Along the way home

So I am tooling along Tramway Road this evening. And why was it, I have to wonder, that it took me so long to start using this path to and from work, rather than driving on the interstates? I used to get to work white-knuckled and rather peevish due to the casual threats against life and limb that we euphemistically call the daily commute. But now... Now that I have finally wised up and go the way that takes a little longer, now I get to work much calmer. And my going home is a joy.

Along my new route, in the morning I am greeted by the rising of a pair of peaks in the Manzanos which perfectly resemble perky breasts; each evening I see the setting of the great basalt nipple of Cabezon Peak. Along the way I see open mesa (all blessings upon Sandia Pueblo for preserving their open space), buffalo (again, thanks to the Sandia folk), the ever-changing painting of the Sandia Mountains, cacti, birds... Even along the built-up stretches of Tramway the pace is slower and the views superior to the freeways -- walkers, joggers, skaters, and cyclists throng the roadside paths, and there is the rolling panel of the mountains at one hand and a view across the city at the other. All in all, far preferable to the tight concreted death race of the freeway.

This evening the view can only be called spectacular. As I round the curve below the Tramway proper and head west, the full vista presents itself and I gasp and verbally applaud and as soon as I safely can pull over beside the road to give the spectacle the consideration it deserves.

I kick back across the hood of the car, the windshield a comfortable angle behind my back, and take it all in.

There is a great gray sponge of stormcloud central in the sky, filtering the sunset through its core. Beams of yellow-gold light -- seven, no now eight, no, ten -- radiate out, spokes around the hub, a great wheel slowly rolling across the landscape, each spoke spotlighting a patch of land. Beyond, Mt. Taylor is almost obscured by a shifting veil of virga rain, those impossible (to Easterners, at least) feathers of rainfall that evaporate before reaching the ground. The veils are one moment gray, then the next cream, then the next pink -- who says we don't get the aurora borealis this far south?

I lounge upon the car, a warm breeze across me. Cars whoosh past upon the road. I cannot see their drivers, the windshields are blank reflections, so they are mere machines. Only the bicyclist who speeds by is real, and the hawk who soars over -- real, because we are feeling the same wind. Inside the machine-boxes there is only machine wind.

With just a small bit of myself -- the rest is within the clouds, and the sunspokes, and the wind -- I wonder of the passing cars and their empty occupants:

What moment are you speeding toward, that is so much better than this one?

My mind and my gaze turn to Mt. Taylor, gone now, the horizon featureless. The rain has dissolved it. I have faith that it shall reform as it was, or even grander -- I plan to visit there again soon, to put foot to the outlines that I see in the distance each day. The very tip of Cabezon is still visible, nipple blushing in sunset fire, and there too I plan to be soon -- all my life in New Mexico, and I have never scrambled to the top of that volcanic plug. I want to see the view from up there. I want to be able, as I watch it set each evening, to know what each end of that view looks like. All my thoughts are of horizons, it seems.

A few fat warm spatters of rain fall upon me, in no way objectionable. But now the hub of the wheel is closed and the spokes of light are withdrawn and I have chores waiting and I reluctantly get back into my machine box and get back on the road.

But I turn off the machine-wind inside and roll down the windows as I go. And my hand porpoises in the slipstream of air past the window. And I call hello to the buffalo when I pass.