(A version of this essay was a semifinalist in the 2017 I Must Be Off! travel writing competition.)
“We made it!” I whooped as our rental car rushed past a mustard-yellow sign decorated with chili peppers. After several hours on the road, we had entered New Mexico.
“Make sure you pick up a rock for Dad before we get to Colorado,” Heather said. So far, Dad’s rock collection included a polished emerald wedge from Alaska and a volcanic marble from Tanzania, but Heather and I knew he didn’t yet have a rock from New Mexico.
Even though neither of us had been to the state before, we were already well acquainted with its barren beauty. Dad had passed through the Southwest in his early twenties, and he often spoke with admiration about the vegetation and wildlife that persevered and even thrived in its endless desert plains.
Forty years after his trip, we were driving through a similar landscape of dust-blasted shrubs when a pavilion appeared on our left less than a mile into New Mexico. Slowing down to see what this was, we spotted a faded taupe sign reading “Four Corners Monument.”
“Looks touristy. What do you think?” I asked Heather.
“Well, we haven’t been in four places at once before.”
I could understand why someone would want to celebrate such a geographical quirk. Where I’m from in Southeastern Virginia, the borders of our counties are usually determined by rivers and creeks, sometimes resulting in bizarre shapes with Jackson Pollock edges, so the thought of a quartet of states meeting at perfect right angles to one another impressed me. I expected to see some sort of gritty pole à la M*A*S*H rising from the sand with wooden arrows to designate the states, but the site we found was not so rudimentary.
After Heather paid the five-dollar entrance fee, we walked into what looked like a small stadium. In the center, a trail of tourists with cameras waited to stand, squat, or splay themselves on top of the focal point, a large metal seal marking the intersection of the four states. Along the periphery, four rows of tin-roofed stalls squared off the monument. Inside these, Navajo artisans displayed their crafts, enticing visitors with a reprieve from the direct sun exposure.
Apparently, idling in 105°F awakens the consumeristic instinct.
Before we perused their goods, however, we joined the queue. Instantly, I could feel the sunrays ribboning around my arms and blanketing humidity against my back. The shadow formed by one of the four state flagpoles offered the only shade.
“You know, I bet Grandma would have loved it here,” I said to Heather as I tasted brine from the sweat trickling onto my lips.
Heat had never seemed to bother our father’s mom. Grandma Smith had made her home in the North Florida countryside, and in spite of its humidity, the history and culture of the Deep South was woven tightly into her life and that of her family. But, she also felt it was important for her kids to know about the world beyond their small town. Even as a single mother, having lost her husband when she was forty-three, she took her family on a road trip which led them west across the South and all the way into southern New Mexico, only a few hundred miles from where we now stood.
The sizzling minutes ticked by while Heather and I talked, and once we had shuffled quite close to our goal, a woman in front of us in line handed us a bright red umbrella. Surprised by the gift but thankful, we enjoyed the shade it offered for a few minutes before handing it off to a couple behind us. We didn’t know where the umbrella had originally come from—the woman who had given it to us had received it from the folks in front of her—but it seemed the passing of the umbrella had become a tradition at Four Corners that day, or perhaps a medical necessity as the sun slowly braised our skin.
While we waited for our turn on the intersection, Heather proposed that when it was time to have our picture taken, we would stand on the seal and sign the first letters of the four states we would be straddling; so, after passing the torch (the red umbrella, that is) we stood back to back in a Charlie’s Angels pose, only instead of making would-be pistols, our hands formed the letters C, N, U, and A. Then, thanking the folks behind us for being gracious enough to photograph our antics, we stepped off the ring of fire and into the sliver of cool air in front of the make-shift shops.
Local artists showed us pots painted with earthy hues and necklaces threaded with dried juniper berries and translucent beads. At the end of one row of vendors—I’m not sure which state—an older Native American woman greeted us from behind a wooden table crowded with pottery.
“Twenty dollars for the smaller ones. These are thirty-five,” she said, motioning to the larger terra cotta vases placed onto the wool blanket in front of her.
A smaller bowl the size of my palm caught my eye; sky-blue pigment clothed its crimson clay, and etchings created vivid contours across its surface. I knew Dad would value something so reminiscent of the landscape around us.
I handed the woman a dollar bill, and then her weathered hands began adeptly pulling scraps of bubble wrap around the pottery. As she placed the package into a paper bag, I noticed a young girl behind her walk over to a box of packing supplies and peer inside.
“Who is this?” Heather said. The girl glanced shyly at Heather, her face betraying a smile before she turned away.
“Oh, this is my granddaughter. She comes with me sometimes and messes around in my things,” the woman said, her eyes shining as she glanced over her shoulder at the girl. “I bet your grandma remembers looking after you when you were young.”
“Yeah,” I said, smiling softly and looking past her through an open door at the painted world beyond the pavilion. “I’m sure she does.” Though Grandma Smith had passed away more than six years before, I could see the land with her eyes, and the same joy of being in a vast and living land that she and my dad had felt all those years ago echoed back to me.
The Barefooted Soul 