Texas to California. Arizona and Utah. New Mexico. 1982-1984 ...
There's so many pictures, from R.I. to L.A., and back to Santa Fe in 1982, and twice more from R.I. to N.M. in '82 and '84. It was certainly a productive, and I can only attest to the lure of sky and rock and pueblo and pinon, the inspiration and the enchantment. And the land between here and there. The traveling over it, through it, stopping for pictures and whatever else made us stop. It was a journey.
And then, through the landscape from R.I. to N.M. and the Four Corners, the West, again and again over the next twenty years, in 1985, 86, 87, 90, 94, 2000, and 03. I-40, I-70, 80, 90, 20 and 10. 48 states worth.
Yeah ... driving cross-country, through the Wild West: canyons and cottonwoods, mesas and moonscapes, Uncle Bill and Ranny, reading Castaneda, The Magic Journey, down to the desert, across the Great Divide, living in the high desert of Santa Fe, where something fine was in the air, and the desert was a fine place to be, at and around the time when things were different. Driving to Espanola, watching thunderstorms, not one but three, roll across the valley from over the Jemez Mountains toward the Sangre de Cristos, listening to Owe'd To Alex and the Yodeling Brakeman, Kweskin's America, Murmur and October, Light & Dark in Spanish New Mexico, and Songs of the Desert Cowboys, and our tv was a tiny black & white one with rabbit ears, and we ate tamales in Chimayo, pinon nuts in Bandelier, corn nuts in Cerrillos, and we hiked along the Frijoles, Big Red in my pocket, toward some end that wasn't yet in sight, and weekends were always on the road somewhere new, somethin' fine.
Yeah, once upon a time ...
Texas to California. Arizona and Utah. New Mexico. 1982-1984 ...
This is just a small selection of images made on such trips, but this was the first one, the one that set the table for all the others that followed. These few pictures on this page were all made over that early two-year span, when nothing paid off and everything was new.
