26.) Surplus of Douche Bags and Eagles......And a Ghost Ranch.....

     I venture on, piloting the Jeep through the northern New Mexico mountains. 41 degrees at the summit, 58 when I reach the bottom. On and on I drive.  I smile as I pass a traffic stop because the offender is driving a bright yellow Corvette with 2 think black stripes from nose to tail.  The quintessential douche-mobile.  My grin widens when I see the drivers skin tight red t-shirt and white sunglasses.  If you ever really wanna look like a douche bag get yourself some white sunglasses.  I pass a sign that makes me chuckle. ‘Double Eagles 2’ airport. Double eagles 2!? Ha! Thats at least 4 eagles already…thats a lot.  
The flat desert is interrupted by more of the red rock cliffs.  They loom on the horizon slowly growing as I get closer until they're right on top of me.  The highway leads me through and not long after they disappear in my rearview like they were never there; while in front of me another expanse of desert humbly sighs into existence and stretches to the limits of my vision.
Along the way I stop at a few indian casinos just for bathroom breaks.  Mostly slots, one appeared to be nothing but penny slots. There’s a few lightly populated table games but the indian dealers and the elderly players look equally depressed.  It makes me a little sad and I choose not the linger.
Abiquiu is what I’m looking for.  Abiquiu, New Mexico. I seem to remember a woman referring to it’s beauty as “where you go when you die.” I locate it in my atlas and head in its general direction.  What I find is Ghost Ranch and it doesn’t disappoint. 
At the end of another long dirt track Ghost Ranch is, or used to be some sort of christian retreat or camp. It’s a secluded and tranquil group of buildings and cabins in the middle of the desert used by a number of groups and clubs to host a number of sermons or seminars, or gatherings.  I wander around for a short while but quickly get bored with the camp itself and venture toward the Chimney Rock Trail.
I see the huge ‘chimney’ rock formation before I even reach the trailhead and three miles later I’m right behind its peak enjoying another gorgeous view. This one being capped by grey, overcast skies has a different feel to it.  A sort of drab, muted foreboding that’s hard to explain. At the trail’s summit the rock underfoot is grey, almost white.  In the distance the cliff faces ooze from this off white to tan and orange. To pink through a reddish maroon. It’s all very……Something.  It looks like a storm is heading this way from over the cliffs behind me so I head back down in hopes of avoiding a soggy afternoon.   

25.) Rudderless Daze....Back Roads......Kidnappings....

      Highway 35 leads me through wide open ranch land broken only by red rock boulders.  Massive, rounded things protruding form the the ground like a zit ready to pop.  I imagine a peaceful life here with long slow days of moving cattle, mending fences, or just surveying the land. It seems nice.  Then almost immediately a wall of pine trees. Standing straight and tall like soldiers on guard. The road cuts deep into the forest; a roofless green corridor without visible end.   

     Eventually I come out of the woods high above Bear Canyon Lake.  Longer than it is wide and surrounded by steep grassy hills.  The trees sparse but constant. It’s a post card image. Memories of past family vacations when life was simpler and nothing could possibly better than a day at or on the lake.

I stop in the town of Gila today to pick up some boxes from my Mom.  Dried food stuffs, snacks, even some candy.  I lucked out pretty hard on the whole Parents front.  Also in the box was my renewed driver license. The old one was set to expire on my birthday. So now I’m good till 2020.

     So far the best choice I've made is not using my GPS to get from one place to the next.  I’m enjoying immensely, the meanderings in between. These back roads are magical.  They differ in only style and scope of magnificence. Rolling hills as far as the eye can see set on a backdrop of forest laden mountain sides. It’d be tough to be in a bad mood if you can just go out side and look at all this.  Highway 180.

