I’ve read Lonesome Dove and I like Western Swing music, so you would think that I’d get along ok in West Texas. Au contraire, mon frere! By the time I hit Fort Stockton, I began to wonder why I was making this trip at all. Up to this point — with a brief respite at Elvis’ apartment in San Antonio — I had been driving 6 hours a day and staying in Motel 6s. Or is it Motels 6? Not sure on that, but it doesn’t matter. I had been staying in cheap hotels that pretty much looked like one another, driving on roads that were basically the same, and not really taking in sights along the way. This was no way to drive across the country. It was time to do things differently.
So after El Paso and Los Cruces, I veered off I-10 and up through Silver City. Billy the Kid country. Pat Garrett country. Definitely more wild that Fort Stockton, Texas. I breathed more easily when I got into those mountains. Joseph Campbell would have seen what was coming next from a thousand miles away. The hero’s journey has to include some trials, some sort of descent into great peril. Lacking a handy cave, the sky itself descended on me in a way I have not experienced before or since.
None of the pictures I have to share with you will do my stories justice. They were all taken with disposable cameras. That’s back in the days of film, children. Film is … well … never mind. Point being that this picture in particular does not adequately convey the threat to my very existence that the storm embodied. The car was rocked back and forth by the wind as I journeyed down the road. Vision was a sweet memory obscured by the sheets of rain pouring down my windshield. At one stage, the waters deposited on the land came rushing across the road, bringing a horde of small boulders with them. One viciously attacked my oil pan, which managed to hold on for dear life, dented but not breached. It would have made sense to stop if there had been an underpass or if I could have been sure no one who was following on the road would have rear-ended me. There was no choice but to get into the storm.
And by getting in, I got through. Through the Gila National Forest. Through Billy the Kid county. Through the State of New Mexico to Arizona’s Apache National Forest, wherein lies the Luna Lake Recreation Area. Therein lies the Luna Lake campground. Camping had been on the agenda for this trip, but this was the first night I was actually doing it. August in Mississippi is not really the time for camping, but it’s the perfect time at 7,800 feet. In the course of 24 hours, I knew for a fact why I was out here. I knew what I was doing. This was exactly why I had come west.