I was 6 or 7 years old when I read American author Owen Wister’s novel about a cowboy named The Virginian. I do not recall details of the characters or the story itself. But the book was set in the Wyoming Territory in the 1880s, and within its pages, I took some of my first steps into North America’s western lands. The roots of fascination took hold in my spirit.
Those roots were nurtured by other authors, as well as the books that my older brother continued to share with me. There was plenty of Stephen King and Dean Koontz on his bookshelves, but western fiction was one of his favorite genres. I never really cared for most of the western-themed shows and movies that aired on television, but I could get lost for hours in the pages written by Louis L’Amour. His words painted images and landscapes of faraway places that I could travel to in my mind.
Eventually, I matured enough to be interested in the glimpses of peoples and cultures that L’Amour wrote about, and not just the scenery he created. Those seeds of understanding and admiration took hold and rooted, which helped to counteract later, invasive, negative input from the media and society in general.
Somewhere along the years, an older me picked up a Tony Hillerman novel from a public library, and all those Western roots and seeds resonated with the taste of familiar beauty in his work. They began to grow in the form of dreams of travel. In 2015, when the spiral of life had carried me to what seemed a point of stability, I started planning a trip to Yellowstone and other destinations. To my sorrow, health problems and other issues unexpectedly altered the course of my life. That trip did not happen, but when it began to seem that my dreams of exploring the American Southwest or anywhere else in the world were never going to come true, the course of my life shifted again.
In March of this year, my father-in-law passed away. Among the promises my husband and I made to him before he died was that we would transport his remains to Topeka, Kansas, so that he could be buried with his wife. They were married for 58 years before she passed away in 2015, and he wanted to be back by her side.
The discussion of plans to travel to Kansas for a long weekend turned to talk about how long it had been since we were able to travel together. Then it wandered into why nots and what ifs, and before you could say Jack Robinson, the projected four-day weekend became a 16-day road trip. I was excited and eager to spend time in places I had long dreamt of, and my husband felt the same about revisiting places his family had traveled when he was a child. After the stress of shepherding Larry through his end-of-life journey, carrying his memory and stories with us to places he loved would add another peaceful, gentle aspect to the process of letting go.
The past year was filled with a comically tragic number of awful events, and I anticipated having experiences that would open opportunities for spiritual healing. And I, really, really wanted to rest.
In the first four days, we drove from Swannanoa, North Carolina, through Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, and Colorado. A delay in the first hours of travel caused my GPS spirit guide to change our route to sweet country backroads filled with marvelous sights.
Virginia tent revival [Bill Rhodes]
Driving through a little corner of Virginia, we went past a large circus tent set up for an Old-Fashioned Holy Ghost Tent Revival. That encounter was oddly mystical, a reminder to be aware of and open to the presence of the divine even when it takes forms that are shadowed and twisted or have been twisted by human beings.
While we did not follow the entire route of the Santa Fe Trail, we were near the starting point while we were in Missouri, as it was four blocks from my husband’s childhood home. For me, it was the first step on the path of dreams inspired by L’Amour’s writings. Of course, Kansas City is a place of legend in tales of America’s West, and in the tales told by my father-in-law, there is no better barbecue in the world than what they make in Kansas City.
My singular spiritual experience in Kansas City did not include a campfire or cows lowing in the background, nor did it occur in any formally recognized holy place. But sisters and brothers, I will tell you that I found a living, moving, holy trinity of love, food, and live Delta blues music at a roadside restaurant on a Sunday night. My heart cracked a bit, and the light poured out and in.
From Missouri, we traveled through Colorado to Moab, Utah. The trail was filled with sights that were both exquisitely beautiful and exquisitely ugly, as well as rich in history. Our conversations delved into them all, and in those wide-open spaces with those wide-open words, I began to feel the weight of the past year lifting. I stopped feeling crowded and compressed. I felt like I could breathe again.
The horizon promised forever, with the land in between rich with life and beauty. The Divine Mother was present everywhere in those fertile fields, hills, and mountains. The mix of old and new, farm fields and new tech windmills and solar arrays, promised hope. The endurance of the land and the creatures and spirits who dwell there filled me with awe.
