The Road Less Travelled

The process of getting from point A to point B can offer almost as much interest as point B itself. The scenery outside the windows as we travelled through the Arizona desert has been breathtaking. Huge expanses of open range, far distant mesas of gorgeous red, brown, yellow, or green, huge granite or red rock mountains. Your sense of distance is distorted, as what seems almost there only looms a bit larger 30 minutes later.

Huge storms are visible from miles away. You see roiling black clouds riddled with flashes of lightning. You see regular bolts of lightning hitting the mountain tops. At times the storms are both massive and minuscule, as the wide angle view of forever gives full perspective to both beginning and end of a storm. You can see wide swaths of mist extending in a column to the earth some twenty miles distant, while immediately before and after this deluge are sunny skies.

As you travel you watch for the intersection of your road and the storm. Will it still be raining there when we reach it? Will we slip past it, either ahead or behind the driving rain and hail? Or will we be hit by the next one, barely visible miles behind this one?

Another part of the process is seeing a different side of America. Towns that consist of a few tired old mobile homes, a closed gas station, a weathered wood corral, and a dirt crossroad. Instead of finding corporate conformity, you find shops, stores, and restaurants that are unique and different without trying to be. Like the two scraggly dogs that live at the Chevron station in Tuba City, Arizona, spending their days sleeping in the shade of the canopy erected to protect customers from the relentless sun, and wandering over to sniff and greet tired travellers as they refuel.