Some kids think going to visit the relatives is boring. Thankfully that was not usually my experience.

There are haiku here and there in this piece because it's an effort to write a haibun--a work that combines prose and haiku verse.

Journeys to a Land of Enchantment

Mom still had family in her home town of Carlsbad when I was growing up. There was a beloved aunt and uncle and assorted cousins. And there was “Granny Polly.” My brother and I loved going to see her as much as we did our paternal grandmother in Arkansas. Granny Polly loved us the same way. Those who didn’t know better would never have imagined that she was actually a step-grandmother—Mom had lost both of her biological parents well before I was born.

Between our home in Arkansas, and Granny Polly and the rest of our kin in Carlsbad, lay an enormous obstacle called “Texas.” Getting across Texas made visits to Carlsbad a major undertaking. We did it only about once every three years.

Generally we would leave in the early evening, after Dad had gotten off work, and drive all through the night. Early in the morning my brother and I would wake up in a profoundly different landscape from the one we had left. It was a place of wide-open grasslands and scrub, with barren hills in the distance and seldom a tree to be seen. And sky—vast expanses of blue sky, and clouds. In most parts of Arkansas we saw only such sky as we could glimpse between the tree tops. It’s no wonder the lands out west are sometimes called “big sky country.”

In a lean landscape
Sometimes the wide turquoise sky
Has more to tell us

We’d watch the landscape rolling past, with very occasional settlements and minimalist roadside rest areas. Now and then a daredevil jackrabbit would dash across the road. And then, while it was still early morning, we would cross a rise and the town of Carlsbad would seem to spring from the otherwise deserted country.

It was all quite an adventure for kids who might go months at a time without ever leaving their home county. And the things we saw once we were in New Mexico! Their official state nickname is “The Land of Enchantment.” To my brother and me there was a lot of truth to that.

What follows is an effort to recall something about each of those youthful trips to New Mexico. A lot of things—including, as will soon become clear, exact dates—have slipped away. Here are some of the things that remain.


First Journey--Christmas in Carlsbad

Our first New Mexico trip took place in the early 1970s, when I was about five. It was the only time we did not go in the summer. We were supposed to spend that Christmas in a cabin set amid the natural beauty of the Sacramento Mountains. Unfortunately my little brother came down sick. We stayed in Carlsbad instead. I recall little else about the trip.

A feverish child
Lies resting in a strange house
Seeing no white peaks

For some reason my most vivid memories of the Christmas holiday vacation are of the actual road trip. We had a blue Ford LTD, one of those gigantic sedans that Detroit turned out in the days when oil cost little more than water. The thing was as big as a good-sized SUV of today, with room in each seat for three full-sized adults. I remember my brother and I having enough room for both of us to lie down to sleep in back.

On the return trip we left Carlsbad well before breakfast. To save time on the road, Mom fed us breakfast while we were underway. She was able to slip between the edge of the front seat and the side of the car to make her way back to where we were. The car was just that big. It was quite an experience to drive as well, as I learned a decade or so later. But that’s another story.

Second Journey--Year of Milestones

Nobody who was a kid in the Bicentennial Year, and had the slightest interest in history, can forget some of the celebrations that took place that year—the Freedom Train, the Parade of Tall Ships, the “Bicentennial Moments” on TV, the tapping of the Liberty Bell, the red-white-and-blue-painted fire hydrants on every corner. On a more personal note, 1976 was the year when I, at the age of eight, decided to follow Jesus and was baptized to join the church. And it was the year of perhaps our most exciting New Mexico visit.

Dad had supplemented the LTD in the family stable with a used Pontiac station wagon. The back seat folded down to extend the cargo area. My brother and I would ride back there, where we could spend the night part of the journey asleep. With today’s seatbelt laws that would be illegal, and most parents would probably be shocked at the very idea. In the 1970s few people would have seen anything wrong with it. Dad attached a trailer to carry his two Honda motorcycles with us.

We kids stayed awake long enough to pass through the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. This was by far the biggest city we’d ever seen. It had a true skyline of lighted skyscrapers, like we saw now and then on TV. There were miles and miles of buildings, and lights, and cars running everywhere. At one point we passed a drive-in movie theater and caught a very brief glimpse of the huge screen.

