The hot way home

We are passing gigantic rock formations between Shiprock and Gallup, New Mexico. This one looks like an enormous drizzle sand castle, hardened in some spectacular weather event. This one looks like huge alien eggs, oval but partly flattened, huddled together standing up in a ring, awaiting the right moment to hatch.

The sky is filled with disney clouds, and the ground is yellow-brown, scattered with faint green desert plants. As cars and trucks hurtle past us on this two-lane highway through the Navajo Nation, gusts of wind are hurled at us, as if a great being were throwing balls of invisible matter at the side of the van.

We drove through Farmington for the third time on this trip. This time, the town seemed to have spruced itself up. It no longer had that depressed feeling of old, dry, hot, falling apart scrubbiness. I saw tree-lined streets and shops whose colorful signs did not glare out at me, but rather formed an ensemble.

We pass horses and cows grazing on impossibly thin grass, amid mounds of earthquake-upturned sandstone. We just passed a chestnut horse with one thin white stripe down its hind leg. We often catch the smell of green hay from the trucks transporting a load of bales to and fro. The hay seems to add moisture to the air, making this landscape seem ever so slightly more pleasant.

We left Silverton just past 8 o'clock last night, after getting a jump from a friendly neighborhood preacher, Scott Bobo, as he introduced himself. We had run down the battery trading off laptop and phone chargers with one plug for hours while Adam and I dealt with our situation in various ways - phone, writing, email, excel charts.

We spent the night in Durango again (didn't think we would see the town for a long time when we left it a few days ago), at the WalMart. This time, I did not buy anything, newly motivated to eat the food we had in the van (which is a lot, since I bought a week's worth before heading to Purgatory), and not to come with any more supply needs given our new financial state of mind. Apparently, this displeased the WalGods and they sent in a massive sleep interrupter: the 2-hour parking lot street cleaner. Since Adam could barely sleep anyway, it was more of a drown-out-thoughts machine than a sleep interrupter, which may have been just as well since his mind was working overtime on thinking up how to deal with a sudden loss of business prospects. I, on the other hand, did not fare so well.

In the morning, I slept as long as I could before the sun drove me up and out of Trogdor's very warm top bunk. Tired of scrambled egg whites and pan toast, I decided on savory french toast. I poured the extra egg white over the two pieces of soaked bread and let it form an omelette. It was much better than egg white scramble. And the pan let go of more egg. I am very relieved to be using a new pan since Albuquerque, as it does not require a monumental amount of elbow grease to get egg remnants cleaned off.

I finally talked to a friend on the phone today about our latest snafu. Adam's method of dealing with crisis is to talk to everyone he knows, which he did most of yesterday afternoon and evening. It took some pushing past mental barriers for me to make contact - I have such specific parameters for how I like to talk on the phone: not in a loud car, not when I'm around anyone else, not when I don't feel like talking. I decided to shine these on since the result was not talking to anyone. It felt so good to make that connection. Writing can only do so much.