Southwest Loop

FINDING OUR WAY
It has been a while since I left the farm, bouncing down the road in a little house with six wheels and a bike on the back, an Otterhound pup named Truman and a lap full of maps. Not knowing much except what the maps and friends have told me, I head to areas of states known for their special beauty and the state and national parks that feature access to it. Every kind and sort of terrain has its own loveliness and each state seems to contain a wide assortment of plain, mountain, desert and waterways. The trees tell you where you are...the West beginning sharply down western state borders from Minnesota to Louisiana. Space is the key visual element of change, the cause is lack of water.

TEXAS GRANDEUR
Remote Big Bend National Park, with late summer temperatures reaching the 100-teens, was empty of people but full of the Rocks of Ages and a spiritual power that matched them. The scene was magnificent with the Rio Grande snaking importantly through canyons as the dividing line between two countries. Sure enough, I was stopped by the Border Patrol checking large vehicles as possible smuggling agents, but all he found was Truman snoring in the back--some watchdog!

TERROR ON THE TRAIL
Here in gorgeous Santa Fe, Truman and I are on trails each dawn and dusk for the sun's incredible cloud and light show. One morning we were armed with wariness and dirt clods as we approached the house of two fierce and slavering German Shepherds who took delight in terrorizing and chasing us with fang and claw. Around the corner they tore, foaming, but this time a child had been playing house with them the night before and there they were, all dressed up in baby bonnets, little socks, necklaces and tiny sweaters. We whooped and they remembered how wussy they looked and slunk away. We definitely learned that dogs do feel embarrassment and also that "clothes make the man?"

THE GREAT PLAINS
Now we are staying with our family at a big cattle ranch in the middle of the Nebraska sandhills learning all there is to know about heifers, steers and bulls. Yesterday I gave a preg-check to two large cows and felt the tiny baby calves shoulder-deep inside, no bigger than a little toe. When you "ride the pens" culling sickly calves for doctoring, you have to be atop a horse...not at all funny, except for the embarrassment of getting on and getting off. Our muscles for walking are definitely not those used for riding and I promise you, your legs and knees will be unpleasantly surprised. Every day five border collies come with Truman and me on long, long walks into those delicate sandhills to watch harriers make crisp dives for mice and voles near the North Loup River. The dogs flush out fat Prairie Grouse along the way to our destinations which are always certain windmills and cedar, cottonwood and juniper groves dotting the landscape. Dawn and sunset are the preferred times--but the ten different field grasses dressed in tones of paprika, curry and cinnamon growing on the hills look spendid in any light.

KANSAS PRAIRIE
There is an itty-bitty town in the middle of Kansas with a half-block Main Street decorated at one end with an imposing 19th century courthouse built in the French Second-Empire style of creamy limestone topped with a cherry-red mansard roof. When I walked into the fragrant Emma Chase Cafe the women's table was occupied by a half-dozen beautiful women, some into their seventh and eighth decade. They assessed my big dumb grin, curiosity and camera as friendly so invited me to join them and after an hilarious hour of teasing and stories, urged me to attend the cafe's Catfish and Pickin' event that evening to really experience the spirit of the town called Cottonwood Falls. Now, I've surmised that pure happiness comes in tiny fragments rather than chunks--most of the time one is blessed to be relatively serene and pain-free. Once in a blue moon self-expression and good will combine to provide a luminous moment and that is what happened in a room full of talented guitars, mandolins, fiddles, piano and vocals raised in joyful noise. Remember the last tme you sang your heart out with a group of hearty voices belonging to folks who love music? So, I truly did feel the spirit that night, the vigor, vitality and courage, too, of this little American village situated in the very last portion of Tall Grass Prairie left in the entire United States, and was purely happy to be there.

BRIDGES AND BUMPERS
The thing is, you should never, never back up while in an RV, or go under anything lower than say, the St. Louis Arch. Since I've learned how to drive this rig on the job I don't feel too terrible about the air conditioner that I scraped off under a low overpass the first weekend, or the egregious bumper dent at Mammoth Cave, but I tangled with a low fencepost at Branson Missouri and the no-contest result is an abrupt 90 degree angle again in the long-suffering bumper right under the "Gogh 4th" license plate. Ambling across tree-lined Missouri with that amusing bumper like a bow tie in the rear, I realized how leaf-starved I'd become out there in the far mid-west. Searching for parks, I crossed without warning the Mighty Mississippi and Ohio Rivers three separate times over incredibly narrow, ancient steel bridges arched like lacy Spanish combs. I have no doubt that these were the scariest moments of the whole trip. Although I normally don't suffer bridgeophobia, it almost came to that when I forced my ten-foot-wide vehicle into a nine-foot-wide lane going up a 20 degree incline with oncoming commuter traffic bearing down at 60 mph. I was dying to look at each river but didn't dare. The only glimpses I had were of water and barge reflections in the terrified eyes of oncoming drivers. Afterwards, it usually took an hour or so to unclasp my hands from the steering wheel.

NOVEMBER IN KENTUCKY
Suddenly it was November, a month of great dignity to me, when colors abbreviate their range, trees become studies in line and shape, and layers become the byword for clothing. It's a time for licorice and Big Hunks if you can find them, cocoa with marshmallows, down-filled mummy bags.