I’ve never been able to see how Dad managed to put in a day’s work and then drive all night long across Texas. All he needed was a thermos of coffee, Mom to keep him company, and perhaps a stop somewhere for a short nap. Our nighttime journeys always went without incident. We did come close on one trip—whether this one or not, I don’t know. On that occasion Dad suddenly found himself on the far side of the small West Texas city of Big Spring, with no memory of passing through it….

In Carlsbad Dad rode his motorcycles around town and up and down the city’s network of irrigation canals. On some of these rides he took me or my brother. One of the latter rides lasted longer than expected when the bike had a flat tire.

We must not have spent too much time motorcycling around town. There was a lot more to pack into that week. For one thing, of course, we drove to White’s City and toured the Carlsbad Caverns. We saw what seemed like acres of “living” stalagmites and stalactites, glistening like miniature snowy mountains; had a boxed lunch in the underground cafeteria; and watched the evening bat flight. I wish that my memories, especially visual memories, of it all were more vivid. But it was forty years ago, and my as-yet-undiagnosed eye problems caused me to see the world in something of a blur. Small wonder my visual memories from childhood always seem so hazy!

So dimly recalled
Gleaming vistas underground
Swarms of flying mice

On another day we drove for hours across the desert to El Paso. There we crossed the border to Ciudad Juarez. It was the first of only two times to date that I have been outside the United States. Apart from the long lines of cars at the border crossing, I recall wandering through a large market. There were stalls everywhere, selling curios, clothes, and jewelry unlike anything I’d ever seen, and more people than I was used to encountering in one place. Mom bought a big, painted pot that still stands in her and Dad’s living room.

Back in Carlsbad we went to Presidents’ Park on the banks of the Pecos River. There we got to ride on an authentic narrow-gage train and a small paddle-wheel excursion boat. Both were powered by real steam engines. There was something fascinating—and perhaps a little scary—about all the heat and noise and hissing steam. While we were on the boat, Dad took me as close to the engine as we could get and explained its operation. He has always taken a real pleasure in figuring out and explaining the workings of any sort of engine or machinery. This was my earliest memory of him doing that.

The real highlight of our visit was finally getting a chance to stay at that cabin in the Sacramento Mountains. These outliers of the Rockies were much higher than the modest-sized mountains of Arkansas. The timber (in those sections that had actual trees) was taller too, though not as dense. Here and there we saw little creeks, known locally as “rivers.” While looking for the Sacramento River on a motorcycle excursion, Dad passed it several times without realizing that that little stream was it.

I have no memory at all of what the cabin looked like. We were there for three nights. On one of those nights Dad loaded me and some gear onto his Honda CB 450 and took me motorcycle camping. We evidently rode quite a way off the beaten path. I recall there being almost no passing traffic on the road that we camped near. Beside our campsite was a ravine with a fallen tree across it. I thought about trying to see if I could use the tree to cross the ravine. Then I decided that I’d better not.

The next evening it was my brother’s turn to go motorcycle camping. The CB 450 developed engine trouble. Coming on top of the flat tire back in Carlsbad, it made me suspect that my brother had jinxed Dad’s bikes. Dad loaded everything onto the SL 125 instead. It must have made quite a sight, as that little dirt bike was never meant to carry much of a load. I wish somebody had thought to get a photo of the loaded bike.

On the trip back the next morning my suspicions about the jinx were confirmed when the SL 125’s tiny engine took out on them. Dad managed to get it restarted just long enough to reach the top of a long downhill section. He then coasted with the overloaded bike for miles, until they reached a house with a telephone. I’ve never heard of anybody else doing that on a motorcycle.

All in all our 1976 New Mexico excursion was quite the family vacation. If only my childish memories weren’t so fragmented, scattered, and dim I could probably have written a book about it. Feeble though they are, those memories are much treasured.

In closing, I might mention something that I spotted one evening while we were in Carlsbad, waiting outside a Mexican restaurant for our table to be ready. Beside the restaurant sat a movie theater. On its wall was a teaser poster for a movie promised for next summer. It was something I’d never before heard of called “Star Wars.”

Third Journey--The Favorite Place

By the time we next went to New Mexico, in the late 1970s, the station wagon was no longer in service. A Chevrolet Caprice Classic had displaced the old Ford LTD as our new primary family car. It did not have as much room as either of the first two vehicles. It also proved less mechanically reliable. On the first leg of the drive, while we were still in eastern Texas, the Chevy’s radiator took out on us.

