Hi Everybody!
How’s it going?
For the first time since I began the blog, I’m not sure exactly whom I’m addressing.
Since my birthday, (49 on March 4,) I haven’t looked at the blog stats.
I haven’t looked once, after obsessively checking for the first month of Sunshine and Olly’s existence.
Why would I do such a thing?
Because I realized the beginning stage was proof of concept.
If I write regularly, and share it for free on a blog, will people turn up to read?
We’ve established the answer is yes.
An audience cohered, and I’m hoping over time we can figure out how to engage as a community more. There’s the comment section, obviously, and some of you chime in from time to time on FB, Twitter or IG.
That’s cool.
But I stopped checking where you’re coming from, and which articles you like best, because from the jump, I wanted this blog to be about what feels right.
(It’s art, not science.)
Targeting articles to a demographic, based upon market research, is about as anti-art as it gets.
Eventually, I’ll reengage with the analytics. But this felt like a precarious time, where creativity and business can become adversaries.
Since there is no business in a free blog, (beyond branding,) I figured we’d keep it pure for a while longer.
Offering advice, or sharing how I’m learning through life experience, has been a fun evolution here.
As I did something new and different on Saturday, to deal with the traumatic energy I acknowledged last week, let’s use it to spread some positive vibes.
Shall we?
In my lifetime, I’ve gotten stuck in ruts.
We all have.
It’s what actions we take to break unhealthy patterns that interest me.
If what you were doing, over and over, isn’t working, you have to shake up your process.
In my case, Taos is really far from everything. Seriously, the nearest big town, from my home, is over an hour away.
(Española.)
Santa Fe is an hour and 45 minutes by car, and ABQ is 2.5 hours away. (Without traffic.)
Not to mention, with a bunch of coked-up crazy drivers out there, going 95 mph on I-25, it’s dangerous as fuck on the roads in 2023.
(Not exactly enticing, when you’re stressed out, and need to get in the car and go.)
To the SouthEast, Las Vegas is also an hour and 45 minutes, except you have to go up and over the Rockies, in a ridiculous pass, so that is not the best way to exit either.
To the West is nothing.
Farmington is 3.5 hours away, (if you’re lucky,) and then it’s probably another 8 to Las Vegas.
(The American West is much bigger than you think, if you’ve never been.)
All told, with that much distance between us and anywhere else, you don’t leave town often.
Which leads to deep ruts.
On Saturday, needing desperately to shake things up, I realized I hadn’t been West of Tres Piedras in more than a decade.
I couldn’t remember anything, other than taking Theo to a fishing contest at Hopewell Lake, with his grandfather, when he was 4 or 5.
(The kid is now 15, and 5’11”.)
So that’s a decade.
Highway 64 goes up and over the Rockies, in the Brazos mountains, and is among the prettiest out there.
Going from nowhere to nowhere, it’s also empty.
I’ve got a really good car at the moment, (for the first time in ages,) so even though I saw clouds over the mountains, and had read that storms were approaching, I said,
“Fuck it! Let’s roll!”
After a “fake” winter of dry, dead, brown grass, slowly, I drove into “actual” winter.
First, it was warm-ish, and then ten minutes later, the rain started.
Up, and up I drove.
The temperature dropped.
I noticed a pickup truck, pulled over by the side of the road.
Up and up I drove.
Winter was here!
Huge pastures covered with snow, and endless trees to the horizon.
It was so fucking beautiful.
Winter, and only for me. No one else around.
Then, the temperature dropped again, down to 32 F.
The rain turned to snow, and the snow began sticking to the road. But still, up I drove. My car has AWD, and is high tech, so I wasn’t worried.
Until I felt the snow starting to hit the undercarriage. It was accruing on the road quickly, and I didn’t have much traction.
I started to get a bit scared.
No one knew where I was.
The cell service was spotty at best.
I looked for a place to turn around, but there was none. Just rapidly piling snow on the side of the highway, with no way to break into it.
Up, and up I drove, but now I had some anxiety in my stomach.
It had officially become an adventure.
Finally, lacking options, I said a quick prayer-thought, and slowed the car.
I had to do a full K-turn on a snowy mountain road, just hoping no truck would slide into me from above as I executed.
Or that I’d get stuck horizontally, and then T-boned by the next car that came down the mountain.
It was a dodgy moment, but nothing bad happened.
The car performed, I performed, and headed down the mountain, knowing I’d drive out of the storm soon enough.
And I did.
That’s when I remembered a hiking trail Jessie and I used once. Maybe 16 years ago? I recall the day we did it, but not the year.
It was forever ago.
I pulled the car over in that spot, and walked through hip-deep snow for a few minutes.
Until I found the perfect clear spot, under a Ponderosa Pine tree. (The wind had made the snow distribution uneven.)
It was so quiet.
I was so alone.
Just me, the trees, and the snow.
I noticed one tree, as I leaned on it, had a wet side, and a dry side.
The same tree.
But a completely different experience.
Just like me.
An hour before, I’d been stressed out of my mind, stuck in our little valley, obsessing about my (very real) problems.
But if you think I felt anything other than majestic, as I stood under that tree, looking out at the endless, empty American West, you haven’t had an adventure in too long.
Time to get out there and see something new!
(Or make something old new again.)
Either way, hope that’s helpful.
Sunshine and Olly 
Leave a comment