I consult my map to find my next destination and stumble upon the Baldera Volcano and Ice Cave. Fire and ice. Two extremes, sounds cool. Plus I’ve never seen a volcano or and ice cave, let’s do this. I hike a mile or so up the trail that winds around the outside to the volcano. Active 10,000 years ago, now the whole area is covered with porous lava rock called cinders.  I get to the top  and look down into the crater.  1400 feet wide and 800 feet deep it’s humbling.  I shake my head in awe. Imagine the power, enough to blow off the top of an entire mountain! Incredible. The ice cave is a little bit of a let down, probably because I was spoiled by the Carlsbad Caverns.  You can’t venture into the cave itself, it’s inaccessible. A wooden staircase leads to a viewing platform above the mouth of the cave.  It’s shaped sort of like an amphitheater so I can see all the way to the back of it from here.  What makes it interesting is the cave floor.  Its made entirely of ice and covered in algae.  The way the sunlight refracts through the ice gives the cave floor a neon green hue. I’ve never seen anything like it.    
 
     In the little visitors center where I pay my small fee. Janice and her husband tell me they own the surrounding 4000 acres. 15 volcanos on their property, 29 total in the area.  A slender but hardened women, in her 60’s I’m guessing.  She tells me that her great grandpa built the first school here in town. He bought the land and it was eventually inherited by her grandmother.  Grandma’s husband tried to sell some of the land by forging her signature.  When she got word of this she sweet talked a neighbor for a ride to her lawyer.  He tells her that what her husband is trying to do is illegal so she swiftly returned home and kick the man out. 
Another story follows about a distant cousin.  As a young boy her cousin was kidnapped by the Navajo Indians and later traded to the Apache. He lived with them for years, grew up within their tribe. They accepted him as their own, he even had an Apache foster mother.  One night the Apache kidnapped a young girl and brought her to the tribe.  Janice’s cousin snuck out with a horse and returned the girl to her parents.  He stayed in town too but would always venture back to the tribe to visit his Apache mother.

When her grandma died Janice’s parents inherited the land.  They were attending Arizona University at the time and low on funds for tuition.  They decided to move up here to the volcano and open it up to tourists.  They started with a saloon and dance hall.  Then they built a few cabins for the overindulgent to sleep it off or families to spend the weekend.  Eventually the saloon was turned into a house, additions were added and now Janice and her husband run it as a visitors center and curio shop.  What a family! 

24.) We go to New Mexico when we die!?....Headed Toward Somewhere......

     I’ve spent a week in the Gila National Forest now, hiking around to all the cliff dwellings and pictograph sites.  Over and around rolling hills and deep into cliff lined valleys.  Pine forests cover most of the area, tall and slender.  Their branches don't really fill out till further up the trunk so passing through is relatively easy.  All over I see signs of past fires. Acres of dead trees, burnt to black, crumbling ash. I’ve heard about forest fires TV in the past but they're always in some far away place. Being face to face, surrounded by the aftermath, is unsettling.  The land looks devastated. Beyond repair.  But in reality they release nutrients into the ground and clear space for new trees and grasses to grow.  It can take years for an area to fully recover but in the long run the fires are actually beneficial. 
This thought makes the sight of all those black, haunted stumps slightly more tolerable as I emerge from the woods and back onto the main road the runs through the park.  The jeep is parked a mile or 2 up the road so I start off in that direction.  I’ve taken less then 10 paces when an SUV stops next to me. The driver leans out and asks whats it like back there pointing in to the woods I've been hiking through. I turn around to look back into them and think for a moment. I turn back to the driver and smile.  Peaceful I tell her  We get to talking and she offers me a ride back to the jeep. Her name is Terri and she extremely apologetic about the state of her car.  In truth it doesn’t look all that bad to me considering what my jeep looks like at the moment.  Turns out she's doing something similar to me.  Living out of her car, piloting it to beautiful places taking it all in.  She can only get away for a few weeks at a time but she does it whenever she gets a chance.  We exchange a few stories of life on the road.  She's headed to some of the places I’ve just been so I tell her about my favorite spots so far and she tells me of Abiquiu, New Mexico.
“Abiquiu is where you go when you die” she says.  “If heaven is half as beautiful as Abiquiu I’ll be very content there.”  Ghost Ranch and Christ in the Desert Monastary are the only details I can recall later, while I’m scribbling about my day in a notebook but I do remember Terri’s passion.  The love I hear in her voice when she’s speaking of these places is enough for me to want to see them.
Lightfeather Hot Springs are the only ones in the area that I have yet to visit.  I decide to hike the few miles to them and spend the night out there somewhere.  An early morning soak might be a nice thing to wake up for.  At the trailhead I hoist everything I need onto my back and set off into the canyon.  It’s late afternoon, the sun and the temperature have both started their nightly decent.  Less than a half mile in and I’m forced to ford the Gila River.  It’s wide and slow moving so there is very little danger aside from getting my pack wet.  At its deepest the water comes up to the middle of my calves and by the time I step out on to the opposite bank my feet actually hurt from the glacial water.  I have to stop for a moment to flex my toes and get the blood pumping again before I can put my boots back on and continue hiking. I cross the river three more times and before long, I’m sure I've passed the hot springs somewhere along the way.  They’re only supposed to be a mile and a half or so from the trailhead and I’ve already hiked twice that far.  The sun is nearing the horizon so I find a sandy spot on the river bank and set up camp.  I dig a small fire pit slightly lower than my tent in hopes of catching the rising heat while I sleep and also not setting my tent on fire.  With camp set, fire cracking, socks drying I take my camera and walk down onto the rocks in the rivers floodplain.

