Keep An Eye Out For The Border Patrol, Checkin For Drugs And The So-Called Aliens

Water, they say, washes away your sins. Well, a special kind of water anyway. This is easy in the Land of the North, where lakes and streams flow easy and free (at least in the special "summer" months). And you Baptists? If you can find a creek or gully or gulch or whatever in backwater GA, then you've got yourself a holy land. And really, that's the human way. We're all wired into that, it's our makeup. The world, our bodies, hell our symbols and empires, born of the great agua.

So tell me somethin, son - when the only water you get is from the sky, and the Rio Grande ain't so damn grand in December, what then? Who is saved?

It's desert here, but it's desert everywhere, so the only difference is elevation. And what a difference it makes. From this height you'd think you'd be able to see something different, but it all just goes up or down, and never the same. See, that's where we came from, and soon will return. The flatness. The vision of a thousand miles. Not in New Mexico. Not on these peaks.

People live here, it's true, but the land swallows all. Great swaths of sand and scrub brush eat up the great majority, leaving one to wonder things about desert oceans and sand rivers. We pass over innumerable "dry washes". They're probably wet for 2 days of the year. This country's hard on people. And it shows.

When you get here, you can drive up and keep going, or you can, as they say, head down to the crevasse. Huge canyons hold as much spectacle as towering peaks, you just have to work harder on the backend. The sun is closer up top, but burns hotter on the floor of the gulch. Ebb and flow, back and forth, and all you can do is go forward.

That's why we're here. Why we strike out on another gallop, why we put the flame to the killer and see how hot it gets. Life is sustainable at sea level, sure. But it moves quicker on the slope. We've been there, and now we're here. And soon, we'll be there again. The birds sing songs of laughter, truly. Our earth-bound gravity can only yield so much.

It's not a renewal. It's not a rebirth. I'm not born in an image, and I have no one to find. But still, if you could excuse me, I'd like to take a bath in that salty mirth, and let it cleanse what it can.