Ravens on the Road

Ravens on the Road
December 1999

Lurching, bouncing, rattling and squeaking down New Mexico 344, a two lane country road 35 miles outside Albuquerque, in my '64 water hauler watching the sun rise off to my left and the road rise and fall in the distance in front of me, I am on my way to Edgewood, a collection of three gas stations, two general stores, some double-wides and our only source of water.

In the late summer this road is bordered on both sides by hand sized sun flowers that wave in my wake as I rumble by. They give way to purple asters as autumn keeps coming on and then to occasional snow banks by late December that, in a strong west wind, feed the white-out conditions that occur on this mainly north-south road. Not much fun hauling in that kind of weather.

But this is a day in late September, and the sky is as blue as you can imagine it to be. Maybe a bit more if you've never seen a New Mexico sky. I wave to drivers headed in the other direction. Its part of what I do on a two lane road. I inherited it from a generation of two-lane drivers who drove when cars were new and few. I use one or two-finger waves raising them lazily above the steering wheel, or if I'm in an expansive mood, a whole hand swipe in the windshield. This waving business takes a sense of timing. You don't want to start too early or you won't be seen, or the other driver may think you're signaling a halt. Too late, and you've missed 'em.

About 18 years ago a friend and I traveled through most of the states west of the Mississippi during a summer break, and since I was into the statistics of graduate school at the time, we set up a scientific study of wavers and non-wavers in each state we passed through. Time of day was held constant to correct for sun-on-windshield factors and we divided on-coming drivers into categories of single females and males, couples, truckers, and RV drivers. RV drivers never waved. Nor did women accompanied by males. Nobody in Wisconsin waved.

I get about 60% wave-backs on 344. That's up from about 45% last year. Its my contribution to world change.

The 2 1/2 ton Ford is a solid old road warrior. A tow truck in a former life, now a plow horse in semi-retirement used once a week to haul 1250 gallons of water to our otherwise dry perch. We could try for a well, but at $14 a foot and five dry 800' holes on the property just below ours we just can't take the crap shoot. So hi ho, hi ho, it's off to haul we go. It's not a bad job, this water hauling stuff. Not even tedious. It's become a kind of ceremony; driving down to town past the low rolling pastures and ten acre home sites to the Basset's place where most of the surrounding drys get their water from the only show in town.

There's another kind of consciousness that comes with hauling water. This morning as I was standing on the ladder at the top of our 1600 gallon water storage tank watching the water creep up as it was pumped from the truck, I remembered how thrilled we were the first day after I glued the last water pipe together and water began to pour into our storage tank. The sound of it splashing into our reservoir was a natural music.

We had that same surge of joy when our five electric poles were put in, and the wire finally reached our house. The sound of the refrigerator coming on that day was like that scene in "Edison" when the first electric light bulb began to glow. We felt as though we had just discovered electricity.

When my granddaughter visited here from Chicago a few years ago she tripled our water usage. I was shocked when, on a routine check of the big tank, I found it almost empty after she had been here four days. Same was true of our electric bill which went up by a third during her visit. Of course to her it was all little stuff. An extra shower a day, washing a load of four or five items everyday; keeping an electric heater on near the bed all night; it all added up very quickly. And the impact of her usage didn't just create little numerical abstractions on a bill that added up to a few more bucks at the end of the month. It meant that the storage tank was near empty and the whole family would be cut off water until we could run into town. Our little holding tank is a small scale replica of the underground reservoir we draw from. Its a sobering reality of dry southwestern living to see it gone when you least expect it.

At the town well I pull in, hoping there's no line, back up to the long hose that leads to the fastest pump, it takes twenty minutes on the fast hose, forty on the slow one, pick up the heavy steel nozzle and haul it up on the flat steel bed to get it under the lid on the big black tank. Once the lid is open, drop the nozzle into the opening and pin it down with the lid. Jump down off the bed, walk to the pump switch and power the water down the line to the tank, watch that it doesn't jump out of the tank with the first surge.

Water's cheap. Costs just $7.00 to fill my tank. Its the gas this old horse uses that boosts our water bill to $30 a month, more or less. Its the energy it costs to get the resource, that's what runs the bill up. That's what they keep telling us and it comes home when it's so clearly demonstrated on a weekly basis.

Standing on the steel bed watching the tank fill I can see the Sandia Mountain ski trails that lie due west of our place. I thank God every day that I am here. Ever since I saw the slick color pictures of New Mexico in my grandfathers collection of National Geographics I wanted to live here.

The stack of Geographics was huge, and I always found one I hadn't seen before. It was a treasure hunt every time. From bare breasts to whales, always an exciting adventure. I had one favorite though and always returned to it when breasts got boring. It was an issue on dinosaurs. Yes, they knew about them in the 40's too. It featured articles, and more importantly,
pictures of the findings in Utah and New Mexico and impressions of what the land looked like when they roamed and what it looked like now. I dreamed that if I could get to New Mexico and Utah, I could find a lot of the bones the scientists had overlooked. After all, they only visited these places, I would LIVE there and know where to go. I might even find one of them alive in some strange dark canyon no one had ever been to.

National Geographic started my obsession with this portion of the Southwest and once I left Chicago in '54 to move here, I knew I had come home. But it wasn't until 1993 that I was able to move out of the city and actually live on the land full time. Previously I'd spent most of my bone hunting time in towns like El Paso and Albuquerque. Never found any big bones. Lots of fossil shells, petrified wood, one old Indian burial site, lots of canyons, with ancient oil filters in them and near fossilized beer cans, but no big reptiles dead or alive.

But now I, and we, my wife Elizabeth and our three kids, are out of the city and on-the-land. Our little house looks over the kind of territory that's worth going "WOW" about. My home-office has a southerly view, just over the top and around the sides of my computer, that takes in the slope of our pinon and juniper covered hill as it descends to the rolling plains, to
the little town of Edgewood and beyond where they rise again to begin building the Manzano Mountains. To the west in winter I see snow dusting the sides of the San Pedro Mountains. It's a small local range of high hills, up to 9000', and we nest on one of the 7000' humps.

These mountains still echo with the sounds of the mining that has gone on since long before the Spanish marched over them. They dug for the magical blue-green turquoise that was traded throughout the Southwest and far down into Mexico for the red, green and azure blue feathers of the Macaw highly prized here for their use in ceremonies and dances.

Today, it's garnet, gold and silica sand. New tribes of people have moved in. Lawyers, sales reps., retired investment bankers, all escaping the sounds, smells and violence of the cities, and resenting that the mining that went on in the past is still going on today. Resenting that people are making a living exposing the guts of these ancestor mountains, and making noise and dust and commotion doing it. The new folks want it to be done somewhere else.

Problem is; the stuff we want mined is always found in these beautiful places!

As I begin my return trip a congregation of black dots on the road; sleek, shiny-black and rambunctious, rise up in a scattering of squawks as I come up over the hill to break up their party.

The ravens, the only birds I know of that love to fly. They fly to have fun and have fun flying. Our skies are usually quiet, and when they fly over us we hear them commenting on the sights to each other over the swish, swish, swish of their wing beats. They play games in the air; flipping over and diving on and with one another, playing at their daily living like I keep
saying I will.

When I get enough time/money/freedom/space...etc., etc.

All of this passes through my mind along with the Carly Simon version of "My Romance" in my ear phones that wards off the roar of the truck.

"My romance doesn't need a thing but you."

She trails out the ".......youuuuu." and I think of my wife Elizabeth and the life that we live and wonder at the magic of it all.

Maybe we're having as much fun as the ravens after all.

Coyote On Coyote - More about Coyote by Dick Prosapio

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