My travel companion and I made it back to New Mexico yesterday, and we've been decompressing and dealing with the altitude ever since. Spending a week near sea level for the first time in years means that when you get up at altitude (6-7000 ft) it takes some getting used to.
And there's all the recollection of the trip to do. My companion may think of herself as "a simple girl from Gallup" but she's been in the Army serving in Korea, is finishing her Masters at a prestigious East Coast university, is planning on a trip to Europe a week from now (subject to change due to possible upcoming job), and is becoming well known in art and museum circles as a force of nature. She's an artist, a curator, a scholar, and a fine human being. The rest of us could take a lesson or two from people like her.
She toured me around Gallup when we got back. It was good because I was not that familiar with the town, and I certainly didn't know all the hidden pockets and the many stories she could tell of families and squabbles and living rough. Gallup has a notorious reputation, some of which is well-deserved, for racism, drunken Indians and more than its share of violence. But she obviously feels great empathy and high regard for the place and the people. So I was grateful to be taken around, to meet an old friend of hers, and to just consider the kind of life she's led, how it differs from the Standard Model, and how those differences can be an advantage and a curse. And to contemplate the differences between her life now and what it was like when she was "just a simple girl from Gallup."
She's been to California before, but she never experienced the places we went or if she had been to one or more of them (like Monterey) she'd never spent the time we did or explored the corners and intersections we did.
Nor had she seen a buffalo herd or an elephant seal refuge in California. Never stood on a beach watching a sea otter hammer a clam shell on its chest. She'd never seen ostriches running free in California nor had she visited a California mission before. She'd never been to Big Sur, never crossed the Bixby Canyon bridge, been in a redwood grove or late lunched at Nepenthe. Never been on Highway 1 at all that she remembered.
She'd never seen Hearst's Castle glowing in the sunset light atop La Cuesta Encantada, nor did she know exactly what it was.
She'd never had split pea soup for breakfast, nor, honestly, had I. But I love Andersen's Split Pea Soup, and soon enough, so did she. But these days, it's hard to find, and we left the pea soup restaurant with cans to take home.
She'd never been to the Cesar Chavez National Monument, nor had I, and we both got choked up remembering or learning the story of the rise and struggle of the United Farm Workers Union. She'd never seen field workers in the numbers we saw on our rural journey through the farms and orchards and vineyards and ranches. She saw how hard they worked and sensed how little they were regarded.
She'd never been a fan of John Steinbeck, but since she read the opening paragraphs of Cannery Row on a street sign in Monterey, she thinks she'll become one. I gave her the book.
She's never been a fan of "Ti Jean" Kerouac and never read his books, but she thinks she might become a fan and read his books after experiencing parts of Big Sur and hearing my story of how he drank himself to death after achieving fame for On the Road, c. 1957. I gave her a copy of his creative nonfiction novel Big Sur and asked her to read it after reading Cannery Row.
Returning home to New Mexico. Fall afternoon, sun low in the southwest, almost fruitcake weather. Oh so glad we went. Oh so glad to be home, greeted by a passel of kedies. "Where have you been?!"
Where I needed to be. And now where I need to be. The Dharma Talks I missed while on the road are now posted online. I'll give myself time to decompress and catch up. Routines will return. Life goes on.
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