white as frozen custard

First off, I'm back in Maryland, so this is all a look over my right shoulder. And I'm alive, so you can rest easy. I added pictures to things that needed pictures, starting with Los Angeles Is Cool. And I also added text here and there, so things aren't exactly the same. I'm not saying you need to reread everything, but, you know. If there's a photo it probably jogged my memory and I wrote something alongside it.

Where did I leave off? Oh, Las Cruces, banana splits in the hotel room.

The next morning I drove north. Here's the road there. They tested missiles and bombs and the like in the area.






I went to White Sands National Monument. Maybe not a surprise, but the sands are blinding, cream of wheat, Irish skin, when-doves-cry WHITE.

And as soft as a kitten. By this point my digital camera was no longer working. Sand in the lens, we figured. I bought some disposable cameras, made a promise to myself to not be stingy with film. Even still, it's a colossal disappointment.

Mostly because CVS tried their best to guess what I'm thinking. What a popular sport around these parts. So they made the white sands into yellow sands. I tried to fix the colors, but I don't own photoshop, and I have very few skills to speak of, so I did my best. As a result the white sands are a few different shades of white. Better photos can be found at the wikipedia article on the place.



Looks like I'm having fun! And that none of my clothes fit quite right?

I rented a sled from the gift shop. Actually, I bought one for $15, and if you keep your receipt they let you return it for $5. It's a ripoff, but you're helpless, because when in your life are you ever going to sled down white sand dunes?

The park is small but the hills make it feel spacious. Even when it was full of people, there was no problem finding an isolated hill to go down. I started small, on a little hill, but quickly learned that the steep hills were nothing to be afraid of. Steeper the better.

Walking through the dunes is tiring. When I was trekking up another hill, wondering whether my lack of breath was an accurate reflection of my health, a man on a motorcycle, about 50 yards away, asked me to pretend I was sledding so he could take a picture. Never mind that I was not really on top of a hill. I complied. Then he waved and drove away.

I continued. Imagine using a stairmaster in the desert--except the stairmaster is made out of soft, depthless sand. I got tired very quickly. I lay down to make a sand angel. I went down the dunes about 3 times. Seriously, that was all I could manage.

Later I went back to my car and discovered that my keys weren't in my pocket. So, awesome, they were somewhere in the desert. I was sure they were already five feet under the sand, buried by the wind. I calmly retraced my steps and they were in the spot where I collapsed and made a sand angel.

Not everyone rented a sled. One family just told the kids to rough it.



That little boy with his legs curled up in the air? I felt so bad for him. So when he came back up the hill I said, "You can borrow my sled if you take a picture of me when you're at the bottom. Deal?" He nodded in the way I imagine little boys do when talking to strange older women.



I wrote some postcards in the car. Then drove to nearby Alamogordo, where I could not find any atomic glass, though it was the only thing my dad asked me to bring back. I did get another banana split, though, from the same local chain that made the previous night's split. And I got my oil changed. While I waited I took a walk and did some word puzzles on a bench. A man asked me what I was doing and I told him the truth. It didn't seem to please him and he walked away, shaking his head.

What I should have done was waited inside the auto place, because they were showing Raiders of the Lost Ark, and I already watched a Harrison Ford movie earlier on the trip. I should have continued the trend.

I have no idea why I took this picture, but here it is:



Maybe it just seemed nice, somehow, that sad little American flag. The road out of Alamogordo, headed east, started in an environment that was the New Mexico I was used to. But then I climbed higher and higher through the mountains and trees started appearing. I went through lonely towns.

Near Elk, NM, I saw a lump on the side of the road and thought it was a hobo at first. But then it moved and ran across the road and I saw it was an elk! I didn't get a picture because I was too focused on not hitting it.

Then the land flattened out. I still felt like I was high up, somehow. I got that feeling sometimes in the West--I would be on a very flat space and still I was certain that I was on top of a plateau and that at any minute I would get to the edge and see a steep road leading down, towards the rest of the world below. Never happened. I did see a beautiful sunset that night, though. I felt at peace.



Here's a failed attempt to take a picture of a group of cows, to prove that they really do look like bears, sometimes.



Now that I'm back a handful of people have asked me, in some variation, if I found myself, or if I searched the entirety of my soul. I'm not really sure that I wanted to explore my soul on this trip. It's hard to say what I wanted. In my head the trip made such perfect sense that I often got frustrated with my inability to explain it to other people.

Here's another attempt. I just had the feeling that something more was out there. I wasn't looking for the meaning of life, or looking for something to give shape to my life. I just wanted to see what I already suspected was out there. It was as if I had already visited it all, but so long ago I barely remembered it, and I wanted to revisit and see things that would trigger long lost memories. If that makes a scrap of sense.

The East is very crowded and you go from one shopping plaza to another. Sometimes you go through little forests, and that's a nice feeling. But I imagined that the West was full of these big, open spaces that would take my breath away and replace it with an awesome peace. I was right. Seeing things was great, monuments and mountains and towns, but the spaces left the biggest impression on me.

I slept in Carlsbad, which is probably a great town if you want to go to the caverns. Otherwise, it's sort of a wasteland. I went to walmart for dinner, and bought three of my favorite items, to make up for the sort of lame motel I stayed in: Stouffers mac and cheese, a mango, and Little Debbie strawberry shortcake rolls. The latter are artificial and superdelicious, but I did once eat so many that it did prompt me to become a vegan for two weeks, a trial-run thing that I hoped would flush out my system of whatever is in those devilish little rolls.