     My little camp on one side of the river, a forested hill gently climbs behind it and shelters me from the wind.  Across the river the rock face is straight up and nearly bare.  I watch the boulders and ledges for any movement; this is mountain lion territory.  But for now all is still.  The only sound is nature. The wind whistles from deeper in the canyon, the river gurgles by, my fire crackles into the night and I think to myself, “I like this.”
No animal encounters in the night but not long after I break camp and begin the hike back I come across some tracks.  They are either wolf or lion...something with claws, I can’t tell which but it’s in the soft mud in the middle of the trail.  If it was here when I hiked past yesterday, I would have noticed it, it’s too obvious.  Now i’m grateful I made the effort to keep the fire going through the night. It may have changed the minds of some would-be visitors.  

        



I run into Lightfeather hot springs on the way back. I try... and fail,,, to explain how I missed it on the way in. I chalk it up to a glitch in the matrix  Where the water first emerges from the rock it’s hot enough to burn flesh.  I have to go a few yards down river before the temperature is even tolerable.  I stand here and warm my feet but decide against dropping my pack and putting on my bathing suit for a full soak.   Once my feet are warmed sufficiently to cross the river the last few times I’m on my way back to the jeep. Then out of the Gila National Forest and back on the road heading nowhere in particular.

23.) The Mystery of Legitimacy..... Majority Rule........

     I plunge 44 miles up and down Route 15. Both mountainous and serpentine through thick pine forest and passed panoramic views of the valley below.  Every street sign pockmarked with buckshot holes sparks a thought of bored, small town teenagers in a disintegrating pick up truck, slingshoting around hairpin turns.  One hangs out the passenger side window with a shotgun ‘borrowed’ from Dad’s collection. Empty cans of Natural Ice rattle around the truck’s bed while full ones are dispensed to each of the occupants from a cardboard case on the back floor.   The gunshots echo across the valley, followed loyally but hoots and hollers of elation or the boos and jeers when someone wastes a shell with an errant shot. 

At the end of The Trail of Mountain Spirits are the Gila Cliff Dwellings.  I saw the name on my map and thought it sounded cool so here I am. I’ve crossed the Continental divide and am officially in The West.  
Through a persistent drizzle I follow a tiny creek whose babbling I can hear the entire way, a mile or two back into a sheltered canyon. From the canyon floor I can see the the caves in the wall above me and my first thought is of the natives hundreds of years ago.  Who knows how long they'd been wandering around the rugged terrain nearby?  They had to be pretty stoked when they stumbled upon these caves. A dry place to sit!? Hell yeah!  Shelter? Protection? It had to be the find of a lifetime.  And rightfully so, they exploited it to the fullest. Six of the seven caves show signs of human inhabitants.  The seventh is unreachable with out climbing gear.  A total of 42 rooms were constructed of handmade bricks throughout the system of caves.  The ceiling is black with soot from hundreds of fires for heating and cooking.  It’s known that the rooms were built and inhabited sometime around the 1200’s but the different uses of each room are more difficult to identify due to explorers and vandals over the years.  No matter what exactly took place in these rooms it’s still eye opening to wander through them and think that this was once a place someone called home.  

