South by Southwest - Week 6-7: Heading Home

We're in the southwestern corner of New Mexico, stalled by heavy winds and cold weather to the east of us. The town of Jal (originally JAL, after the cattle brand of the ranch that used to be here) is a good place to be stalled. Just south of town is a lake, shaped like the original JAL brand, and a beautiful park where RVs and campervans can plug into water and electricity and stay for up to three days for free. The lake has a nice trail around it, and is full of migrating birds who flit among the cattails and tease the resident ducks. Nash has discovered the pastime of birdwatching. Unlike human birdwatchers, he makes no effort to identify the species he is looking at; he just watches, rapt.

Actually, we were already in a kind of holding pattern. I am flying out of Oklahoma City Friday morning, so we need to be near the airport on Thursday night, but we don't want to get there too early and have to spend our last days of travel together in an urban Walmart parking lot. So we've been zig-zagging across New Mexico, looking for good hikes and good weather. Sadly, the federal shutdown has closed most of the state's National Parks, but we've found less-known delights like Albuquerque's Sandia Peak Tramway and Carlsbad's Sitting Bull Falls and the endless miles of high desert lands in between.

After the awe and wonder of the Arizona National Parks, it's been a lower-key adventure as we wind up our trip. A few exciting moments of the week:

The alternator shield dropped from the undercarriage of the van on an exceedingly rutted road, digging into the gravel and grinding us to a stop far from civilization or cell service. (The upside to breaking down in the middle nowhere is that you don't have to pull off the road. No one is coming. Also the downside.) Fortunately, we had a wrench that fit the remaining bolts of the shield and Joe was able to take it off so we could continue the trip, unshielded.
East of Albuquerque, someone started throwing rocks at the van, or so we thought until the bangs increased in frequency and revealed themselves to be hailstones hurled from a cloud appearing out of an otherwise sunny sky. Fortunately, we thought to look behind us for the amazing rainbow that appeared as well. Also fortunately, the windshield, which we had to replace after a real stone incident during our last trip, was unscathed.
Our plan to stay an extra day in the BLM lands near Sitting Bull Falls was cut short when Nash discovered – and apparently befriended – a tarantula. Without cell service to reassure ourselves (as we did later) that tarantula venom is pretty mild, and tarantulas wandering around in October are males searching for love, we decided to vacate the campsite.

As we wind up our southwestern travels, I am bracing for re-entry in Charlottesville. On Saturday, I need to vote early, since I'll be working 5am-9pm or so as assistant precinct chief on Tuesday, Election Day. Saturday afternoon I'll be MCing and leading security for the Jazz Parade for Democracy downtown. (If you're around, I hope to see you there!) I've already got four meetings scheduled, one Saturday evening, one Sunday, and two Monday, as part of local resistance work.

Resistance feels even more urgent now than when we left home in mid-September. There's the almost too-perfect symbolism of the destruction of a large part of the White House to create a ballroom for dignitaries and funders. We are watching in real time as the structures and safeguards of democracy are dismantled before our eyes. Trump and his allies are doubling down on un-checked authoritarianism while Congress stays – literally – out of Washington, refusing to act. ICE "agents" and American soldiers are deployed to invade American cities, terrorizing immigrants and anyone who looks like they might be an immigrant. The U.S. military is publicly killing people in boats on the mere suspicion that they might be bringing drugs into the country, without proof or trial or Congressional approval. The petty – but potentially catastrophic – punishment of Canada for running an ad critical of tariffs, the sycophantic fawning of Republican Congress members, the refusal to even engage in negotiations to end the federal shutdown, and the Supreme Court's capitulation to administrative overreach are finally convincing more and more Americans that this administration isn't just something we can wait out until the next election cycle.

It's becoming clear that there is not going to be a "return to normal" after this. Republicans are fantasizing about an end to elections that will free them from accountability to those who don't agree with them. White Christian nationalists are working to build a 1950s America where alternative views can be dismissed or punished, and history can be molded into the shape of inevitable domination.

I wonder if this trip has been a bit of our own fantasy of "normality" – planned before Trump took office, but taking us through an America that is forever changed. We've seen small towns empty and shuttered as the expected fall tourism season failed to materialize with the closing of nearby National Parks. We've driven through rural communities where the threatened closing of hospitals will leave residents without access to health care. We've driven on BLM roads rutted into impassibility because so many federal employees were fired even before the shutdown that there is no one to maintain them. And we've seen the anxiety in people's eyes as they anticipate their food benefits ending at the end of the month.

As we plan for our return home, we have realized that this will have to be our last big trip for the foreseeable future. We both feel a need to dig in and work for the America that needs to follow this period of our history – not a return to the way we were before, but a better nation, one that really stands for liberty and justice for all. I hope we'll see you in the trenches.

JAL Lake