We saw buffalo, white tailed deer, mule deer, coyotes, elk, squirrels, big horn sheep, lizards, frogs, songbirds, raptors, rivers, creeks, ponds, and lakes. Farms and farm families that manage to survive drought, tornadoes, and floods, their fields still filled with crops, even while the government is acting to bankrupt and starve our people. I asked Siri to tell us how many acres of farm and ranch land there are in each state we traveled. The numbers surprised me enough to foster new conspiracy theories about why the wealthy and powerful want to drive hard-working people into foreclosure.
Night sky [Bill Rhodes]
The last hours of the drive to Moab were spent primarily in darkness. I did not have a sneak preview of the countryside. We arrived at our cabin on the outskirts of Moab late at night. There was no light pollution, so once the truck lights were turned off, all we could see was the night sky and the light our host left on in the window. We opened the windows to the night air and sounds and slept our first restful sleep of the trip.
The next morning, I walked out the front door of the cabin with a view of the small, level pastures of the farm where we were staying. My feet carried me along the eastern curve of the driveway as my eyes took in the pretty view of trees, flowers, grass, and a small herd of goats. Not until I rounded the loop toward the west did I see the stunning view of the red rock canyon glowing in the morning light. It was not so much that my knees gave out as it was that I slowly sank to the ground in wonder.
Hello, Louis and Tony. Hello, dreams.
I sat where I was for a few moments to hold onto that feeling of wonder, then stood and continued walking toward the west. As if the morning needed any more magic, I was delighted to discover a labyrinth laid out with stones and large crystals in a nearby field. The first stone was green and shaped like the head of a dragon. He whispered a clear invitation for me to walk the labyrinth, which I accepted, and when I finished, I was ready to meet the day.
We spent that day and the next exploring the stunning living landscapes of Arches National Park and a nearby recreation area that I will not name, as the longer it remains largely unknown, the better. And I spent that time moving between the here and now and in and out of liminal space. To be a tourist, a visitor, a traveler taking in the sights I had read about so many times, to feel the land, the heat, and the constant breeze was incredibly surreal.
And oh, to be an earth-loving witch taking in all that beauty and energy! That was an out-of-this-world/centered directly in this world experience that I shall never forget.
We drove, stopped, wandered, walked, and took in nature’s wonders for hours. As we passed a rock formation of standing women with a crowd of rock women standing below them, I remember thinking, “This is a sacred space, a sacred place where the Mothers hold the earth together.” I am not sure if that was my own thought or someone else’s.
The formations and desert were full of life, both in this realm and coming in from others. Shadows and light, sleeping buffalo, mastodons, people, and wolves, frozen in place in that timeless land of portals and windows. There was so much life there, even though the land appeared dead and barren. We saw dozens of small lizards and discovered a badger hole and tracks in the sand near a pull-off. We also spent 45 minutes watching the antics of White-Tailed Antelope Squirrels as they scurried around their den and climbed flower stalks not strong enough to support them.
Small plants and grasses held my attention, especially the orange blooms of Desert Globe Mallow. Sphaeralcea ambigua. These flowers were one of my favorite finds. I was so deeply drawn to their beauty and energy that I repeatedly stopped to be near them. They appear in my dreams every night now; sometimes as part of an arrangement on a table in the corner of a room, sometimes acres of them, sometimes a single plant or single bloom in an unusual location.
Desert Globe Mallow [Bill Rhodes]
According to Arizona Park Services, “this lovely native plant is neither threatened nor endangered. The only “problem” is that once established, they and their abundant progeny may aggressively take residence in spaces reserved for other plants in the garden…stand back and watch the plant spread its glowing blossoms as far as the eye can see.”
I find it is not a problem at all to let them flourish in whatever spaces, real or liminal, where they have taken hold. I feel safe when I see them. Curious. Old as the stars and new again.
On our last day among those red rocks, I was able to get close enough to a formation to put both my hands against the rock. I could feel the Great Mother breathing and understood why those mountains and that landscape did not make me feel small: they reminded me of the vastness to which I am connected. As I touched Her open bones, I remembered that Her bones are mine, and mine will be Hers again someday. That we are all connected. That roots and bones are sometimes one and the same and they are all connected, too.
I would have cried, but the contact and the message were so profound they transcended emotion. My youngest daughter would have called that a geographical spiritual healing. She would have been right.
That was the sixth day of the trip. I slept like a contented baby that night and woke the next morning feeling rested and content. It was time to leave Moab and head for our next destination, but the lessons and reminders I learned while there opened the way to deeper seeking and understanding in my further travels. I wear one of the Mother’s bones as a touchstone if I need it.
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