Back on the road a sign points me toward Gila Hot Springs and I turn onto a dirt track down a steep hill and through fields of sheep, goats, and what were either lamas or alpacas, I don’t really know the difference. Maybe both are in there.  Five dollars get me a site for my tent, the ability to have my very first camp fire of the trip, (due to dry conditions there’s been a burn ban through the whole of Texas and into parts of New Mexico) and access to more hot springs.  The campground is no more than an area in the woods thats dirt instead of undergrowth. When I pay my fee the owner shows me pictures of how the place used to look.  A massive flood a few years before drowned what appears to be a lush, deep green, Eden-like grove. Each of 3 hot spring pools secluded by tall grasses and moss covered rocks.  Just out of frame I imagine pixies dropping sparkles on the waters surface. It’s gorgeous.  I look from the old man’s photos into the reality of today. Dry, hard, compacted dirt. Sad, decrepit tiki structures cover the hot spring pools.  Looks be damned I say. Each pool was naturally a different temperature so I Goldilocks my way through them until i find the one that's  Just Right. I lounge for the better part of  two hours by myself in a hot tub in the middle the of the New Mexico wilderness while reading Mississippi Solo.         

After I’m sufficiently prune-y I stumble back to my campsite, engage in some fireside note jotting, and I sew up a hole in one of my gloves. I do a pretty kick ass job, Pam Melik would have been pround.  It’s the first time in a while I haven't slept in the jeep. While the extra room is kinda nice the jeep is far from uncomfortable.  There's a lot to be said about sleeping up off the ground, no matter the situation, that’s soothing.  I lay awake in my tent and think, What am I trying to prove with this trip? Theres no real purpose to it.  The purpose IS in the process.  I’ve said it before, or something close to that and I want it to be that so bad but it’s hard sometimes.  The point of going is supposed to be just to Go. To show myself that an alternative life style is possible.  That you don’t have to nest somewhere.  But sometimes just going for the sake of going feels like just killing time.  But that's what were all really doing anyways…just killing time. Might as well have fun along the way…right?  Explore the world outside your door and the one inside your head and heart.   And what makes going to a job you hate everyday any more legitimate than what I’m doing?  And whose to say whats legitimate and whats not. Majority opinion is not synonymous with right, or correct or anything really.  Except for that a lot of time it is.  Even if you’re completely right, if everyone around you thinks you’re wrong, you may still be completely right, but you're still completely fucked.  Majority doesn’t mean reality.

22.) Hiking Through the Hourglass to Other Planets......And Filler....

After my stay I exchange numbers with Matt, thank him endlessly, and promise to keep in touch.  He has the same don’t-mention-it, no-big-deal sort of attitude as usual as I point the jeep west and head deeper into New Mexico.  When I next stop I find myself at White Sands National Monument.  The largest collection of gypsum dunes in the world.  With the water table only a few feet below the surface, and gypsums inability to store heat I’m able to hike nearly three miles completely barefoot through hourglass sand. Soft and fine as powder.  