As the light of evening faded, Dad crossed a fence and fetched water from a nearby stock pond. This got us into the nearby town of Greenville. There we had to lodge for the night at a motel. We were naturally rather disappointed by this mishap. Dad made it to the nearest radiator shop early the next morning. The mechanic there appreciated our plight and got right to work. We were soon back on the road.

The evening we were there, Dad went outside the motel to smoke. He met another traveler who badly needed somebody to talk to. I don’t know any details of what they discussed. But I’ve often wondered since whether the chain of events that caused us to spend the night there was really an accident. If Dad’s being there when he was helped somebody who truly needed it, then our family’s temporary inconvenience was not a great price to pay.
In Carlsbad we found that Presidents’ Park still had its narrow-gage train and its river boat. Both had replaced their steam engines with prosaic gasoline power plants. Dad observed that the gasoline engines were much simpler, less labor-intensive, and more economical to operate. Unfortunately they also made the vehicles they powered seem that much less fascinating.

That year we paid our first family visit to the Sitting Bull Falls Recreation Area in the Lincoln National Forest. Much of the sprawling “forest” is actually desert. A rare perennial stream there flows into a canyon to create a water fall. In his travel classic Oku no Hosomichi the 17th-century Japanese poet Basho speaks of visiting Urami Falls—“Back-View Falls,” so-called because a cave in back made it possible to see the falls from behind. Sitting Bull falls also has such a cave. We got to climb up to the cave and view the falls from it.

Mom loved going there when she was a girl. She had read a story in which singing cowboy Roy Rogers finds a hidden valley behind a waterfall. She liked to think of Sitting Bull Falls as that place. If the canyon isn’t exactly hidden, it is certainly fascinating. The stream in the canyon creates a micro-climate oasis where the region’s desert plants grow in unusual profusion. The little juniper bushes there can get enough moisture to grow into proper trees. From that time on Sitting Bull Falls became my favorite place to visit in New Mexico.

Like Basho once saw
Curtain of hissing water
The canyon’s life-source

In Texas on the way to New Mexico and back we crossed vast oil fields that were then at the height of their production. I recall miles of country filled as far as the eye could see with scores of pump-jacks, all nodding like donkeys to force up the black gold. My efforts to count them soon foundered. At one little town we even saw a working oil well right in the middle of town.

Like any child of the eco-conscious 1970s I knew that oil wells weren’t environmentally friendly. They stank, too! But ugly and dirty as they were, they still held the attraction of the exotic. I learned later that Arkansas had modest oil fields, and a scattering of isolated wells, of its own. In fact, I now live about an hour’s bicycle ride from a still-working well. Once in a while I go out to see the nodding pump-jack, as a reminder of the Texas fields that so impressed me as a child.

Nodding metal head
Surrounded by young pine woods
Takes me far away

Fourth Journey--Our Economy Motor Home

In the early 1980s Dad replaced his ancient pickup truck with a slightly used Ford model. Modest in size compared to many of today’s behemoth pickups, it was still big and powerful enough to haul Dad’s scaffolding, masonry saw, mortar mixer, and other tools of the bricklayer’s trade. For our next trip to New Mexico he cleaned out the truck and built a pair of low bed frames in the truck bed. Luggage, tools, and the spare tire went under these. Slabs of foam for mattresses went on top. A simple truck-bed camper shell enclosed it all.

My brother and I rode back there with my miniature poodle, Jacques (We kept poodles for indoor pets, due to my allergies. My brother’s outdoor cats were left to fend for themselves. We arranged to have food set out for them while we were gone). Jacques spent much of the ride running back and forth to look out the camper shell’s windows. I suppose he managed to sleep that night when we did.

Dad borrowed a pair of antique telephones from a church member and drilled small holes to run wires between the bed and the cab. We could call Mom and Dad in the cab by turning a crank to ring the bell. They signaled us by flashing the cab’s dome lights. The system worked quite well. We would sometimes talk back and forth about what we were seeing along the way. We startled Jacques once by having Mom speak to him over the phone. The moment he heard her voice, he turned his head to look at her through the cab’s back window.

On the way through Dallas-Fort Worth we saw mile upon mile of apartments and condominiums that had sprouted since our previous drive through. We wondered how in the world all of this housing could find residents. I learned later that much of it did not—the oil boom of the 1970s had led to massive over-building of housing in the area. Some of it was reportedly torn down without ever actually having been lived in.

