THE ROAD 7-18-07

 TRIP-3 ENTRIES   1 OF 3 -START

Hi!

The end of last month I got a call from my friend and fellow photographer, Scott Peck. His wife, Joyce, was having a family reunion. He doesn’t shoot people and I was complimented that he asked if I would come play. I also had someone waiting go get a model portfolio the next time I was in Boulder. It would be over the time when my friend Sherie Hart held her annual 4th of July event. It would be a great time to see all of my artist friends from the place I called home for thirty years. And….it meant I could take a road trip! I said YES.

On July 1st I was out the door before 4:30 AM. My friend Joe had given me some tapes to play in my CD challenged car. He had Eckhart Tolle reading his book The Power of Now. It was way too early for Tolle. I popped in The Talking Heads and David Byrned my way down I-80. The light of dawn began beaming just before Davis. As I passed the “Milk Farm” sign I remembered the first time I saw it hitchhiking to California thirty years ago and the dozens of times since. Each time I thought it would be great to shoot a full moon behind the sign at dawn when it was still dark enough to make out detail on the moon and light enough to make out the sign. I always imaged that, at some point in the future, I would find myself in the right place at the right time to take the picture. I passed the sign, looked in the rear view mirror, saw that time was now, took the next exit, turned around and took the first shot as a milk truck sped down the empty highway.

It felt like a gift. I felt enormously grateful. I found myself saying, “Thank you. Thank you.” As I got back on the road I turned on the tape. Mr. Byrne was singing, “Thank you. Thank you.” as a chorus of voices behind him repeated the phrase, “When you get to where you want to be.”

The light was still warm as I came to the elevated highway over the floodplain just before Sacramento. I looked to the right to look at a place I had stopped before and had taken a picture of a few egrets. The few specks of white I had expected was, instead, a field of white. I drove several miles to the next exit and came back to the Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area. I approached cautiously, but as I got out of the car several hundred birds lifted into the air. Rather than disappearing to the next patch of water as the birds on my previous visit had done, they simply circled and lit again in the same place. They weren’t about to desert the young chicks that I now saw through the lens. This rookery had hatched and now held hundreds of these most elegant birds.

Because I stop so often and drive so fast I often times pass the same slower moving vehicle a number of times on our shared expedition on the open road.

As I drive I love watching the lines of the highway and the landscape line up almost as much as I enjoy it when the whole thing becomes a bit twisted.

I am always stopped by the same barbed wire fence just short of Salt Lake City. It’s always different. This was the first time I was there just before sunset. Also, I’ve noticed that the fish gets bigger or smaller depending on the depth of the water.

From there I drove into the night until I stopped in Coalville, Utah near the Wyoming border. I normally turn South at Salt Lake and catch I-70. That stretch through Utah and into Colorado is some of the most spectacular Interstate in the country. It’s only a hundred miles shorter through Wyoming, but you also are not slowed down by going over The Rocky Mountains to get to Denver. This was going to be a short trip and I wanted to make some time across flat Wyoming.

About fifty miles out short of Rawlins I was thinking about a time I was in the same place some thirty years before. My friend Joe was living in Boulder at the time. We were both at a place where making a living, dealing with the latest girlfriend or having no girlfriend and just living called for some sorting out time. Road Trip! We had both just read the Seth book, The Nature of Personal Reality and were primed to test our powers of manifestation. We loaded up my squareback Volkswagen, which had four balding tires and no spare, and hit the road with enough film and gas money to last a week. We decided to start from the beginning. The first day out would be about birth. Near the end of the day we stopped at a deserted hot springs in Southern Colorado. The picture I took of him held everything that we had talked about that day. The nature of the womb, where we begin by floating in space and then it becomes restrictive and then as you are born you are once again surrounded by space. The tie-died curtains and blue light from the window became the embryonic fluid. The splashes at his feet represented the idea that we are all born from stardust and light. Even the wobbly reflection on the right of the picture retold our discussion about the billions of cells that are dividing every second in the womb and continue to do so every second of our lives……which was to say we were continuously being born. It was very deep.

On the second day we, being the simple minds we are, chose to look at death. We found ourselves in Dead Horse Ranch State Park in Arizona. We found a dead horse. We rode the theme until we were beating a dead horse. We examined the phase, “beating a dead horse.” All that thinking was killing the experience of just being. We let it go. Out of that revelation came the most profound understand of what was in front of us the whole time, the road itself. Part of the magic of being on the road is that it is all new, it’s all being born. And it is all new because, as we pass we’re allowing it to go, we’re letting the past die behind us. Birth and death were simply different aspects of the same experience. That shut us up. It was, in the vernacular of the day, “orgasmic.” Or as the French call it, a “petite mort”….a little death….a semi passing.

