cortez to 4 corners-beauty in untold places-wednesday 6/21/06

we really didn't have any idea about what to expect from four corners, other than both of us had decided we wanted to go there. we had been told that there was nothing there, and in fact, that was true. there was nothing if you were looking for something...but we were just going to stand in four states, and we got an unexpected bargain in the process.

dropping out of cortez down to the flats of this area was breathtaking in a lot of ways. when i saw the first butte, i pulled the car off the side of the road to take a picture, the first of many i kept taking of...nothing! but the nothing was something. it is hard to describe how desolate it was, but it was beautiful. when we turned on the road to go to four corners, the road stretched out flat and straight in front of us, and there were almost no cars and absolutely nothing on either sides of the roads except dry arroyos and buttes. the array of colors went from pinkish red to black to white to tan. it was almost like a colored moonscape, and the sky was blue as far as you could see.

the entrance to four corners is at the top of a little hill after you come up from a little dip in the road. you turn off onto a gravel road and then you drive up to it. around all sides of the actual monument thing are booths filled with navajo indians and others selling their wares.

pam and i had our pictures taken doing all the silly stuff you would do there and then we separated. she went off to shop (she bought an ankle bracelet) and i went off to steal rocks. well, i did feel a tad paranoid as i walked off into the four different states with my camera. i went first to colorado and took several pictures of that view, which i gained by walking about 20 or 30 yards beyond the booths and cars parked behind them. in colorado i developed a process of theft...i would descretely bend down and pick up a rock, and then another, and then i moved on to the next state, which was utah.

rocks in pocket, i took some more pictures, noticing that there actually seemed to be a difference in the landscape, and in the rocks. i started looking for utah rocks that would be different from colorado rocks. while walking back from utah, i decided that i needed to stash the geology in the car, and opened up the trunk and tossed them in. there were a few indians looking at me at first, but then i moved on to arizona and repeated the process...and returned to the car with the booty, again.

by the time i got to the new mexico perimeter, i had decided that i hadn't gotten enough rocks from colorado, so i went back over there and swiped some more. my final gesture was to number them, bag 'em and tag 'em and toss them into the car trunk, with the watchful eyes of navajos on me. at that point i think they were likely wondering what in hell i kept going back and forth to the trunk for...i tried to look cool, but i don't exactly escape notice with my wild hair and large body! in any case, i finally caught up with pamela, who had at this point stopped everywhere looking at stuff for sale. i checked out a few of the booths, but didn't buy anything. one thing i did hear, though, was the navajo reservation radio station that we had been told about. it was interesting listening to the language being spoken.

i had hung a little combinations whistle/compass/thermomether on the mirror when we took off on this journey, and when we got in the car to leave, it was registering 120 degrees despite the fact that we had left windows cracked! i am not sure i have ever been in that type of heat before, but i was amazed that neither of us croaked! i was dry heat, and the only affect seemed to be on pam's eyes and both our noses. we lived to shop another day!

we left four corners and were still amazed at the landscape as we were leaving. i popped in the nicholas gunn CD with the indian music on it, and it made for a very peaceful and relaxing drive out of the desert.

i was running out of gas, and we stopped at a truck travel center on the ute reservation. i was on a quest for fritos, which had become the everyday 4pm snack. while in there, i found a dime and a penny, the first money i had found in awhile! more angels! i saw dill pickle sunflower seeds and bought a bag for austin to take home (they were pretty good and he didn't care about them one way or another, so i have been eating them!) we gassed up the car and headed back from four corners through cortez and onwards toward pagosa springs. but first, we had to make a stop at one of my excentric garden spots...the arrows at mancos, colorado.