Travel Notes

"A girl, my lord, in a flattop ford" forever checks out the lonely hitch hiker in Winslow, Arizona

Travel notes #1:

From the Grand Canyon and Sedona, where I visit my friend Linda and view the Grand Canyon over lunch at Mary Coulter's famous Bright Angel Lodge.  To be honest, there is really no way you can describe the Grand Canyon.  It is so huge, so vast, so amazing, that you can only look down into its depth in utter wonder. 

Stopped in Winslow, forever immortalized by Jackson Brown.  His youthful self stands forever on the corner there, lonely in bronze, always waiting with 7 women on his mind.  

Went to  see another one of Mary Coulter's hotels (the woman architect who was a colleague of Frank Lloyd Wright and built the beautiful hotels visitors to the Grand Canyon stayed at on their pilgrimages West.)  La Posada was her favorite.  Sadly this amazing building sat vacant for over 40 years, until it was bought by an artist couple in the early 90's, who restored it, brought it back to life.

It is also Tina's studio, and her surrealistic paintings are well worth seeing as well.  

No such trip in the dry vastness en route to Gallup should be without a visit to Meteor Crater, the best preserved meteor impact crater in the world, or at least, so they tell us.  And it's indeed a humbling sight to see, and to touch as well, that heavy stone from outer space.  Our tour guide had lived there, beside the crater, for 15 years...............one of the "care takers" of that great hole in the ground.  I wondered what it was like, to be a caretaker for something like that.  He loved it there; each place has its voice, it's "numina".  But it would not be my place, I think...................

To Nogal Canyon, my friend Georgia's handmade Earth Ship house, and a visit to Carrizozo in New Mexico. We visit an artist's home in Lincoln, out in the middle of nowhere really, beautiful place to dream and make.  

  A visit to another tiny village along a dusty road, we visit a lovely garden that is an Iris and Lily farm, and the beautiful Sanctuary of San Patricio, where I walk the Labyrinth.  There is no one there but us, we walk unhindered, make a lunch, all the doors are open, we look in the quiet rooms and think what a wonderful place to have a retreat it would be, sit and meditate in the old chapel.   There is a big feather found on the Labyrinth path, which I take as a gift, a "magic spell for the far journey", and that feather travels with me now, east. 

 

 

 I offer my gratitude to the Goddess as She manifest here, ubiquitous, Our Virgin of Guadeloupe, the Catholic Madonna standing in her Vesica Piscis, the Lady so many millions make pilgrimage to, who is also the most ancient Aztec Earth Mother  Tonantzin, finding another form to manifest, just as she has done for 35,000 years, ever since people began to paint her vulva along with mammoths and cave bears.  All return to the Mother, even if they don't know it!  But, of course, I keep these thoughts to myself, and keep on driving.


A check in with the UFO Research Center and Museum in Roswell, where I buy a bumper sticker, and regret that I won't be there this year to hear Stan Friedman and colleagues discuss the Roswell Incident, as they have been doing together for some 40 years.  Then the long, hot drive through the Bible Belt, strange billboards warning me that I better get "saved" before it's too late and their "Merciful God" will gleefully impose an eternity of very painful torture on me because I don't believe in him and him alone.  Hmm.  This contradiction should be obvious to even the most devout, but, apparently not. I keep these thoughts to myself as well. Oklahoma with its terrifying storm fronts, now there is a not-so-merciful God I definitely believe in, and fortunately can drive away from.   Kansas, a night spent at a nameless rest area somewhere in Missouri. 

Here I am, on this Life Loop, following the lovely touchstones of my herstory,  reclaiming little bits of memory, people, all the stories that each Place holds that become me.  At last, I wake up to suddenly realize how GREEN everything suddenly is - the trees are tall, there is a green carpet underfoot, there is even a robin warbling and hopping.  

The terrain has changed, I'm going East, the spirit of Water makes her presence felt again.  

I have a synchronicity to note as well (since this is a journal)...........an aquaintance I haven't heard from in years writes to tell me about an amazing, bright and talkative little boy she met in Brooklyn this summer while she was doing face painting at an outdoor festival.  She painted his face, and was amazed at how charming he was, and got to talking with his father as well.  She mentioned that she had done the New York Renaissance Faire, and he mentioned that his wife's mother had done it for a while as well.    She realized, in the course of speaking with him, that she was painting my grandson's face..........which is kind of amazing, since my daughter and I have been out of touch for 6 years now (the reasons aren't necessary to go into here).  

What are the odds?  Once more, I'm blessed to remember that, no matter what goes on on the surfaces of our lives, we're all really connected, a part of each other, at the roots.  

So, on to the summer's adventure!