  I wander over one dune and I’m immediately on another planet.  It's fucking Tatooine! White sand tsunamis in every direction, very disorienting.  If not for the wooden posts that mark the trails I would be hopelessly lost already. When I reach the top of the next dune the view is tough to beat.  Rolling waves of sand spill out to mountains on the horizon while lazy clouds halfheartedly stretch to their breaking point across a sky of dollhouse blue.  Clusters of weeds and desert grasses that manage to cling to the shifting sands are the only disturbance in the sea of white. While it may not be a destination in itself, White Sands National monument is worth a stop along the way.  At the very least it’s a curious and beautiful landscape in which to stretch your legs after long hours on the road and the kids will love renting a sled from the gift shop and hurling themselves down the dunes like a coat of freshly fallen powder…..well, kids and 30 something drifters who pester them until they're given a turn will love it equally…..

21.) Everybody's Got Their Thing......Laundry Matt Hospitality.......Previous Occupations....

My entire thought process on coming to Roswell was “Roswell? Aliens….Cool!”.  I never gave much thought to what I would actually do when I got here so when I stumble upon the visitors center I dip into the parking lot. Visitor centers are usually good for finding out the goings on around town, things to see, places to go. Plus this one has the coolest mailbox I’ve ever seen. I’m inside for all of two seconds because the first thing I see is a sign that says UFO Museum 3 blocks with an arrow.  I’m there for the rest of the day.   

Aliens creep me the fuck out.  Everybody’s got their thing; wether it be ghosts, or demons, or birds in an elevator.  Everybody’s got at least one thing.  That one thing that gives you the heebie-est of jeebies.  So much so that you won’t discuss it out loud because just thinking about it starts that shiver in your spine   Aliens are my thing.  I think it’s because aliens are probably real.  Out of all the millions of galaxies that we know are out there now, it’d be weirder if aliens didn’t exist.  There’s just too much room out there for earth to be the only place in all the infinite cosmos to have self aware beings living on it. Aliens are also scary because they can just BE in your room all of a sudden.  You can lock your doors and barricade yourself inside but aliens don’t give a shit.  They’re just in there.  Man, you ever seen The 4th Kind?……Aww fuck dude! One minute you’re sleeping and the next BAM! Aliens all up in your bedside.  And they’ll probably have that crazy space technology that paralyzes you to your bed so you can’t run away. They always have that.  

 Ever read a book called “Communion”? Where Whitley Strieber claims that aliens have been visiting him repeatedly throughout his entire life.  He never tells his son about these visits but one day his son describes the same exact aliens the author describes.  Down to odd little details like the smaller ones in blue jumpsuits are the grunts, the workers; while the taller slender ones seem to have more authority. The kid says he sees them in his sleep, or something like that.  Yeah….creep me the fuck out.  So thats why I go to the UFO museum.  

 A giant timeline of the Roswell Incident runs the length of the museum on the right side.  The who, what, when, sort of thing with testimonials from different perspectives and the like.  Claims of evidence being stolen or destroyed or replaced with parts of a weather ballon.  It really is pretty engrossing and I could spend more time perusing the exhibits but the place is closing.  It’s almost 6 so I head back to the quick lube to see if Matt will make good on his offer to put me up for the night.

     I park near the back door and when Matt comes out and see me he yells “I just can’t get rid of ya huh!?”  he laughs outlandishly to show he’s joking.  “Just give me 10 mins to close up shop.”  After a bit he locks the back door and hops in the jeep with me.  “Ya hungry?” he asks by way of greeting. I’m kinda hungry but I’m trying to stretch every dollar and groceries are cheaper than restaurants. I open my mouth to answer and Matt interrupts, “If we can stop at the grocery store for beer and the Asia place for food it’s all on me.” Sounds like I’m coming out on top of that deal so I quickly agree and we proceed to a Chinese buffet where we each load up a styrofoam clam shell to capacity.  Back at Matt’s house I thank him profusely for the lodging and the food while I'm stuffing my face full of beef and broccoli.  He just waves his hand in that same  ‘don’t mention it’ kind of gesture and continues talking.  And boy is he a talker.  Loud and boisterous and a million miles an hour.  Firing off stories like a fully automatic weapon one after another.  