Ok, back to Wyoming, thirty years ago. So, we’re driving home from this enlighting trip and about two in the morning I’m passing this semi doing about ninety when I hit something in the road. Both tires on my side of the car blow out. I danced the car to the edge of the highway. Nothing was going to happen that night. In the morning we assessed our situation. We had twenty dollars which was just enough to buy gas to get back to Boulder. We had two flat tires and no spare. We were in the middle of nowhere and the creators of our universe. I also needed to pee. I went down to the fence line and while I was standing there I saw a 20 dollar bill tangled in the tumbleweed. The only other thing I had of value were a few of my San Diego Zoo bird posters that I had left from my days as a collage artist.

So, I stayed with the car. Joe hitchhiked the fifty miles to Rawlins with two flat tires, twenty dollars and a bird poster. About noon a tow truck pulled up behind my car. The driver stepped out one side and Joe stepped outside the other. This guy from the tire store had sold and mounted two used tires for the twenty bucks and drove Joe back to meet me so I could sign the poster for his sister who just loved birds.

Ok, back to Wyoming three weeks ago. I’m thinking about this event in my past. Romanticizing and recreating it in vivid detail and, in what could have been the exact same place…….POW……..a flat. That didn’t let the air out of my experience. I mean really, what could you do but laugh. To add to the humor I went to the back of the car, opened the gate, took out all the pictures, travel bag and road supplies to get to the spare. I lifted the cover and the wheel well was empty. I gave Joe, who sold me the car, a call. He laughed as I recounted the event and said, “God, are you powerful.” Then he asked, “Ok, are your ready to look really stupid.” “Always.” I replied. Then he said, “Close the gate.” I did. And, there it was. The wheel had been in front of me and behind me the whole time I had the car. I finished changing the tire and walked back to see if I could find what I had run over. Sometime in the past someone had lost the entire contents of a toolbox. Screwdrivers, awls, drill bits and pliers littered the road. As the event disappeared in the rear view mirror I let it all go and remembered that reliving the past can be a useful tool and, sometimes, even entertaining, but ultimately it just creates a circle of more of the same.

Having grown up in Colorado I always thought of the Continental Divide as being on the top of14,000 foot peaks. It was funny to see a sign with so low of a number and odd that the number was so even. When I stopped to take its picture I looked down at my odometer and saw something even odder.

At Rawlins I got two new tires after I gave the tire guy a penny. He used the coin to show that the tread should be deeper than the edge of the coin to the top of Lincoln’s head. As I left town I stopped at a Tepee. I found that I was using the same visual muscles that I use when doing an architectural shoot.

While driving through Sinclair, Wyoming I stopped to take pictures of the Sinclair Oil refinery. I was playing with all the smokestacks and puffs of white clouds when a woman in a truck pulled up in front of me and told me to stop taking pictures and to follow her to the main gate. There I was questioned about my motives. I said, “Beauty and Humor.” They were very nice and explained that as part of Homeland Security it was not a good idea to be taking pictures of refineries. I got their email to send them some pictures. They were all great. After a few, not too refined references about whether or not to do a strip search we thanked each other, shook hands and said goodbye.

I could see the massive windmill farm at Arlington from quite a distance. I got off the highway and headed down a dirt road to see if I could get a closer look. I never made it to the top of the hill, but on my way back to the highway I took pictures of the miles of 12 foot high snow fences set up to prevent white outs on I-80 during Wyoming’s severe winter storms.

Driving South from Laramie, Wyoming to Ft. Collins, Colorado I saw two pickups rounding up a herd of horses. I turned down the dirt ranch road and reached the group just as the horses were entering a corral. There I met Chip, Kathy and their son. It was an honor to meet them all.

After they had separated the horses they wanted the rest were let go. And thanks to their invitation to stick around I was ready to get a few shots and enjoy the feeling of freedom and power of release.

As his parents and I were enjoy doing our favorite thing in the world the boy was busy being a boy running on the rocks next to the corral. He was busy simply being.

Thanks for joining me on this next stretch of the road. With each email I feel I am getting closer to seeing how I would put this together as a book. I would appreciate any insights you might have. If you want to be removed from these emails just send a reply with “No Thanks” in the subject line. If you are one of those who received this from a friend and want to be added to the list send me an email. I will be delighted to include you. jd@jerrydownsphoto.com

Enjoy Your Bright Future!

Jerry

Jerry Downs Photography
P.O. Box 1082
Larkspur, CA 94977
415-686-2369
http://www.jerrydownsphoto.com/

He feels the power of the past behind him
He has the knowledge of the wind to guide him…on.The wind in my heart
The wind in my heart
The dust in my hair

The dust in my hair

The wind in my heart
The wind in my heart

Listening Wind

The Talking Heads

From the Remain in the Light Album