Winslow, Arizona

I remember exactly the moment I fell in love with the Eagles.  I was sixteen years old and  sitting on the top of a giant ladder painting my boyfriend’s name on the set of the school play.  The set was a cityscape, and my art teacher told me I could label one of the buildings, Matt’s Garage.  I was putting in the apostrophe when she popped in a new cassette in the boom box and out poured Hotel California.  We grinned at each other and both sang every word.  It doesn’t matter where I am or what I am doing, anytime I hear the Eagles, I am instantly on top of the ladder with my brush dipped in orange paint, carefully making art on a 20 foot tall canvas, completely at peace.  That was a defining moment in my life.  I knew exactly who I was and who I wanted to be.  

Flash forward forty years later.  The joy of that long ago girl is buried deep inside my soul crushed under the weight of loss, fear, sadness and fatigue.  Many times in my writing I have shared my angst and grief, but the last months have been so incredibly painful,that I have been afraid if I put a single word on paper that all the darkness will come spewing forward.  There have been no words, just tears.  It takes all my energy to make myself get up and fake my way through the day.  

Some people seek solace in Jesus, or nature, or the bottle.  For me, it’s always been the road.  Especially the highways of my childhood. I remember the roadside motels and the mom and pop diners and the games my brother and I invented to pass the time.  It helps center my thoughts and turn off all the other noise.  It brings me back to my dreams. 

So after a soul crushing week at home and at work that left me feeling as broken as I have felt, I hit the road.  Destination: To stand on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, and take it easy. 

My trip got off to a scary start.  I had an appointment on Tallahassee Rd. If people don’t think Canon City is the mountains, go to Tallahassee Rd.  It’s definitely wilderness right around the corner.  

The snow came so fast.  First it was nothing, then everything was white and the car wasn’t moving forward.  I didn’t know if I should back up, or turn around, or try to grind my way forward.  I had no cell reception and there were no tracks on the road.  

I turned off the engine  and  realized I was one of those travelers you hear about with a few meager snacks and a wimpy plastic water bottle, mostly empty.  I had a coat and a hat, but no blanket or gloves.  In my defense, Tallahassee Rd is only about ten or fifteen miles off the highway, and I didn’t think I was going to get stuck in a blizzard on a backroad less than thirty miles from home.  

I got out of the car and took a look at the situation.  I was on a grade, on a very narrow cut.  I didn’t think going forward would be possible unless I dug out the snow and made some traction with dirt or my car mats.  I could go backwards, but that seemed terrifying.  Turning around seemed like my best option, even if the road was a drop off on one side.  I looked down off the road, and actually pictured what that would be like to have a car buried in snow off a cliff no one was looking over.  Imagination is so over-rated.  

Only someone really stupid or really brave would have turned a car around on that stretch of the road.  Because I was stuck, I had to scrape the snow back to expose the dirt, and then inch forward and backward and sideways in a slow 180, until I was ready to follow my tracks back to the highway, except I knew I had another problem.  I had already come down a major grade and I’d have to go back up it to get to the highway.  I didn’t think I would be able to do that, and  there was another option.  There was a cut-off county road to Cotopaxi.  Cotopaxi is on the river, so I figured that the road had to be mostly downhill, but I had never been on that road, and I was scared.  However, the county road was a good call; I drove out of the blizzard into just a wet, rain snow, and stopped worrying about dying  in the middle of nowhere.  

The blizzard set me back two hours, so I stopped off with a girlfriend in Monte Vista.  My friend has a beautiful house.  She has carefully put it together with an eye for vintage things and a plethora of books and plants and art.  It’s the kind of house that anyone would want to live in.  It’s the kind of house I always thought I would want to live in, but it made me realize that my own house with the books and art and carefully polished wood is adding to my oppression.  

The furnace went out in February, so I had to buy a brand new one and I bit the bullet and got central air and added a new payment to my life.  The fence fell down, so I also have a stack of lumber, ready to assemble.  And I haven’t  finished the window install that I started.   The  sprinkler system has another freaking leak and I spend anxious moments wondering how I am going to manage all the house projects when I am eighty.  Maybe the house needs to go.  

When I woke up Saturday morning, there was a lot of snow, but I figured the worst was behind me and I was hell bent on my corner in Winslow.  The six hour drive was more like an eight hour drive because of all the snow on Wolf Creek Pass, but it wasn’t like Tallahassee Rd.  There were snow plows and pavement and cell reception and I had snacks and water.  

Even though it was a Saturday, most people paid attention to the winter storm advisory and there wasn’t much traffic   When I drove  out of the storm into New Mexico, I felt very alone on the highway.  Solitude is a good word for traveling in the Southwest.  Miles and miles of sky and land and nothing.  I always get a sense of sadness that this landscape is where Native  Americans got pushed.  It’s a forgotten, desolate wasteland.  But at the same time, it’s breathtakingly beautiful in its vastness.  I drove on, concentrating on the road and the music on the radio.  

I got to Winslow with daylight to spare.  I know that when I was a kid Winslow was a stopping point at least once on a trip to Las Vegas.  My brother and I always were invested in the motel, hoping for a swimming pool.  The motels are still there, sad apartment buildings now, some still trying to stay alive with cutesy little signs like –sleep on a corner in Winslow, Arizona.  I wasn’t looking for a place to stay though; I headed right for the famous corner.  I took pictures, bought a t-shirt and ate some fry bread.  I chit-chatted with the waitress.  She asked me if I was alone and then gave me some tips on good air b and b’s.  The thought  of making an eight hour drive the next day, seemed a bit daunting, I wasn’t that tired, so I thought I’d start back and find a place to stay somewhere on the road to home.  Except, backtracking on the inter-state seemed boring, so I decided to go see the Grand Canyon.  

Here’s the fact about last minute opting for the Grand Canyon from Winslow.  The road there is absolutely lonely and barren and you better have a full tank of gas and a car that isn’t gonna break down.  The sunset on the desert is spectacular though.  When I got to the signs for the  Grand Canyon, it was dark and late and there was nowhere to stay, so I just kept going.  

I felt an urgency to get home.  Not to be in my house, per se, but an urgency to get back for obligations.  I promised to help with the mural at school and I  have been helping a kid with his capstone project.  So even though, I did sleep a bit, I drove most of the night.  I was tired as hell, but a few hours after I pulled into town  I went to work on the mural that will be reinstalled on the outside of the school building in a couple of weeks.  And  then I helped a former student work on a slide show for his senior project.  The trip felt like a dream, like maybe it didn’t really happen.  

It’s been a week, and I am still thinking, did I really drive to Winslow, Arizona in a day?  I haven’t recovered from the fatigue.  My eyes are blood shot and I’ve been lying awake sorting out the lessons.  The road usually brings me answers, but this time it has highlighted all my questions.  I am on this great crossroad that feels pretty alone.  The freedom to travel the unknown is pulling at me, but the anchors of the familiar are holding me back.  I think about the snowstorm, but foraging ahead anyway.  In a way that is what I always do.  I keep working my way through the storms.  But I am tired and wondering if the storms will ever be over.  

Why did I even want to go to Winslow in the first place?  And I know it’s connected to that  long ago girl on the top of the twenty foot ladder, crazy brave, painting and singing away.  I realize she is not who I still want to be, she is who I have always been.  I didn’t need to find her; I just needed to bring her home.