Untangled

Dylan’s harmonica soars and ebbs through the speakers as we head, windows down, deeper into the desert. The air is perfect, as is the evening light; the mesas rise, southward down the two lane road as  the first stars fade in, silver pinpoints against the bluing sky:

      “Later on, as the crowd thinned out, I’s just about to do the same --
        she was standing there, in back of my chair sayin’ “Jimmy, don’t I know your name?”

Even though I’ve been down these roads a dozen times, each time I’m here I know I’ve never been down these roads before; water replaces other water as the rivers run to the sea, but what looks the same never really is. You’re one place, then another, then another, never really ever to return, not completely.

Roger Miller comes on, singing Kristofferson:

      “From the coal mines of Kentucky to the California sun, Bobby shared the secrets of my 
       soul,  standin’ right beside me, Lord, through everything I done, every night she kept 
        me from the cold.

      Then somewhere near Salinas, Lord, I let her slip away, looking for the home I hope 
      she’ll find…”

The further south we drive, the more palpable becomes a sense of a storm rising – you can start to taste the electricity pent up in the humid air trying to slip in under the heat -- the Grateful Dead sing about silver linings, then Etheridge takes over on the thin AM band from the college station off to the west in Page:

      “Fly, fly…I guess this is goodbye -- Oh you packed up your heart, and you left no 
        souvenirs…”

So much of our music, our poetry, our stories are about travel and distances, about finding and losing love, about how just by being in, living in a moment we change it forever; it’s nearly dark now, a long day winding down. 

We’ll stay in Kayenta tonight, head on to Antelope Canyon at first light to beat the crowds. The warm resonance of the engine calls up a drowsiness and an awareness of the distance we’ve traveled; Dylan echoes with the perfect reprise as we fly on wordlessly across the last twenty miles before we find our beds:

     “But me, I’m still on the road, headin’ for another joint -- we always did feel the same, 
      we just saw it from a different point…of view...”