Category: Objects of Beauty
-
The Forever Road Turns East
[Near Fort Lenard, Kansas] I didn’t write the following paragraph, but I wish to the eternal sky that I did… Look out from the mountains edge once more. A dusk is gathering on the desert’s face, and over the eastern horizon the purple shadow of the world is reaching up to the sky. The light…
-
A Short Walk Up Boot Hill
[An unknown prostitute of Dodge City] My reason for being on the road for so long has a great deal to do with my growing dislike of the winters of the North Country. It also enables me to wander and explore my interests. I love history, I am attracted to stories of the pioneer…
-
A Rock, A Pumpkin And The Grateful Dead
“May I top you up?” –Anonymous bartender. “You can’t top that!” –Patrick Egan People like to put things on top of things. Nature likes to just leave things where they were put originally. I remember one afternoon, in mid-October, 1997, (if you…
-
A Night At The Opera
I sat in the Amargosa Opera House. Half the seats were filled with ticket holders. I looked around at the fantastic murals, I moved one seat away from the heat of the pot-belly stove and I watched the red curtain. It was 7:05 pm on Saturday night. There would not be an opera here tonight,…
-
Reality Check: 66% Of The Road Trip Is Behind Us
[Organ Pipe Cactus] We are roughly two-thirds of the way through our long and event-filled road trip. As I write this, I’m sitting in a Starbucks, about 263 dusty, windy and empty miles from Tucson. According to my four weather apps on my iPhone, it’s going to be nearly 80 F today. We need warmth.…
-
Honky Tonks, Bordellos And Celery
[This soiled dove was from Cripple Creek, CO.] We watched January turn into February in Silver City, New Mexico. A former mining town from the 19th Century, was a place where miners, tired and in need of a drink and a little love to purchase, would come up from the valleys and down the mountains…and…
-
On A Dusty Street Corner In Juarez
“When you’re lost in the rain, in Juarez, and it’s Easter Time too, And your gravity fails you and your negativity can’t pull you through…” –Bob Dylan Just Like Tom Thumbs Blues Let’s be realistic. You didn’t think I was going to write a blog about crossing the border bridge to visit Juarez, Mexico, and…
-
Mix Mesquite, Sage, Fire, Oil And A Dash Of White-Line Fever
You shall cross the barren desert, but you shall not die of thirst. You shall wander far in safety, though you do not know the way. –From Be Not Alone, a hymn commonly sung at funerals. Words by John Michael Talbot. “Somewhere on a desert highway, she rides a Harley-Davidson…her long blonde hair flying in…
-
My Moonlight Sonata
“Moonlight becomes you, it goes with your hair. You certainly know the right thing to wear…” –Popular song For many years, the Full Moon has fascinated me. In the North Country, in the death-like silence of the mid-winter, and the snow on the ground is seven inches deep, and bending the branches of the cedar…
patrickjegan 