     He was born in Califorina, grew up in Arizona and now owns a house in Oregon.  He came to Roswell in an attempt to help a chronic fuck-up of a brother.  I didn’t want to pry, so I didn’t get all the details but it sounded like drugs got hold of his brother and just wouldn’t let go, no matter how hard Matt tried to help. The quick lube was supposed to be something they could do together, and keep his brother out of trouble but he stopped showing up soon after they opened the doors.  He no longer even knows where his brother is.  This story is told in the tone of someone who is deeply saddened by the situation but has been numbed to it. As if it occurred so often over the years, it's become the norm.  I try to relate.  It’s true that time heals all wounds but the serious ones leave scars that can last for years…..or lifetimes, unnoticed by a flippant glance but still a part of who you are….always.

Matt doesn’t give me time to feel sorry for him. He’s already told another story and is halfway through a third.  The house we’re in belongs to a friend of his, a judge.  Apparently the judge and his wife raised a family here and when the wife died of cancer the judge wanted nothing to do with the house. I look around and notice there are no family pictures on the walls, just rectangle dust shadows where something used to hang. Just empty space on desktop and mantlepiece. Memories are the enemy now, even the good ones. So the judge lets Matt stay here just so the place doesn't get broken into. That explains all the available bedrooms and hastily packed boxes. The somber mood never fully settles in the room because Matt’s already giving me his list of past employment and various adventures he's had with each. Moving cars and heavy equipment back and forth across the country, physical therapy for a quadriplegic, caring for 98 monkeys, small business owner. He’s got the quick lube/carwash now but he used to own a laundromat. (Back then people would call him Laundry Matt. Ha! I find it much more humorous than he does.)  At this point he’s been talking non stop for over an hour while we slowly get drunker on beer he bought us along with the Chinese food but I’ve got to stop him here.  “Whoa, whoa,” I interrupt “Ok, when you say ‘monkeys’ you mean..?”  He stick out his hand, palm down as if it indicate the height of a toddler, looks me in the eye and with a single nod just replies “Primates.”

“98 of them!?” He stops momentarily and makes a thinking face.

“I think it was 94 of them actually.”  I’m not sure why but for me, this slight correction make the story infinitely more believable.  “Monkeys are mean dude! Sometimes we couldn’t control them so the only thing we could do is spray with the hose to get them to back off or stop humping things.”

“Monkeys don’t like to be sprayed with water huh?” I ask.

“Nope….neither do people” he says with a shrug. I laugh, because it’s a good point.  Think about how anyone would react if you just started spraying them with a hose. They would lose their minds. Probably they’d run away, but they'd definitely stop whatever it was they were doing. Monkeys are no different.  

When one story ends he moves seamlessly into another.  It’s difficult to follow but the enthusiasm with which he speaks is ruthlessly entertaining. He’s onto caring for ‘Sharon’ a quadriplegic woman now, illustrating his responsibilities with off color jokes and politically incorrect comments which happen to be my favorite kind of jokes and the best type of comments. In one incident he’s invited some of his friends over to Sharon’s house and they’re being noticeably quiet and seem uncomfortable. By way of reassurance Matt tells them “Don’t worry guys! It’s not she’s gonna come peeking around the corner, sticking her head in here or anything! She’s not gonna sneak up on us…..cause she can’t! Followed by uproarious laughter.  “I know where she is…..cause it’s right where I left her!” I laugh harder than is socially acceptable, shake my head and choke out “that’s awful,” as I make little head way on reigning in my giggling.

“How does a person go from monkey handler to physical therapist?” I ask perplexed.

“They we’re HER monkeys.”

“WHAT?! The paralyzed woman had nearly 100 monkeys!?” I can’t believe what I’m hearing but at the same time it’s one of those stories thats so crazy it has to be true.  Think about it.  What’s more crazy? A guy having a job taking care of 94 monkeys that belong to a quadriplegic woman who he also takes care of, OR a guy making that story up out of thin air and then saying it…..out loud…to another person. The second guy is clearly a sociopath right? Like the scary, wear your skin like a an overcoat kind of sociopath.  Matt seems good natured and harmless and I’m still convinced that his stories were true, or at the very least based in reality.  

