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the avra valley dispatch: 10 May 2004 -- May's Four Letter Destination Number One: Taos
One afternoon in 1997 I decided to drive to the eastern Sierra. It was after dark by the time I got to Lee Vining but I had a vague recollection of the BLM map in my head and determined to camp out, went crashing through the sagebrush in the darkness, eventually found a pullout, and flopped out in the backseat of my rented Jeep, the smell of giant sagebrush permeating the vehicle. I awoke to snowcapped peaks in a sea of blue-green bushes.
On Friday night, it had been dark for hours before I reached the converted summer camp cabin ("Bearhead") I rented in the hills outside Taos, New Mexico but I could smell the sage. On Saturday, I awoke in a sea of giant sagebrush, surrounded by the Sangre de Cristo mountains, still dusted in snow. I was euphoric.
I'd been through Taos nearly a decade before and my only memories were of pinon pines and cottonwood trees and way too many picaresque adobe buildings for its own good. I'd forgotten that it looks a lot like the eastern Sierra. I miss only a few things about California, and the high plains area east of Yosemite is one of them.
I avoided the vortexes and the hum and the southwestern tourist art and expensive restaurants in Taos and instead holed up in a crazy little cabin and soaked up the sagebrush. I did more than that: I snipped a bunch of it and stuck it in a ziplock baggie and brought it home.
But back to the cabin. Generally I'm happy with dirt cheap motels -- the older the neon sign out front, the better. If I'm going to spend more than $30 a night for lodging I want unique. I want unique and funky and great little details and a memorable experience. The pictures I took testify to the visual and atmospheric appeal of the cabin, but get a load of the names that are scribbled on the walls:
Nico Vreeland
Thayer McClanahan
Seeton S. Stuart
Prescott Eddy
Juanquie Benevides
Gid Hixon
Chase Sutton
Randall Warden
Bebo Nelson
Wright Sigmund
Are these not just absolute kickass rockstar names?
In my next comic book, Nico Vreeland could totally be the lead signer for Laserjet 1000. And you know Gid Hixon will get the girl, riding off through the sagebrush to the snowcapped peaks in the sunset.
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Postscript, January 31 2005: I have received emails from "the" Gid Hixon and "the" Nico Vreeland, now grown up and surprised to find this li'l article. Nico is a short story writer (good second best to rockstar), and informs me that Thayer McClanahan had a small role in the film Rushmore and that Wright Sigmund survived a car bomb set by his sociopathic half-brother.
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