Part 3 is here. After visiting the caverns, we were to drive south to Fredericksburg, Texas, to stay with my old roommate, Zoe. As the navigator, I looked for routes to avoid backtracking more than twenty miles. I selected a tiny grey road to which we missed the turn and had to reverse down the highway fifty feet. It was then that I learned that little grey roads are actually one lane dirt roads which cast dust over the car like a shroud. We all coughed and struggled to put up the windows while the Subaru bounced and dipped down the road, like a joyful Labrador chasing a moth. We barely made it to Zoe’s before nightfall and we spent the final miles driving through Texas Hill Country while Zoe coached us on the phone through a maze of back country roads, each of us squinting against the twilight to read the road signs. For the next few days, I would relinquish my role as the navigator while Zoe shared her hometown with us. We swam in the Guadalupe River, watched the sunset from the top of another geological point of interest, simply called Enchanted Rock, visited a two thirds scale model of Stone Henge and the heads from Easter Island, and bought Disney Princess Pez dispensers from a candy shop on Main Street. At the same candy shop, I bought a dashboard Hula Dancer for Antonio. Kate named her Joanie. Zoe joined us for the next six states as we made our way east along the Gulf Coast. Kate, Zoe and I all had family members scattered around Louisiana and Florida, so the four of us were spared the pleasure of pitching a tent in the humidity or the rain. Our first stop was in New Orleans, which was still freshly covered in blue FEMA tarps, and where the street signs were still bent in half around the sign posts. This combined with the complex maze of one way streets made finding our way incredibly difficult. After copious amounts of swearing and moments of road rage, we found the house where Zoe’s oldest brother was staying. Zoe’s brother was making the best of the recent hurricane and was busy buying flood-damaged houses to fix up and flip. We slept on the floor in one of his projects which had avoided the worst of the storm surge and broken levies. We spent the next day wandering around the French Quarter, searching for jazz and hiding from the rain. I took pictures with black and white film and when I finally developed it three years later, the expired film caused all the prints to come out grainy except for one. In it, Kate, Figgins and Zoe sit across from me and my camera. We are waiting for beignets at the Café du Monde and Zoe smiles at me, aviator sunglasses perched on the top of her head, her amber freckles pulled tight across her nose and high round cheek bones. Kate pulls a face, her lips puckered and her brow furrowed. Figgins is smiling too, which is rare. She usually ducks out of photos or at the very least obscures her face with a proudly displayed middle finger. In this picture, however, Figgins holds her cheek in her right hand and her left hand hangs limp and relaxed in front of her chin. She seems happy. For Figgins, the trip was her first step toward becoming liberated. In boarding school, she was one of the few hybrid students who resided in the dorms, but whose parents lived just outside the city in Monument. On a good day, her relationship with her mother was strained and her father had moved out of Colorado and to Arizona by the time she graduated. In the fall, Figgins planned to attend Smith, a women’s college which she imagined would suit her intellect and newfound sexuality. On the road, she was a wanderer, drifting from place to place where everyone but the people in the car was a stranger to her. The days we didn’t spend camping we were hosted by my friends and family, or Kate’s, so every person she met was new to her. Figgins’ world was in the West, but she was willing change that. She had a suitcase full of books and a dry bag that she had bought for a kayaking trip to keep her clothes from getting wet. In it, she said she carried everything she needed. The next few days would net us a speeding ticket in Tallahassee, and a quick dip in the Gulf of Mexico. In Florida, there would be more swimming, this time in crystal clear blue springs which had a current so strong we had to drag each other upstream to get back to our car. We would also veg out, watch “Hellboy” and the entire “Blade Trilogy” while eating stale marshmallows and the trail mix that had melted into a solid mass while we were swimming. After Florida, I convinced Kate to depart the interstate in favor of the slower drive up Route 1 which runs parallel to I-95 from Miami to Boston. The time on the highway moved us through small marsh towns surrounded by trees heavy-hung with silky-grey Spanish moss. I preferred the time on the quieter road, but Kate sat in the driver’s seat gritting her teeth while we slowly drove along behind a green pick-up, whose bed was loaded with fishing gear. At the first chance, we got back on the interstate. Note: Figgins uses they/them pronouns now, but chose to keep their previous pronouns in this piece to honor and acknowledge who they were then.
