Pissing on the Continental Divide

Today Cara and I drove from Albuquerque, NM to Flagstaff, AZ. I must say that I am falling in love with the desert. The landscape is truly enchanting. I think one day it might be nice to actually move to New Mexico – either Albuquerque or Santa Fe. I had broadened that to both Arizona and New Mexico, but after seeing more of Arizona today, I came to miss the landscape of New Mexico. On the whole New Mexico felt more dynamic with more mountains and plateaus. Maybe one day I'll be a New Mexican.

The people of Albuquerque were incredibly friendly. We spent some time this morning downtown and had wonderful conversations with a woman who runs a local art gallery and our waitress. Art Gallery is originally from Boston and moved to Albuquerque 5 years ago with her husband. They were tired of the winters in Boston and the rigidity of the people. Art Gallery was very nice and recommended several places for us to visit while in town. (We definitely would have taken her advice if we had been staying any longer.)

One thing that struck us odd about Art Gallery was that she said Albuquerque wasn’t pretty; it wasn’t pretty like Boston. While Albuquerque isn’t the most gorgeous city on the planet, it has quite the charm. I found Albuquerque rather colorful, and the desert really inspiring. It seemed unfair to compare it to Boston; they are quite different. It’s like comparing an apple to an orange. (I think I could actually do some great work in Albuquerque with such exciting inspiration. Hands down, the desert has been my favorite landscape thus far.) Besides, any city that welcomes visitors with light up cactus sculptures and architectural lighting under the overpasses is okay in my book.
Our waitress was another transplant. She is from Huntington Park, CA. She got all excited when she found out our next big stop would be in Huntington Beach – just outside LA. I think she may have been the happiest waitress I’ve ever seen – bubbly and engaging – I would go back to Lindy’s just to visit her.
I know many of you were expecting me to be blogging from Las Vegas, but today Cara and I made the difficult decision to bypass Vegas in order to get to California faster. We decided that it would be better to spend more quality time in Los Angeles than to rush through both cities. I think Vegas is really a city that I need to spend time in to appreciate. It is glorious, tacky, and it revels in both. These qualities are not things that can be fully observed in a few short hours.

The road today proved rather interesting. The desert rained a bit. It was exhilarating to watch the rain move in sheets across the flats, the clouds cuddling with the mountains until they finally blanketed us with water. We made a video diary of it, which I may post eventually, but probably not tonight. (I’m still having trouble getting our first video diaries to load. *insert growling noise here*)

We stopped at a rest area atop the Continental Divide. This is the divide that separates the flow of water into eastward and westward flowing. We truly were in the West once we crossed the Divide – not even the rivers flow east anymore. It was curious to ponder which way our urine flowed. Since we were at the top – it could have flowed either direction – (this is assuming that the rest area did not have plumbing, which obviously it did, but play along.)

After using the rest area, we came upon an accident scene several miles down the road. It was unclear what had happened, but there was a van in a ditch in the median- its back hatch wide open, and a man laying face down – lifeless – in the road. It was one of those moments that remind you of your mortality, the fact that one day you too will die. Cara and I turned our heads as we passed; we couldn’t gawk at the scene; we had to look away. In the median a man held a child – facing the opposite direction. He was sitting with his back turned from the body rocking. A woman with black hair looked from the right side of the road. She too was restraining a child, but this child was not looking away. A single policeman had laid a tarp over the body, but the tarp was too small and left the man’s head and feet exposed. A thousand questions raced through my mind. Who was this guy? Was he the father of one of these children? An uncle? An older brother? Did anyone watch him die? Hopefully it had been quick. Hopefully - even in the violence of the accident - he went in peace.

Cara and I continued driving, talked about the scene for a few minutes, and had gotten fairly far away when we stopped for gas and dinner at another travel stop. We were finishing our dinner in the car (it was parked and the doors were open for the nice breeze to come through) when another group of tourists pulled into the parking lot next to us. There were many adolescents in the vans, but also adults. An adult woman began a conversation with the younger ones about the body we had seen, and how it had been a fairly bad trip. The adolescents began asking: “was that really a body!?!” and exclaiming things like “I told you that was a body!” “I think we ran over his shoe!” “Somebody had run over his shoe!” With this came the laughter. There was a cacophony of laughs from the group, and they continued discussing the body giggling away.

I understand that difficult situations can sometimes lead people to laugh. Laughter is a strong healing emotion, but this felt completely wrong. A man’s life had just ended, and not an old man who had lived a rich and full life and died in his sleep, but a younger man (I would guess no more than 35) who one moment was alive and the next was thrown from a vehicle front-side first into the pavement. This was someone’s child – someone’s friend – possible someone’s father, brother, and/or uncle. Why does someone laugh at the loss of a life – the extinguishing of a flame?

I wanted the adults to say something, especially the woman who had brought it up, but no one said a thing. Everyone kept going in their merry way – not giving a damn that they were making light of another family’s tragedy. I found myself wondering if the man had not been Hispanic would it have made a difference? The observers on both sides of the street were Hispanic, and I could only assume that the man with dark hair on the pavement was also Hispanic. The adolescents and other tourists were all white. Did the idea of “otherness” come into play here? Was he the “other” and therefore didn’t matter? If he had not been the “other” would it have made a difference? Or does none of this matter and does it simply speak to the depravity of humanity? Are we so low that we cannot empathize with our fellow man?

I want people to be respectful of others – to empathize with the hurt. If we all could do this the world would be a better place. But with people, I guess it’s like pissing on the continental divide – they could roll either direction. The question is: which way will you roll?

Photos from the New Mexico landscape.