the where of it

destination tucson

• Posted by Summer Wood on March 18th, 2010 filed in routes
• 1 Comment »

Ah, vacation. Time off, a change of scenery, and no laptops tethering us to the cyberworld.

Just the world itself, out the front windshield of the mini Cooper.

(photo by Kathy Namba)

We headed for the western edge of the Gila Wilderness (first spot so designated in the country – thanks to Aldo Leopold and his forward vision) and spent the night in Glenwood. The next morning we hiked the Catwalk beside the river, made plans to return for hot springs and cliff dwellings and more, and headed for Tucson.

The little toy car forded the flooded road sections, and the two of us reveled in the sheer joy of being on a road trip.  We crossed country we’d never seen before and let the landscape steal our attention from thoughts of work and everyday life.

Even if you love your life, there’s something indispensable about leaving it behind for a while, giving your mind a rest from the one-thing-after-another aspect of it all. With a road trip the travel itself, the movement from one place to the next and the next, substitutes for plot. It’s enough just to look.

Part of what I watched for (besides cactus, which I’ve long been crazy about, and rock formations, a new obsession) – was the frequency of roadside memorials to friends and family lost at treacherous turns in the road. In New Mexico we call them descansos, the homemade markers that celebrate a life while they mourn its loss. They stand as a reminder that any stretch of highway offers a good opportunity to rocket out of this life.

But they do more than just put a shine on a sense of mortality; in a weird but charming way, they personalize the relationship between humans and the land. Render it more specific. Here, at this place, somebody left her body behind.

A loved body, in a lot of cases.

I couldn’t help but remember the story my uncle Rolland told of his great-great Uncle Stephen and Aunt Elvira, who ventured west in a wagon train, had a baby en route, and turned back – returned to Ohio – when a snakebite proved fatal for their infant son.

And it made me wonder. When you die, do you miss yourself?

No, stay with me. Here’s what I was thinking. You know how deeply we miss the ones we love, once they go? Even places, once we’ve been separated from them? I wonder if there’s maybe a moment in the midst of the act – the experience – of dying, when some part of you can look (sure, metaphorically) on the body, the whole self, being left behind, and just, well, plain, miss yourself. Not all that went with it; just that specific human body, written on by time and the weather.

Reminded me of that great Basho haiku, written on the occasion of the death of his young son (trans. Robert Hass):

The world of dew

is a world of dew, and yet –

and yet.

Then we got to Tucson and ate a lot of great food and slept in a great place and got back in the car and drove north to Gold Canyon and saw wonderful friends and drank some astonishing tequila and slept again and then we got back in the car and came home, to work and — yes — beloved everyday life.