My personal favorite is the one where Matt leaves Sharon a plate with a sandwich on it for lunch. Apparently she can move her arms enough to feed herself but not much else.  He leaves her room to go handle some monkey business…(HA!) When he returns the plate is over turned on the floor, the sandwich having been stolen by a rouge monkey who now has each of Sharon’s ears clenched firmly in each of it’s tiny monkey fists. A monkey foot on each of her shoulders on either side of her head, fully aroused and vigorously face fucking this poor paralyzed woman who's not strong enough to fight off a monkey or get up and run away.  Matt spit this story out between fits of uncontrollable laughter and ended it by shooting the offending primate with a squirt gun, looking at Sharon’s mortified face and asking, “So.....How was lunch?” 

“Was this woman qualified or trained in any way to have monkeys or anything like that?” I ask.

“Fuck no!” he fires back.  “She was a junkie whore. She was paralyzed in a car accident while she was blowing a trucker!  One day she told me she wanted a baby and I thought fuck,   can’t help you there,” implying that he refused to have sex with a paralyzed woman whose nether regions he already cleans on the regular.  Her desire for a baby is what led to the acquisition of one single monkey which she fell in love with and led to all the others.     

Reguardless of the level of truth present in these tales they were painfully entertaining. Matt is a born story teller and simply a decent human being.  I end up staying with him for 4 days, doing laundry, watching movies, and sleeping in an actual bed. He buys Royal Crown and grills filet mignon that he doesn't even eat.  We get drunk and trade stories everyday when he gets home from work.  Some highlights from these whiskey soaked conversations include one liners like “chicken lips and butt pork”, and “She wasn't much to look at but she could suck start a Harley.”

20.) Mediocrity at the State Line.....Inside the Desert....Drifting and Hygiene.....

I thought crossing the state line into New Mexico and out of Texas would be miraculous.  Another lame metaphor for leaving all the garbage behind, beginning anew.  Truth is, I almost missed the whole damn thing.  I was right, there was no line, no apparent change in color or even landscape. It was really a non event.  Just a sign in the desert by the side of a desolate highway and I'm disappointed in the mediocrity.  Then it starts to hit me. Your out, you never have to go back there.  Out for good.  This trip is legitimate now. crossing state lines…its for real.  And New Mexico! Never been here before. Gaing steam. I’m excited again.

 

      I spend the day at Carlsbad Caverns just over the state line.  You hear about them and you’re kinda just like.... yeah big cave…cool....whatever.  But to actually see them, to explore INSIDE the desert is remarkable.  I hiked nearly two full miles under ground in a constant 56 degrees  through stadium sized caverns with vaulted dome ceilings. I’m in awe of the enormity of this place.  Theres a food court inside this cave……Amazement followed shortly by a heavy depression and the sound of my forehead falling into the palm of my hand.....The exploitation is incredible. The simple volume of this place....the amount of space it takes up.....is ridiculous... and I'm staring at the golden arches....*sigh* The only thing i can do to make myself feel better is order a 20 piece McNugget (c) meal and call it a day.  I shake my head in disbelief.....When I hear the phrase "super size it?"...I instinctively start to nod and proceed to the second window.....      

Back above ground I wander around the little museum and learn that 100,000 tons of guano, basically bat shit…was mined out of the caves over the years.  Over 40 feet deep in places. I assume it was used for fuel of some kind but I’m not sure.  Outside I follow the “Old Guano Road Trail” to a shaft that was dug to make guano extraction much easier.  It’s all fenced off and it’s  basically just a hole in the ground but you can see all the way back into the caverns. The ground I’m standing on now seems less reliable. I look out at the expanse of nothingness leading back into Texas and nod in agreement. I point the jeep away from it and toward Roswell, New Mexico.  
 The jeep could use a cleaning and an oil change as I pull into Roswell.  It looks like any other moderately sized dessert town except for the abundance of ufo and alien paraphernalia everywhere.  They really run with it, even the Mcdonalds is shaped like a ufo.  I find a quick lube oil change place with a car wash attached.  Three weeks worth of desert has attached itself to the jeep in a thick film and a wash is just the refresher it needs.  I could use a refresher myself.  The desert has attached itself to me as well.  I saw a few campgrounds on my way into town, surely one of those has some shower facilities I could use.  As he rings me up, I ask the man behind the counter if he knows a place in town where I could have a shower.  He’s a tea kettle boiling on the stovetop.  Positively charged and brimming with energy.  Never coming to a complete stop, he seems to be running the entire operation by himself.  A dusty baseball cap sits atop his bald head, five o'clock shadow out in full force despite it being early afternoon.


