let’s get this road on the show

Gateway Arch, St Louis, Missouri – foto by Smith

Lady wanted to attend the 38th Annual Rainbow Gathering in the Rocky Mountains north of Albuquerque, New Mexico. She’d first gone to the 2005 Gathering in West Virginia, and it had changed the way she thought and looked at herself – showed her she was too closed and negative.

It made her want to go again, so soon after we first met, we forgot about promoting the publication of my final issue of ArtCrimes and left the U.S. a month early so we could join the European annual gathering in North England in August 2006.

This meant we pretty much lost the entire $4,000 publishing price for ArtCrimes 21 because we wouldn’t be around to promote and sell it. But this wasn’t much of anything new because I had the uncapitalistic habit of paying 100% of the publication price myself, giving each contributor a free copy, and then giving away most the sellable copies. I lost $20,000 on 21 issues over 20 years. But ArtCrimes made my underground rep here and abroad, and it’s in the hands of thousands of artists world wide and in University collections, so it was money well used. It’s the greatest and perhaps most expensive calling card in the world.

England was my first experience with the Rainbow Tribe, and it was an unqualified disaster (except for the rabbits). A Dutch Rainbower had promised to loan us a tent and sleeping bags for the occasion but forgot. With backpacks far too heavy, we bused to Northern England and walked forever up tortuously steep hills to the high fields where they were camped. With no equipment we tried to sleep unprotected in the shit-filled sheep fields and I started freezing. I had no idea one could freeze in August, but the high hills get real cold. Some group took pity on me and let us into their tent, but I still went into hypothermia, shaking uncontrollably. Lady found some blankets and covered me with her body after I’d put on every piece of clothing I had in my pack.

We’d failed to get much of a welcome from the self-superior stand-offish European Tribe, had no equipment, were miserably cold, so we waited until first light when we could see to side-step the sheep shit and left. This part at least was magic for as we walked down gorgeous mountains in the rising dawn, we saw thousands of rabbits bouncing through the fields and running across the dirt road all around us.

We trained down to Burley-On-Warfdale and spent way too much for a week in a Bed & Breakfast. It was good, but not what we came for. At least there we got to walk the moors, which made me re-read Jane Austin’s Wuthering Heights with much greater appreciation.

So, understandably I was less than enthusiastic about driving 1,800 miles in 2.5 days, camping 2 days and driving 1,800 miles back in 2.5 days just to be with the Rainbow Tribe. Tried to tell her it was too fast, too long, and we’d be too tired to enjoy. Not that I thought there’d be much to enjoy – who cares what a bunch of old and faux hippies do? I say this having been with but not of the hippies in the late 60s, though I did like the hippies then and like the survivors even more now.

She was adamant, and I cannot deny her (even if I tried, I’d fail for she is rock and stone to my ethereal flow). So July 1st we jumped in the car and took 2-hour turns driving 70-90 miles per hour for 11-12 hours a day. First day got halfway across Oklahoma. Second to Santa Rosa New Mexico. Third day, 3-4 hours brought us to the camp at 9,000 feet in the midst of the Rocky Mountains.

This is not the way to travel, though hurtling across country at high speeds does have a certain Kerouacian cool madness, for as Jack Kerouac says, ‘The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”’

Will go into greater detail tomorrow, but the highlights of the first two days were the Gateway Arch across the Mississippi River in St Louis, Missouri (It stands 630 feet / 190 meters tall, and is 630 feet / 190 meters wide at its base, making it the tallest monument in the United States), the incredible jumbled dark painted cloud skies of Oklahoma, and Cadillac Ranch just outside Amarillo Texas.

Oklahoma – foto by Smith

The good part here was Lady had never seen how vast this country is, or what vistas there are. Oklahoma, Texas, and Colorado were amazing eye-openers to her – but it was New Mexico that was especially beautiful with its buttes, mesas, deserts of greens, reds, browns, and endless horizons.

Now I have to find a way to get her to the 4-corners (Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah), The North Dakota and Montana badlands, and the Grand Canyon.

Here are some fotos of Cadillac Ranch. Cadillac Ranch is (according to Wikipedia) “a public art installation and sculpture in Amarillo, Texas, U.S. It was created in 1974 by Chip Lord, Hudson Marquez and Doug Michels, who were a part of the art group Ant Farm, and it consists of what were (when originally installed during 1974) either older running used or junk Cadillac automobiles, representing a number of evolutions of the car line (most notably the birth and death of the defining feature of early Cadillacs; the tail fin) from 1949 to 1963, half-buried nose-first in the ground, at an angle corresponding to that of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. The piece is a statement about the paradoxical simultaneous American fascinations with both a “sense of place” — and roadside attractions, such as The Ranch itself — and the mobility and freedom of the automobile.”

When I saw Cadillac Ranch my first two times in the early 1980s, the cars were only minorly grafittied, you could still see most of the original car surfaces. Now they are totally buried under endless coatings of paint.

Cadillac Ranch, Amarillo Texas – fotos by Smith