Magical Belmont, Part 1

The moment Jamie belted out her version of Sinatra's "New York, New York," I knew we were in for an exciting trip...one that would begin with enthusiasm and would end in complete exhaustion. However fresh a person is going into a long road trip, the miles on the road will do a good job sucking the energy right down the drain. Add to that early morning trips to the Belmont backside and late night parties with the elite in horse racing, and we could hardly stand up by the time we headed down the long road home. Still, we wouldn't have changed our experiences for any moment of rest, as we accumulated a lifetime of memories in just a few short days.

It seems a trip to the horse track inevitably brings too much rain, cold, heat, or sun. This trip was no different. Rain pelted down for two straight days, yet we trudged from backside to track to backside again, getting wonderful photographs, and talking to some fantastically quirky people.

A trip to the barns and backside is a step back in time. Surrounded by the urban sprawl of Long Island, Belmont's backside is a soft, tree-filled setting of tranquility (note Jamie's photo to the right, from flickr.com/creepy_coyote). Though few cars pass down the dirt roads next to the barns, horses fill the lanes, frequently grinding foot traffic to a halt as scores travel to the track for workouts. Though busy with vital tasks, riders and trainers are nearly always friendly with visitors, making a point to say "hello" and smile. Of course, it helps to be a girl on path, as that yields a lot more looks and nods.

Photographers also have built a pretty tight community as well. Throughout the trip, beginning with each morning at the barns, jokes and smiles abound as photographers jockey for position like horse paparazzi as some major contender gets a bath or walks the shedrow. It's comical watching them wait patiently for even the slightest of movements from a horse. Sometimes, all it takes is a lick of a tongue from a horse during a bath, and the sound of rapid-fire shutters cuts the air. Photography is serious business for these people, even if there are jokes in between shots.

New Eyes on Old Landscapes

There are times we let things slide. My wife gave me a shirt that was supposed to be of Nevada...with the buttes of Monument Valley and the Saguaro cactus of the Sonoran desert. It's a typical mistake, like something you would see in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. After a decade of adventures out there, learning about the landscape inside and out, I should put that shirt in the back of my wardrobe, maybe pulling it out for the occasional paint job. However, I wear it proudly because I love her, and she gave it to me before she knew better (probably in that order)...

A while back, I was reading Ted Bishop's book, downing my last bottled beer outside the Cowboy Monkey, just enjoying the laziness of a summer's evening downtown. Then, he started writing about passing through Monument Valley...just outside of Moab. What?!?! I looked back to his map, and he never passed through Monument Valley, which is far from Moab. It was a confirmation that Bishop was not yet getting straight his landscapes for the American West. Add to that his visit to Mesa Verde, the most popular and the most sanitized of protected ruins, a few pages later, and I was scoffing at his beginner's experience.

Riding home, I realized he was expressing another voice for travel, though. I have read all kinds of travel narratives. Some are eco-narratives, where few people are seen, and landscape dominates the thoughts of the narrator. Most, though, center on people met along the way, and they always follow the same structure (a little about the road, and a little about whatever put them on the road in the first place). The latter really branches into many categories, including the old war horse, the beginner, and the re-invigorator. In all cases, it is not usual for the traveller to be clearly aware of the landscape. It is always a passing fascination. If I give Bishop the benefit, he's just trying to grasp the vast West for the first time, and he's mixing it all together. He's the beginner, and as all beginners to the West reveal, keeping straight the many different landscapes, even the famous ones, can be a difficult task.

Back Roads

The side roads have been good to us this trip to the four corners region.

In south-western Colorado, we searched through dirt roads on a large tract of BLM land to find one or more elusive herds of wild horses. After missing a turn-off and driving about 18 miles through endless scrub land, Jamie spotted a group of them. All but one looked completely relaxed, but the stallion kept a close eye on us. It was for good reason, too. Clearly, one of the mares was ready to burst with pregnancy. So, after a few pictures and so loitering in the pleasantly hot sun, we moved on.

Just outside of Flagstaff, there is a Native American ruins site that is in the process of excavation. Though we had just visited Wupatki and all its beautiful ruins just an hour before, we felt lucky to stumble on this pile of mounds that seemed to be bursting with broken artifacts churned to the surface by summer rains. Here, we could see the remains of an ending before too much was done to start a new beginning. Somehow, it felt more intimate this way.