We took a day trip from Carlsbad to the quaint little tourist town of Cloudcroft in the Sacramento Mountains. There we saw a woman weaving on a hand loom and visited a few tourist traps. Dad commemorated the visit to Cloudcroft with the only bumper sticker I ever saw him get. It stayed on the bumper of that pickup for all the many years Dad owned it. Mom returned with samples of yucca and prickly pear. She successfully transplanted these to our yard back home. In some years they even managed to bloom.

Near Cloudcroft we took a brief horseback ride at a dude ranch. Mom was thrilled to have a chance to ride a horse. I, not much of a horse lover, and with no previous experience with them, could not help feeling nervous about the whole idea. My horse, now stopping to crop grass, now working up into a trot, kept me guessing as to what would happen next. I felt relieved when the ride was over.

Lovely mountain horse
You have a mind of your own
Which kind of scares me

By great good fortune our visit to Carlsbad coincided with the arrival of a troupe of Lippizaner horses. We got to see the beautiful Austrian horses perform at the rodeo arena one evening. Mom was over the moon at being able to watch them perform their trademark “airs above the ground.”

We paid Sitting Bull Falls another visit on a day that turned out unseasonably cool and drizzly. My brother and I had not anticipated that we would need to bring jackets. Granny Polly loaned us a pair of hers. They were both in a style usually associated with ladies of a certain age. I’m not sure which of the two of us was the more embarrassed at having to wear them.

Two memorable incidents occurred during our Sitting Bull Falls visit that year. First, an unusually bold squirrel stole part of Mom’s uncle’s lunch. Second, while reading the many names carved all over the woodwork on a rustic park picnic shelter, I spotted Mom’s maiden name. It had to have been she who carved it—she has a fairly uncommon name. Before seeing that carved name, I had always had trouble believing Mom when she talked about having once been something of a tomboy. Now that seemed much more credible.

Some of that tomboyishness must have rubbed off on Mom’s much younger cousin in Carlsbad. At the time she was still in college. She mentioned while we were visiting that she was into martial arts, and had practiced with the nunchucks. I had learned of the existence of nunchucks through reading comic books. I felt a bit in awe at the idea of somebody I knew actually knowing how to use them. She never used them against anybody, of course. As far as I know.

Fifth Journey--To the Living Desert

For our next New Mexico vacation in the mid-1980s, Dad restored the Ford pickup to its camper configuration. He replaced the jury-rigged onboard telephone system with a pair of cheap store-bought intercoms. I was now old enough to drive the pickup. At our first rest stop in eastern Texas, Dad put me behind the wheel and retired to the back to take a nap. He planned to switch back before we reached Dallas.

Dad had impressed upon me that I needed to accelerate to highway speed as rapidly as possible before merging onto the interstate from the on-ramp. I took him at his word. While running through the gears I punched the gas hard enough to make the truck give a lurch. The lurch caught Dad unprepared and nearly made him fall over before he had had a chance to lie down.

We went to Sitting Bull Falls once again. This time the weather was fine. My brother and I climbed above the falls and tried to see how far we could go upstream. At one point we came across a swimming hole where a man and his two young sons were skinny-dipping. Once again I don’t know whether I or my brother was the most embarrassed.

By this time Granny Polly had downsized her living arrangements. We stayed with Mom’s aunt and uncle instead. One evening we sat out on their back porch and watched a thunder storm in the distance. Big sky country may not get storms as often as the regions further east, but one can get a much better look at them. It was a magnificent spectacle.

We also visited a zoo called the Living Desert. Here we saw all sorts of regional wildlife, from bison, to coatis, to Gila monsters. We also got a nice guidebook to western wildlife. The book was so comprehensive that it rather amusingly included an article on Bigfoot.

No need to worry
Even the desert creatures
The Father still feeds


Sixth Journey--Sandy Vistas

The summer before I started college Dad was unable to get away from his work long enough to go to New Mexico with us. Mom, my brother, and I went there in a red two-door Plymouth Volare that Dad had scared up from somewhere. It was such a garish red that Mom once called it “the Red Bomb.”

I found while riding in back that I just enough room to curl up and lie down. While trying to take a nap on our way across western Texas, I happened to look up out of the window and saw—nothing. There were no telephone poles or treetops. All I could see was blue sky and clouds. It made me feel almost as if I was riding in an airplane.

We stayed with Mom’s elderly aunt and uncle. On the now-traditional trip to Sitting Bull Falls I managed to reach the farthest point upstream that I ever reached. It was to be my last visit there to date.

