Mar. 04, 2002 - 21:23 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Sage And Mesas

It was a nice sunny, warm day here in Denver and Heather and I ran errands which had been pending through the spell of cold weather here. We rode with the car windows partly open with out jackets or sweaters enjoying comfortable air.

A long time ago I ordered through the Tattered Cover a book "Patient Drug Facts," yadda, yadda "comparisons, etc." About 180 bucks worth, and to me it is worth every penny of it. It had come in and a card was sent me that they would hold it in reserve for four weeks. The four weeks was about over, my pension was in and the weather nice. So we went to my home away from home to pick it up. Heather wanted to look for a couple of books while there. We got coffee, sat at one of the tables in the Tattered Cover coffee corner, me with mocha and Heather with the coffee of her choice. I had spotted a book by Amy Tan I wanted to look at while Heather was upstairs looking for her books, as I started to get up to go to the shelf the name, "Tony Hillerman," burned itself into my feeble mind.

Now if someone ever asks me who I would like to be, it would be Tony Hillerman if I could have his body, brain and ability to spin a story. Most of his stories are in the Four Corners area of our country, with a good many of the characters Indians of that area. I was very fortunate, it is his memoirs, "Seldom Disappointed," that caught my eye and led me to take it off the shelf. As I sat there sipping mocha and leafing through the book and then back to chapter one, my mind slid off track, the pages not looked at and my mocha getting cold while my spirit flew down to the Four Corners my memory first went to a recent thing, a time when we were going through and went to that official marker. Heather took a picture of me, I was face up and had a limb and attachments in four different states. Only place in the USA it can be done. We were in the process of finishing up a trip in Hillerman country, which we had enjoyed to the utmost.

Then my mind went like one of those thin plastic grocery bags in a wind. Back, back to the time when as a child we went down into New Mexico. I remember the soothing, tasty smell of sage guarded by vigilant clumps of Spanish Bayonet, the land flat edging on to mesas. The mesas themselves seemed to have been carved by God. Each one different but obviously of the same family.

On the way was the occasional ranch house with outbuildings and some kind of corral a few skin and bones kind of animals could be noticed. Both sides of the road fenced with barbed wire, once in a great while a few scrubby cattle could be seen, maybe in another property a herd of horses, but the animals that seemed to me to be the healthiest were the herds of sheep we would see once in a while. A bit of action would be a jack rabbit loping, zig-zag away from the road and our car.

The mesas and the mountains far in the background pretty well held center stage, the other things just items noted momentarily. They fascinated me, something reached out to me from them. I had read about the Indians in the four corners area living on top of the mesas which were pretty well impregnable and safe. But it went deeper than that, a genetic memory of Masada maybe ? But early on I claimed that country, dry desert and its denizens - snakes and lizards, for the most part as mine own.

The sun on the sage put its aroma in the air, far vistas teased my eyes and imagination and the ever present mesas kept me company. The very best part of a day traveling in the well named, "Land Of Enchantment," was toward dusk on into the dark. Sage brush became mystical creatures to me, the colors around were changing, and shifting toward night. There seemed to me to be a sort of muted lavender or purple hue in the darkening sky and as night fell it would cool down, the breeze would bring the smell of the west to my nose. Out there when it got dark, it was dark, stars didn't serve as street lights and although the moon would light things up, it was still hard to see. Our headlights would find an animal once in a while, its eyes luminous from the light, glowing for a second or two and then - nothing. There might be a jackrabbit on or near the road fleeing from our car and momentarily in our headlights.

I would fall into a reverie and watch the moon riding alongside of us, it would look into a different window as Dad changed course. The moonlit clouds, those misty cushions made things even more unreal in a storybook sort of way. Somewhere along there I would ride the Night Horse into dream land, becoming semi-conscious when Dad would make a turn, but not enough to make me open my eyes and come away from dreams which nicely absorbed what was happening and blended it into my slumberous travels.

I was in Hillerman territory off and on many times, childhood into youth and thence into maturity. Yet when we go back into that beloved area my mind becomes one which takes a childish satifaction to being once again in the land of Sage And Mesas . . . . .

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