Along highway 4, headed to White Rock, New Mexico, I passed a small sign indicating a prehistoric site. I almost stopped, but decided to wait for Jamie to come along, thinking it was something rather insignificant. So many sites in that area have been marked, and since I could see some of the ruins from the road, I figured it would be less significant than other around the area. It was a great thing I waited for two reasons. First, I headed down to White Rock, pulled alongside the houses until I got a WIFI connection, yanked a trail map for a canyon hike, and hiked a beautiful trail to some rapids along the Rio Grande. Second, Jamie was able to come back to the area with me, and we found an unexcavated cliff dwelling, so well-preserved, plaster still existed on many of the dwellings' interior walls. Above the cliff dwellings, there were unexcavated pueblos, and like our experience in Flagstaff, there were all kinds of beautiful pottery shards churned to the surface from recent storms.

West of Las Vegas, New Mexico, we found a road that cut through the mountains towards Taos. Though short on the map, we spend a glorious afternoon weaving around mountain roads, stopping once for some fresh high mountain clear water raging alongside the road. Now that I had a good water filter, we could enjoy the freshness of mountain water in minutes.

And the back roads in the cities brought us to both familiar and new spots, away from crowds, where we blended in with locals as we did our own thing as we would have back home. Aztec Café in Santa Fe and The Bean in Taos were the most comforting, and the most familiar, and neither showed signs of even one tourist. Both had the best coffee I'd had since Paradiso's strong cups back home, and neither would have been visited at much length had I not needed to use the internet out of obligation to work duties. The required diversion, though first thought as an albatross, turned out to be what opened up to the most conversations with the most people.

Interstates and chains and tourists are comforting when we need them, but the adventure of the back roads is much more satisfying. Yes, it takes longer to get place to place, but isn't that a good thing? After all, the finish line is always going to be home, so side trips and out-of-the way adventures, both exciting and unsettling, seem to prolong the trip, providing some of the best stories in the process. I have so many more from this trip alone, from being chased across a cliff's edge by bighorn sheep to crossing a creek between two waterfalls to get to a mining cabin along a ledge in near zero-visibility fog, from hiking in 105 degree heat to find elusive ruins to requests for rides by odd characters hitching their way to Las Vegas. But those are for another time.

Waking Older

"After thirty a man wakes up sad every morning excepting perhaps five or six until the day of his death." --Ralph Waldo Emerson

I don't know when it happened. Really, I think it started before thirty, but once I hit thirty, there was only looking back. I became older. Yeah, I still like loud music. Yeah, I take chances and have fun and generally live up my life. But there's a depressing feature of my life now. I realize I'm going to die. I'm scared of the day my family members will die. My close friends, too. I feel it now, and I used to just know it. This fear doesn't transfer to full-out depression or real waking sadness, but it is a weight that sits on me from the moment I wake up. We only have so much time in this world...

Before thirty, the world is all ahead. Life is the future, and youth still grips us in all our uncertainties. It's not like there isn't uncertainty after thirty, but it takes a shift, and it starts to feel more like anxiety, like everything should be figured out and is not. Responsibility fights (and usually wins) over the once prevalent reckless abandon of youth. Experience adds cynicism towards those less experienced. And then the light bulb goes on. I'm looking back. I'm no longer idealistic and carefree. I've moved on.

All things considered, it's really not so bad. It's just that I realize all of our days are numbered...that we have to make the most of things. And in my laziness, I don't really make the most of anything. But I think I make more of my life now that the weight of age wakes with me every day. It makes me try harder...at least a little. At least I hope.

On relationships

From High Fidelity:

"...what really matters is what you like, not what you are like."

So, they propose "the idea of a questionnaire for prospective partners, a two- or three-page multiple-choice document that covered all the music/film/TV/book bases. It was intended a) to dispense with awkward conversation, and b) to prevent a chap from leaping into bed with someone who might, at a later date, turn out to have every Julio Iglesias record ever made...there was an important and essential truth contained in that idea, and the truth was that these things matter, and it's no good pretending any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently, or if your favorite films wouldn't even speak to each other if they met at a party."

Liking people and having a relationship with people are very different things. I like a lot of people, but it's tough developing meaningful relationships/friendships, and I think a root to this difficulty stems from this cultural rift. It's too difficult to develop relationships with people who don't share some of my same interests in the arts, or at least appreciate the arts. I don't understand those who hate to read books, love only blockbuster films (or even worse, look forward all year to movies like Shrek), and have a singular connection to corporate music from the radio or MTV. Without a wide range of the love of the arts, and without that philosophical connection between the arts and humanity/existence, and of course without some connections between actual likes and dislikes, I am usually lost for conversation after a short period of time. I'm sure this is a failing of mine, but I'm guessing I'm not alone here. What we like matters to our relationships and our conversations.