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Part 3 of 6. Read Part 2 here: Our next stop was Carlsbad Caverns National Park, and I sat in the passenger seat with Figgins’ road atlas closed and in my lap; my finger marked the page for New Mexico. Highway 285 South to Highway 62 West. I mouthed the words, and flipped the atlas open to retrace the route, checking our direction and reminding Kate what signs to look for. Southeastern New Mexico can be disorienting to a trio of Coloradans from the Front Range. Half of Colorado is flat like Kansas, but the other half features the Rocky Mountains. The Front Range is the Easternmost line of blue snowcapped peaks which run from the north and south of the state and serve as a picturesque backdrop to all of the major cities. As a result, the majority of the population orients themselves based on where the mountains are. If the mountains are on your left, then you are headed north. If they lay behind you, then you are headed east, and so on. When there are no mountains, most Coloradans still use landmarks for direction. Later, when I would live in St. Louis, I would base my location off of the Gateway Arch, but my parents’ new home outside of Washington DC left me directionless. Thick forests stifle the roads and hide all landmarks and all of the interstates run in circles leaving me confused and hopelessly turned around. Southwestern New Mexico has the opposite problem. There is nothing to obscure the view, but the land is flat, dry, rocky, and god forsaken until you reach the Guadalupe Mountains. But beneath this arid tedium is one of the wonders of the natural world. Between 4 and 6 million years ago hydrogen-sulfide-rich waters began to migrate through fractures and faults in the limestone bedrock of the Chihuahuan Desert. Sulfuric acid dissolved the limestone along fractures and folds in the rock to form Carlsbad Cavern. Over time, the Guadalupe Mountains uplifted and busted open the cavern, exposing it to the elements for the first time in its geologic history. As a result, airflow and snow melt allowed for what geologists festively call “cave decorations.” Among these decorations are limestone lily pads, robust totem poles, delicate soda straws, and, of course, stalactites. The cavern is the seventh largest in the world and plunges more than 750 feet underground, which is 120 feet deeper than the St. Louis Arch is tall. The cave itself is made up of a number of chambers with such fantastic titles as the “Hall of the White Giant,” the “King’s Palace,” and the haunting “Spirit World.” By the time we visited, I was already confident in my own Atheism, but I was willing to concede a point to those who would label the cavern God’s natural cathedral. There is something undeniably spiritual about the place. The lights illuminating the cave cast a golden glow, like candles on an altar. White stalactites cling to the ceiling like angels, and even the cave itself forms a cross. As I stood by the “Lake of the Clouds” the lowest point in the cave, fighting with my camera to take a decent picture without using the prohibited flash, I found myself overwhelmed and shivering. In the car I would begin to write about the experience, but give up after only a few minutes, writing simply that the cave was inspiring and that I promised to write more on the subject later. Four years have passed and I am still at a loss for what to write. Note: Figgins uses they/them pronouns now, but chose to keep their previous pronouns in this piece to honor and acknowledge who they were then. Part 2 of 6. This was written before I had a smart phone or had even driven my first road trip mile. Read Part 1 here. Before Google, my family relied on road atlases to navigate our summer road trips and for my first road trip alone after I graduated high school in 2006, I would do the same. Four years of boarding school in Colorado Springs, a town without public transportation, had left me without a license and with a reliance on school buses, cabs, and day students with cars for rides to the orthodontist or the movies. My post-graduation road trip would take me through 27 states and over 5,000 miles and my journey would be shared with my friend Figgins, the girl she was secretly in love with, Kate, and Kate’s white Subaru Outback, Antonio. At 18, I was the oldest, and I pretended to be wise, but my age amounted to little more than the ability to buy cigarettes, though I never acted on it. This pissed Figgins off because the self portrait she had designed for herself typically had a cigarette pinched between her forefinger and thumb. But she was seventeen for a few months longer and I refused to buy her a pack because I hated the smell. She had half a pack stashed away which she would carefully ration for use throughout the trip. I didn’t drink, I didn’t smoke, and unlike Figgins, I wasn’t interested in pursuing altered states. But I saw myself as a nomad and subject to a force which had hooked me behind the collarbones, pulling me towards the road with a kinetic energy that entreated me to keep moving. I fantasized about hitchhiking across Canada, meeting interesting people, consuming mileage and devouring the scenery as it flew by. So when Figgins came to me and proposed we spend the summer working on a boat in Greece, I pleaded her down to a month-long road trip in the United States. I was more comfortable in a car in my own country. Anything more would be too much. Kate signed on because Figgins asked her to and I