With the wind in my face I left the land of my birth and set out across the country through places it seemed I had never been.
I discovered the beauty of desolation while driving through the barren Nevada desert. Where spectral modern ghost towns clung to the cracked asphalt of the highway like sun baked rib bones grasp to the spinal column of some long dead beast of burden half buried in sand. The only places of business that seemed to flourish in this stark landscape are that of pleasure and vice which ironically had parking lots full of eager patrons.
Passing through the wonders of Northern Arizona, with it's giant rolling clouds and wraith like birch forests, I laid eyes on one of the greatest wonders of Mother Nature. The Grand Canyon, a rift on the surface of our earth so deep and wide that it defies all forms of description or categorization through any form of communication. Even experiencing it first hand left my mind reeling at the intense vastness of this land born abyss.
In the Land of Enchantment I rode between three tumultuous thunderstorms. Each rolling and competing in the wide blue sky. Excitedly throwing bolts of electricity to the baked high desert earth and infusing the air with the scent of ozone, wet dirt, sage and pine. As the sun set through the aftermath of this meteorological struggle it cast a vibrant crimson glow upon the sheets of rain to the north of the wonderful New Mexico sky.
Entering into West Texas there were more signs of abandoned towns and dreams. Old concrete walls with chipped paint, boarded up doors and windows broken by the promise of the American Dream as it became the American Reality cast an eerie silhouette against the endless horizon of oil fields with their ponderously slow pumps moving in an arrhythmic dance. Finally after many miles the despondency of this scene was broken by the wave like beauty of the Hill Country. With the lush ranches and thick accents I started to feel more at peace.
It was then, as I was ending my journey that I realized this topography which I thought would be alien to me matched that of my own internal road. One of struggle, success, love, pain, companionship, solitude, wonder, beauty, desolation, conviction and vice. But most importantly a road that continues even as I stop in Austin.
