I’m calling this Road Trip America for two reaaons: 1. I rarely leave New Mexico and 2. I made an unlikely state jump, traveling from Denver, CO to Paris, AR. I missed my children who had grown up and moved to these exotic climes, and I was too impatient to visit one this year and the other the next So, I packed up my car, and I drove. Admittedly, I loved the long drives. I had audiobooks and my favorite music to keep me company and no one to complain if I listened to norteño or banda for eight solid hours.
Nevertheless, the drive from Denver to Arkansas was not easy. As soon as I left Denver, the temps soared, reaching the triple digits in Kansas and remaining there as I made my way into Arkansas. Have you ever experienced triple digits with high humidity? The highest we seem to get in Roswell – unless it’s storming – is forty percent. The heat went from a wall of dryness in Kansas to walking into a steam bath in the wilds of Arkansas. Thankfully, in these blessed days, we have air-conditioning. Earlier today, I listened to a podcast of a woman discussing the health problems modern man is afflicted with because we no longer live out of doors with nature. Well, I know one medical problem I’m avoiding through remaining indoors: heat exhaustion.
The countryside appeared to be having heat exhaustion, though, with fields drying in the sun and covered in hay bales to the horizon. This heat wave will not break, and it isn’t great for farmers. It brings new meaning to this Divine Mercy message I spotted along the interstate in Kansas:
On an entirely different tangent, one architectural feature I adore when leaving New Mexico is the traditional red barns that dot the landscape. They aren’t common in my home state for the simple fact that farmers originally used iron oxide mixed with linseed oil to protect the wood frames of their barns from rot and decay. The red color came from the iron oxide. Because New Mexico traditionally didn’t use wood frames for their barn walls, they likewise didn’t typically use iron oxide to protect them. Whenever I leave the state, the red buildings rising up from the rolling hills bring a simple joy to my heart.
Rolling hills, red barns, bales of hay. And heat. It was a long drive across the prairie, made longer because the GPS kept re-routing me to avoid toll roads. When you live in the western half of the country, you can live in ignorance of such taxation. It hadn’t occurred to me that I might have to pay to drive down a road in my very own nation. I had heard of them, of course, but it was a bizarre idea that I imagined only foreign cities like Chicago might consider entrapping innocent citizens with.*
*California does have some tollways, but we already know all about that state. Colorado also has bizarre express lanes that allow you to pay for a higher speed limit. Or something like that. I’ve never driven in one and don’t know the rules. However, I’ve watched vehicles zip along in them and disappear completely within seconds, clearly moving at very high speeds.
Near the end of my long haul to Arkansas, I managed to get stuck in a traffic jam caused by a rollover semitruck accident, which meant I arrived at my final destination after midnight. But I made it with the help – in the last few hours – of an audiobook, and that’s what matters. There’s nothing like listening to stories of the quaintness of murder to make you question your life choices. Eg, why am I not a detective who trips over bodies in the English countryside? Why am I a Catholic secretary with a priest for a boss instead of an Anglican receptionist who makes tea for the kind but boring vicar? These are good questions to reflect on, especially since the murder mysteries I write involve the enchanted Southwest and waayyy too much excitement at the Catholic church. And coffee. Always coffee. Maybe some tequila or whisky for good fun.*
*Caveat: my actual real-life priest is a tea drinker, though I’ve never made him tea. He drinks it at the rectory before coming to the office.
Now I’m at the spot in my post where I should give a travel advert for Arkansas. Honestly, Arkansas sells itself. It’s beautiful and lush and has big rivers and lakes. Remember, I’m from New Mexico. My idea of a grand river is the Pecos because you can manage boats on it. I’ve even been on a boat in the Pecos at the 4th of July celebration in Carlsbad. By comparison, Arkansas is a wooded fairy land. I don’t know if fairies actually live there due to the uncountable Christian churches full of people who don’t believe in fairies – and a surprising number of Catholic churches in a state that boasts 10,000 different Baptist denominations you probably didn’t know existed. During last year’s vacation, we did a Catholic church tour in Arkansas. As it turns out, German farmers settled there and brought vineyards and their Catholic faith. My eldest daughter enjoyed the church tours purely from an art aesthetic – free art galleries!
This year’s ended up being an art tour in museums – mostly. She (eldest daughter) had her Tesla drive us to the Crystal Bridges art complex in Bentonville. I tried to pretend the Tesla was KITT, but its AI was unconvincing.
Crystal Brisges is a free museum experience brought to you by Walmart. Bentonville happens to be the birthplace of Walmart. The museum contains numerous galleries, a nature art walk, and a Frank Lloyd Wright house you can tour. It is worth spending hours there for the architecture of the buildings, let alone the works inside. I was completely overwhelmed by the size, just as I was at the Denver art museum. In neither case did we make it all the way through. What I’m left with is the image of one of my favorite paintings from when I was young:
I’m not sure why I appreciated this particular painting. Now, I would consider it drab.
We left the art complex because we were both faint from hunger, thinking we would eat lunch and return. Instead, we ate lunch and decided to charge the Tesla in a hip downtown area. The Tesla drove us there, its AI brain sure there were chargers. There were not. In defeat, we went to a local café called the Onyx Coffee Lab, where we purchased overly sweet but unusual coffee drinks and sat down in the hipster-shaped chairs provided for café loungers.
That was when we met an artist called Spyridon, named after St. Spyridon. He told me he liked the medal I was wearing – it was Our Lady of Guadalupe. He said he had painted her once. He had been playing some type of card game in the chair opposite to us; I wasn’t paying attention. Now I looked: the game cards and pieces appeared to have iconography on them. Upside down, I confused St. Spyridon (the icon) for St. Patrick. He then told me about this game that he had created, using years’ worth of his artwork.
I was a little stunned: after a day spent at an art gallery, I had met a living artist in a café, who was there babysitting a little service dog until his wife and sister returned. I asked him if he had trained as an iconographer, and he said that he had, in multiple countries around the world. I took a photo of the QR code for his game website:
The purpose of the game is to help tortured souls reach the light by climbing white ladders. This was sounding peculiarly like my first published book, Anna and the Dragon. He showed me how to play an easy version of the game, and the afternoon still feels surreal to me. The artist and his family were visiting Bentonville, too, and I wouldn’t have met them at all if we had chosen to return to the museum. He told us about an indie arthouse film one of his paintings had been featured in – my daughter and I watched it on Prime later that night. It is gritty and black and white, but well worth it to see his painting and the story the film tells about it. It’s called El Tonto Por Cristo.
The film is peculiarly Orthodox, I believe, with an Orthodox trope known as a fool for Christ (like the name of the film). I appreciated its simplicity and the small ways the main character becomes a “fool” to help those around him. I didn’t appreciate the black and white and wondered at the artistic choice. In color, it would have been visually stunning, as it was set on the Texas coastline and featured an Orthodox church and artwork.
The vacation now over, what ultimately left an impression on me was the time I spent with my daughters. They are more beautiful than paintings or sculpture, and I miss them very much already.
FIN
Jill Domschot 