By Ami Regier    

1.

I can feel the energy coming from the land.

This is where I bought parts for the truck.

There’s where I went rock crawling with the truck.

I didn’t get far from Myrtle Beach before breaking down on the side of the road.

Pointy toe cowboy boots are cockroach kickers because they go for the corner wham. New Mexico style is more the square toe.

This is the loop that we took coming back into Gallup from Zuni.

That’s a 550. It’s like a ton and a half.

That was a Charger. You can tell by the taillights.

Miata.

That’s a pretty Road King.

I drove my truck on top of that hill of  caves and areas where squatters, homeless, partiers, trashburners were, where we went stargazing last night. Homeless  may be living in the cliffdwellings now. See the stuffed teddy bear, a shoe.

Warning, the sign appears to say:  proposing marriage in Canyon de Chelly may make you lightheaded.

2.       

New Mexico reminds me of Zane Grey novels. Shayne remembers Louis L’Amour novels.

I see purple sage, rimrock, the hugeness of space and the smallness of self.

I can’t figure out if we took this loop before.

We hiked a loop from the Mentmore trailhead above the Gallup mesa: rimrock, sky.

Snapshot: your bear necklace, your arm reaching out toward us, so much desert.

Ancient people walked here too.

The hand signifies self as relation to others and geography: the thumb is the baby, the fingers, parents and sky, mountain, water. The pinky means I am made of grandfather and  fire.

The ancient roads leading to Chaco canyon were not for what roads are thought to be for.  Scholars do not now know what the roads were for.