Phoenix is a tribute to its name, at least from the perspective of the freeway by-passer. Surely, this city has won awards of some significant nature for the meticulous attention to detail expressed in the cultivated landscaping if its expressways… causing me to wonder: If the federal government is the ‘great equalizer’ in terms of maintaining a nationwide network of connecting arteries among the various states, what is Phoenix doing that the rest of us could model?
Because frankly, the state of our national roadways in other locations along our route unfavorably pales by comparison, with Colorado placing a somewhat distant second. In both places, however, one of the more impressive qualities is the mosaic embellished to the retaining and sound-deflecting walls that corridor the pavement. Denver has gone with a scribed ‘mountain & river’ motif, which scrolls along the top of the walls like an endless graphic tapestry that is surprisingly pleasant and much easier on the eyes than plain cement.
Phoenix, however, has captured the allure of Aztec temples with embossed geometrics and cultured landscaping, lush with flowering flora. Captivating.
Anyway, today we shall leave behind us the chimney rocks and blooming cacti of the Arizona high deserts. We spent last night in Globe, just a hop and skip to the New Mexico border on US 60, which we shall travel all the way to our current destination.
Whew… June 28, 2010
Tags: commentary, culture, family, life, mothers and daughters, road trip, travel, travelogue
The last 5 days have been enormous.
We arrived home about 2 hours ago, somewhere around 1:45pm, having set out from Shawnee (Shawna was delighted with the name), Oklahoma, around 8 this morning.
The drive the day before (aka: Sunday), leaving Magdalena around 7am, brought us 600 miles closer to home by the time we stopped. And that evening (which was only last night, but feels like a week ago), we dined at a marvelous Chinese buffet where Shawna had octopus for the very first time. (Note: She liked the tentacles but did not care so much for the head.)
Backtracking further, the day I wrote my previous post (June 24, aka: last Thursday), was the day we arrived in Magdalena, New Mexico, and for a scant 68-hours (aka: 3 nights and 2 full days), soaked up the ambiance and culture of this sacred (a term I do not use lightly) community which pokes its head up through hard-scrapple terrain like a cactus blossom in the arid mountain plain… all of which I’ll say more about, later.
Fastforwarding back to (almost) the present moment, by 2:30 this afternoon, sweet Shawna (who drove the entire trip, shy only about 200 of the roghly 4000 miles — incident free, I am thrilled to announce) had our chariot unpacked of luggage, technology, snack box, cooler and assorted trinkets gathered along the way, was showered, had donned fresh clothes, text-messaged at least 6 friends, posted 2 notes to Facebook, made plans for the night and was out the door to check in with her (previous) employer to see if a spot still existed for her to come back to work.
Also by 2:30, I had turned on both of my desktop computers and started downloading emails: 6oo+ to one account, and about 50 to the other. Also, I noted that the house was not cooling down from the humid 80-degrees the thermostat read when we turned the a/c on… a circumstance which had not changed even an our later, just before I started this note, and so I called to get myself ‘on the list’ of our local heating & air folks who will (thankfully) be able to come check things out tomorrow.
Which is fitting, somehow, to come home to the routine nonsense of life. The maintenance, repairing, maintaining, and outfitting of a home, which — so long as one owns one — never ceases… except for spaces of time such as indulged for the last three weeks, which have in every dimension perceptible have been sheer bliss and pure enlightenment…