Mora to Moab -- Where We See Some Stuff

It was another long drive.  Skip and I shared driving time and between the scenery, the conversation and the music it went by fast.  We started out on the wrong road due to the faulty memory of the old man driving, but we got back on track and drove through some familiar stomping grounds.
 

We drove through a little town named Mora.  Marty put together a mission trip for our youth group at First Presbyterian in Waco to repaint a church there.  All the kids and sponsors stayed at the house in Pendaries and we drove over every day to paint.  I could not find that church as we drove through, faulty memory you know. 

We did find Sipapu on our way.  Sipapu is a small, family owned ski resort where we skied with the kids and friends.  It was great place to get better at skiing because there were no lines.  There wasn’t much variety in the slopes, but you could focus on the skiing and the green chili cheeseburger was great.
 

This is where Andrew Patrick had one of the greatest wipe outs I’ve ever seen.  He tried a long jump, at great speed,, and didn’t make it.  It was one of the only times I saw his older brother express concern over Andrew.  It was a hell of a crash and as some old hippie dude passed over on ski lift above the crash site he says, “Wow dude, big yard sale” as Andrews skies, poles and gloves were scattered across the slope.  BTW…. he survived to do other insane shit.
 

We went from sort of the mid-west part of New Mexico to the mid-east part of Utah.  Along the way we saw antelopes, mountain magpies, some elk, some deer, we crossed the Rio Grande at least three times and saw no walls or moats with gaters. 
 

We ran into two or three construction work areas that required waiting in line because they had only one lane open.  While there we watched as some real-life working cowboys drove about 30 black angus across the road.  
 

We saw the reds, tans, browns, yellows and greens of the mountains as the leaves are slowly changing.  The aspen leaves are turning green to yellow and they light up the high canyons and mountains.
 

We sheltered in Pagosa Springs Colorado, made famous in CW McCall’s song, “Wolf Creek Pass” …..you know the one, if you don’t, go listen because that trucker ended up with a load of chickens in downtown Pagosa Springs.  Our motel was located to the first marijuana dispensary I’ve ever seen.  Colorado has it going on.
 

The motel we were in felt a bit like living in a dorm.  You could hear people walking down the hall and hear the motorcycles outside.  They had a special washing station for the bikes, and the owner of the motel had two huge bull dogs that hung out in the lobby.  It was kind of laid back, but they made me sign a promise not to smoke in the building, ever.
 

We headed out to Moab early that morning with the thought we would get there in time to check in to our motel and then go out to Canyon Land.  We did make it in perfect time and found Moab to be a cool little town with old and young alike walking around in hiking boots and attire.
 

As it turns out this part of the trip is where I got to restore part of my soul, it was where I felt the sun and wind in my face and the sound of nothing but the wind moving around me.  We got to Canyon Land and toward the evening I found myself sitting on a rock as old as time looking out at an expanse of red and green canyons, carved by ancient waters, pressures and dust. 
 

You simply can’t look at this place and not feel a couple of things, insignificant and knowing that some Hand touched something long ago and painted a masterpiece.  It was like Vincent Van Gogh took millions of years to paint Starry Starry Night.  I was sitting at peace, breathing the air, soaking in the colors, completely immersed in the simple natural beauty of the reality before me.
 

As dumb and weird as it may sound, which saying dumb and weird stuff is kind of my deal, it was right there, right then I figured it out.  Marty’s not gone, she simply found, as she told me, “another way of being.”
 

A friend asked me the other day if I ever feel Marty’s presence.  Yes, the images I have, the memories I have are baked in and will never go away.  They will change, but her presence in my life is ingrained in my cells.  But, while I sat there with me, God, God’s eons of work before me and no one else within ear shot, Marty, or at least pieces of her were there and I felt, in my little pea brain, just a little more at peace than I have been in a long time. 
 

It was a release, not so much a burden, but a tension, an anxiety, a worry, a burden, okay we can use that word but it’s not a very good one here, it was never a bad burden.
 

Tomorrow we tackle Delicate Arch.

Pendaries -- Sometimes its the Destination and the Journey

Pendaries New Mexico is a small, mountain golf resort in the Sangre de Cristo mountains about an hour north of Santa Fe.  Marty’s parents had a house there and her father, Arty, loved going there to play golf.  We loved going there to escape the Texas heat, the working for a living stress and it was a great place to use as a base for snow skiing.

It is a long way to Pendaries but worth every mile Skip and I drove.  We even got a bit of bonus as we drop up to the Clovis New Mexico city limits sign and Marty said, lay down some ash here, where she was born.  So, bold as you please, we stopped and made a new memory.

This place was fantastic.  It was cool in the summer and close enough to Angel Fire and Sipapu to be a great launching point for several family ski trips.  Marty loved it up here.  She painted dozens of rocks, walked and drove the narrow dirt roads, saw a bear and got too close, saw an owl we named Doc Al after the Vet in Dalhart, played games and thought thoughts.  It was great for that…thinking thoughts.

This is where Marty put together a Christmas Eve service one year.  It was intended for our whole family who was in Pendaries for Christmas.  Marty took on an old First Presby bulletin and built a short service because she was missing her favorite church service in Waco.  By the time all was said and done the little chapel, lit by kerosene lamps was full, not just with family, but by residents of the golf community.  Word had gotten out and we had a crowd. 

It may have been my favorite church service ever.

Being in Pendaries was always special, but more than that, the epic road trips up there with the kids and friends were legendary  We listened to music, played the ABCs of birth control and body parts (don’t ask), made the kids listen to our music, ate at Dairy Queens, let Matt drive in the snow (Marty was so much better at that than me), convinced Matt that Peter, Paul and Marty were actually okay, found out more about our kids and the other kids we loved to love, including spotting a tongue ring at a Pizza Hut in Clarendon Tx, had a family revolt in Amarillo over a dodgy motel, The Amarillo Seven and argued about having to stop every three hours (good grief let’s move people).

Pendaries became a part of our family and our family’s lore and folk tales.  We would go to Santa Fe and walk the Plaza and eat at La Fonda del Sol.  Matt had rattlesnake and goat cheese quesadillas there…..he was maybe pre-teen when he did that, already a cultured palate.

Marty loved the square, the people, the plaza.  Mostly she loved Jack-a-Lopes, a huge novelty, folky, junky, funky merchandise purveyor.  The billed themselves as Jack-a-Lopes, folk art by the truck load if that tells you anything.

Skip and I scattered some of Marty’s ashes at the Pendaries Chapel.  I paused, took some deep breathes, and let the moment sink in, remembering all the enjoyment we had experienced there.  I thought about that service, I thought about Marty and it was a pretty perfect kind of moment.  I smiled and had a bit of a tear at the same time.  You can do that you know.

Skip and I played a round of golf the next day.  It was about 30 degrees when we teed off and 65 when we finished.  

 

We played past the back of the house and later played a par 3 hole that is straight down.  It’s short but the green is about 100 feet below the tee box.  Running parallel to this hole is steep road/cart path that Arty Watkins, Marty’s father, at the age of, let’s say 70, sat down on a paper-thin plastic sled with his grandson, Bill, and rode that little puppy down the steep, snow covered road.  I mean really, top 10 great memories.

That was Pendaries.  We are on to Moab Utah to experience some of God’s great work.