We also took a long day trip to White Sands. There we walked barefoot through the dazzlingly white, strangely cool gypsum dunes. My brother scratched out an I-love-you note to his current girlfriend on the side of one dune. No sooner had he done this when a busload of school children from south of the border came by. They asked their teacher what the message said. “Yo te amo Patty,” he translated. They all had a good laugh. My brother was rather proud that it attracted some notice.

On the white dune-side
A youth’s hasty love letter
Soon drifting away

Seventh Journey--New Sights, Old Familiar Faces

We made no more trips to New Mexico during my time in college. After that I went to graduate school in Nashville, Tennessee, a fair day’s travel farther east. From that time on I usually had all I could do to get home to visit Mom and Dad and other Arkansas family.

There was one exception. A year or two into my grad experience I was able to get home for a bit longer than usual in the summer. Mom and I spent part of that time going to New Mexico. We decided for once to take a more northerly route, through Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle. Oklahoma had the bumpiest section of interstate highway we had ever ridden.

In Amarillo we stopped for supper at the Big Texan, best known for its 72-ounce steak. We contented ourselves with much smaller portions. Dining at the Big Texan is unquestionably a unique experience. It’s the only restaurant I’ve ever visited where the parking attendant rode horseback.

We spent the night in Tucumcari, New Mexico. Tucumcari’s main claim to fame is its dozens of motels. We chose one called El Palacio. Mom and I both agreed that the place was very poorly named.

The next day, in Santa Fe, we saw a real palace—the Palace of the Governors. This sprawling, four-century-old adobe structure now houses a truly fascinating museum of the region’s history. We also visited the Loretto Chapel and saw its famous spiral staircase, said to have been built by none other than Saint Joseph. We strolled along the river promenades, and visited street markets. I bought a road runner carved by a Seri craftsman in Mexico. It now sits in my living room.

We had far too little time to spend in Santa Fe. From here we drove down to Carlsbad. Most of the people we had come to see were very much getting on in years. Granny Polly now lived in a nursing home. Her mind was as clear as ever, and she got around better than most of her fellow residents. She loved windmills like the ones that she had known growing up in Texas, and had gotten permission to put a miniature one outside the window of her room. She made it the centerpiece of a kind of little southwestern garden area.

Squeaking steel windmill
Fond sight of youthful journeys
Seen near journey’s end

Though they all lived for years longer, this was to be the final time I ever saw Granny Polly and Mom’s beloved aunt and uncle. I sometimes regret that I had so few chances to go visit them (And that they were only able to come east to see us a few times). At this point I can only wait until the great reunion that still lies ahead. In the meantime, I’m glad we got to visit even as often as we did. Not all family members separated by such a long distance have that much opportunity.


Eighth Journey--Desert Solitaire

Thankfully, Mom had more chances to visit them in those later years. Now all of her close family are gone. She still has a number of relatives out west, but I have never had the chance to get to know any of them. I feel that there’s really nobody left in New Mexico for me to visit.

But the land still holds a fascination. In the spring of 2014 I drove to Monument Valley in the Navaho Nation in Utah. It’s every bit as awe-inspiring a place as I’d imagined it would be. From there I went to Mesa Verde in Colorado and spent a day and a half visiting the cliff dwellings there. It too was everything I’d dreamed.

From Mesa Verde I drove down through northern New Mexico, glimpsing a great deal from the road, but having little time to truly see anything. In Santa Fe I spent two nights, and put in a very strenuous day of hiking around the old city. It’s a unique place of adobe dwellings and courtyard gardens, river promenades and museums, where the visitor can sit for a time in the cathedral, view art at the State Capital, or browse through baskets of fossils and semi-precious stones in an outdoor market. At one point I found myself alone on a stretch of river walk with an urban-dwelling desert raven for company.

Where ancestors flew
Now so built-up and crowded
The raven still feeds

On this latest trip, as on all the others, I remained a vacationer, trying to cover all the required distance and see the sights in the limited time available. To be a true traveler, truly getting to know the places and people visited, takes time I’ve never had, or expect to have in a busy life. But for those of us who never really have the chance to travel in the truest sense, an occasional vacation is not to be despised. Even vacationers, if they go with their eyes open, can in a short time take something useful away from the places they visit.

The short desert rain
Passes, leaving much behind
Like a well-lived life