Backwards

Thanks to the magic of technology, I am writing this on the road. Literally, somewhere along the I-40, eastbound, just shy of Albuquerque and heading for Santa Rosa, New Mexico.

It's roughly ten at night. On either side, the desert is a flat black slick despite the light of the full moon high above us. It sits behind a veil of diaphanous cloud that stretches almost to the horizon. The boys are asleep behind us. Laura is driving. We are coasting along on the ceaseless thrum of our wheels on the road, over which we can just hear Flanders & Swan dropping another hat. The cabin is lit by orange dials and passing cars.

I love this bit. Even as a passenger I still relish the sense that we are making progress, chewing up miles and states and gradually, forcibly, bringing our destination closer.

Satisfying though this is, it can't and doesn't detract from the fun we have when we stop and look about. We managed to do a lot of this today as well.

We sauntered around a thousand year old lava flow at Sunset Crater, AZ. It looked freshly ploughed, an avenue of great chunks of clinker and black sand from which these beautiful Ponderosa Pines had sprouted.

And then we clambered around some similarly aged cliff-dwellings, hewn from the wall of the (modestly sized) Walnut Canyon by ancestors of the Hopi tribe of Native People. It was a strenuously peaceful walk: the cool stone weaves between the sunlight and the shadows of trailing trees. The only sounds, the wind and the caws of ravens.

But before all that we had to tear ourselves from a grander canyon. Long ago, in the dark, we got up, wrapped ourselves in all our clothes and set out to watch the sun rise over the rim. Funnily enough, in the dark the abyss isn't anywhere nearly as scary and I was able to perch happily on the low wall above the drop to wait for the sun to peep. The sky faded to grey and below us the rippling folds of rock gradually materialised from the murk, like leviathans swimming up from the depths. And then finally a needle of orange light pierced the gloom and the canyons burst into colour.