“Shower huh?!” His volume matches his energy.  He makes that face people make when they mentally picturing the days to-do list, his index finger unconsciously ticking off items in the air.  “Gimmie…..uuuhhhhhhhh, 10 minuets.  Wait right here” and he scurries out the back door.  I see him through the big picture windows in the front of the office, trot across the parking lot and into the garage where my oil was changed. A few minuets later he trots back in, grabs some keys off a hook behind the counter, and point to a white pick up truck outside.  “I gotta drop that truck off down the street. Just follow me and I’ll take you to a shower you can use” and he’s out the door before I can respond. I jump in the jeep and whip onto the road behind him figuring he’s leading me to one of the campgrounds but we come to a stop in a driveway.  He parks the truck and kills the engine. He's across the driveway, and in my jeep’s passenger seat before I know it and already talking.  “That truck stays here.  You can shower at my house and then give me a lift back to the garage.”
“Are you fuckin serious?! That’s awesome, thanks man!”  I can’t believe it and I’m slightly weirded out by the offer but this trip is about saying yes and I’m getting pretty ripe at this point.  
“Don’t worry about it, it fuckin sucks not having a shower…Matt” he says, extending his hand and directing me through a neighborhood and into the driveway of a beautiful, mansion-like home.  Into the house, through a large den with a big screen TV in the front and a bar in the back.  Boxes litter the bar top while more are congregated in a corner and in front of the TV.  Not the nice packed up and sealed moving type boxes;  most are open on the top filled with a mishmash of unrelated clutter that seems to have been just tossed in without much thought.  It’s apparent that this room hasn't been used in some time.  I follow Matt across another living room with a leather sofa and a matching recliner.  Built into the center of the opposite wall is a desk flanked on either side by overflowing bookshelves.  No time to gawk though, Matt is moving fast. Around a corner and up stairs into a bedroom. Sliding Glass doors look out onto a small balcony with a spiral staircase leading down into the backyard. A huge patio, complete with in-ground pool and hot tub takes up most of the space. Across the pool and up against the fence is a professional grade propane barbecue with marble counter tops on either side.  “Showers in here.”  I’m startled out of a daydream about me, steaks, and that barbecue when Matt says it.  
“Right!” I say, shaking my head back to the present, “Sweet…”  I turn the corner into the bathroom and the shower is one of those glass room deals with multiple shower heads.  Marble floors and ornate fixtures on the vanity. “Whoa.”
“Go ahead and wash yourself. Ima go make a sandwich then you can drive me back to the shop,” is all Matt says as he throws a towel at me.  By the time I catch it I already hear him clomping down the stairs.  
After three weeks of camping in the desert a shower is magical.  Even more so when taken in a bathroom resembling that of a hedonistic glutton king.  I wish I could have spent days in there, but Matt was cool enough to let me use the thing so I didn’t want to keep him waiting if he had to get back to work.  I compliment his house and thank him profusely as I drop him back at his shop.  “No sweat dude,” he says waving his hand in a don’t-mention-it gesture. After he asks where I’m staying and I admit that I haven't really thought about it yet, probably sleep in the car at Wal-mart, he says “Come back at 6 when I get out.  I got 4 fuckin beds in that place that no one’s using, you can have a whole room to yourself.” 

“Kick ass dude! Thanks! I just might take you up on that” but he’s already gone.