Five years ago, at this very moment, I was driving into Chaco Canyon. I'd been planning the trip for awhile. I stayed with a friend in Taos, and we had planned to leave for Chaco well before sunrise, start our hike at 7 a.m., and then head out at around Noon for Ojo Caliente to soak in the mineral pools and stay overnight.
The afternoon before we were set to go, my friend began to feel unwell and suggested I rent a car and go on my own. The thought was daunting. We had planned about a 13-mile backcountry hike on the Supernova Pictograph Trail. You need a backcountry permit to go, registering for it at the park office. I was interested in seeing the pictograph thought to represent the 1054 Supernova that created the Crab Nebula. The trail takes you past numerous petroglyphs as well. These stories in stone are a passion of mine and I've been visiting ancient sites for years to experience them.
I decided to go on my own. My friend would head straight to Ojo Caliente and hope the mineral pools would give her some ease. I'd meet her there later.
My alarm went off at 4 a.m. I woke with a migraine and thought about rolling over and going back to sleep. The thing was, I'd come to New Mexico for this experience. I'd set myself up to be ready to go in the morning, had packed the car with what I could the night before. Really just needed to get dressed and pull together food and water and go. And that's what I did.
One of the challenges for me on the trip was not knowing the area, and the darkness. It was hard to make out landmarks and to see where I was going. Roads in rural New Mexico can be confusing and more than once I strayed onto the wrong road. As I look back, I sometimes think I wandered into a faerie tale.
There were some amazing highlights. Abiquiu. The rising sun on the rocks. The light. I can see why Georgia O'Keefe loved to paint it. Rounding narrow roads and seeing the lake stretching out before me, so unexpected in this landscape.
I made some notes in my journal:
This is a land of contradictions. I am looking over wide and vast Mesa lands, high desert, and in the middle of it a lake, clear and pale blue.
and
Each curve I come around offers a vista more beautiful and majestic than the last. The poet in me wants to stop and write. The adventurer in me wants to push on.
I crossed the Continental Divide. It was magical. I felt the energy shift much the same way I did in Joshua Tree when I crossed from the Colorado Desert into the Mojave.
Moving through Apache lands was a deep honor. The rock there also was different from what I had encountered in other places along the way. The trip to Chaco should not have been as long as it was, but with the migraine and missteps I was delayed by hours and drove into Chaco closer to midday than to the early morning. The path there was breathtaking as different road surfaces brought me closer. Highway, roughly-paved road surface, small gravel, medium gravel, large gravel, rain-pocked dirt roads with deep divots and an arroyo that, had it been at all wet, would have ended my trip just before I arrived at my destination. Indian paintbrush lined the road once I left the highway. I nearly missed the road. A small sign and unassuming entrance marked the turnoff. The canyon itself and its notable landmarks, the butte and the mesa, were invisible until they suddenly appeared.
Have I said it was magical too many times?
I had the thought more than once that the compact car I rented might not survive the roads once I left the highway. There was no cell service between the highway and the canyon. It was true wilderness. And so beautiful.
Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What's Showing Up is a daily writing practice. Turns out that a lot of this writing explores the landscape of grief. My mother died shortly before I began this writing, and this is what I'm thinking about most of the time these days.
Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.
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