable. The great southwest!

This shot is from a long ago trip to Arizona. Those are the Vermillion Cliffs along route 89 headed towards the north rim of the Grand Canyon. Among your life list of things to do before you die... this should be one of them!

We'll be in a different but no less impressive part of that fine state this time around. Everyone stay well while we're away. Oh, and unlike Paris, I won't be live blogging from there. Pics when we return!

Cheers.