was fine with that. She was barely seventeen but I admired her. To me, she was an old soul. Kate was the daughter of a widowed and retired military man who scared me and whom I privately referred to as “The Colonel.” She had heavy lidded eyes and long elegant fingers that gripped the steering wheel as she leaned forward on the accelerator to overtake a car that dared to obey the speed limit. She reminded me of Lara Croft, from Tomb Raider, a game I never played but liked the look of. She was a badass with a capital “B” and I could see why Figgins had a crush on her. I planned the trip in my grandparent’s living room in Colorado Springs. I used MapQuest to calculate the distance we would drive each day, estimated how much gas we would need, and how much it would cost when split amongst the three of us. I created the itinerary complete with phone numbers, addresses, and campground reservations. When the first itinerary was declared “too vague” by the Colonel, I added ETAs and emergency contact numbers of friends and family within 300 miles of each stop. When there wasn’t anyone available within 300 miles, I made someone up. Copies of the itinerary were sent to our families and our cell numbers were distributed in the hopes that at least one of us would be reachable wherever we were. The plan was to live out of the car. Most nights we would camp in a pair of two-person tents, and alternate nights in the tent alone. We would cook for ourselves on a propane camp stove and eat from a larder of Zatarans beans and rice, Annie’s Mac n’ Cheese, and avocados we had purchased from Wild Oats. We had water bottles full of dish soap and ziplocks filled with powdered dairy creamer, and ate with camping utensils: forks, spoons, and knives that attached to each other with metal rings and that made a clinking noise when you used them. Some nights, we would stay with people we knew. One of the advantages of boarding school was that your friends and family lived all over the country, and in spite of being on the road for nearly a month, we would have to stay in a hotel for only one night. On the way, we would stop at several National Parks and I would get my National Park Passport stamped. I would write about our journey in the Italian leather journal my grandfather had given me and take pictures every day. I chose the states and the stops, and Figgins marked our route in her road atlas, tracing the roads with a yellow highlighter. Our journey was truncated by complications with Kate, and since we were using her car, we were held hostage to her schedule. While Figgins and I planned the trip, Kate was in her sister’s wedding party. When the ceremony was over and the newlyweds safely on their way to their honeymoon, we thought we were good to go. Instead we were delayed by The Colonel’s insistence that the car be serviced before we were allowed to leave and while I recognized the wisdom, with each day gone, a day on my itinerary vanished as well. But anticipation transformed itself into reality and when we finally hit the road, the sky was a clear blue and the highway was vacant—a graduation gift that promised adventure and possibility. Kate drove the first few hours and I sat in the passenger seat. After lunch, we rotated, and I moved to the back seat while Figgins drove and Kate navigated. We listened to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on audiobook, so we didn’t talk. At that point we were all brimming with expectation and varying degrees of anxiety. There wasn’t much to say. We spent the first night at Bottomless Lakes State Park near Roswell, New Mexico, which were, in reality, little more than 12 ft deep ponds with an artificial beach and an amphitheater of sandy red cliffs around three sides. I swam out to the middle of the lake and pointed my toes down, threw my hands straight up above my head and sank. I exhaled to aid my descent and my feet found the silty red bottom, kicking up dust in a cloud that obscured my shins and ankles. I looked up at my hands above my head, fingers black in silhouette against the rippling blue sky. I pulled my hands sharply down to my thighs and rocketed up, breaking the surface with a spray of water that temporarily blinded me with flickering flashes of waves and setting sun. After a quick scan of the shore for my friends, I found them clambering up the face of the red cliffs. I swam over to find Kate breaking off rocks, counting the plains of cleavage, holding them up against the sun, and finally bringing them to her lips. “Mmm, salt,” she declared and tossed a chunk to me in the water and handed another to Figgins. Figgins sat on a boulder and licked her piece, quietly tasting it and watching Kate as she climbed higher. To the tip of my tongue, the rock tasted like sweat. Note: Figgins uses they/them pronouns now, but chose to keep their previous pronouns in this piece to honor and acknowledge who they were then. After I graduated high school, I took a month-long 27 State road trip with four friends. I wrote this series about it when I was in college, and only a few years after this trip took place. That was almost exactly half a lifetime ago for me. I'm retracing many of these steps, so I thought I'd share it again while I do the boring stuff like work on a commission at the local public library in Ft. Myers.
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Addison GreenThe day-to-days of an Itinerant Illustrator Archives
November 2023
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