Big Bend Gazette :: Thumb Notes, a Hitchhiker’s Journal, Part 2: Silver Towers and Two Tones of Death

Chilly and on the road before the sun...a ranch-hand comes by within the half hour...one mile further down the road...hey, a mile’s a mile and makes me smile...

Never turn down a ride unless you think it will put you in a disadvantageous spot for thumbin.” This one put me in a better spot and it was in fact a most grand place to be: a valley between hills of pine and aspen (Rio Grande National Forest) in the foothills of the San Juan Mountains. Wolf Creek can be heard gurgling nearby.

Not a bad place to wait for SEVEN HOURS....Okay, no place is really so great that you want to hang next the road for seven hours.

A couple vehicles pass every few minutes and I realize that 50 percent of these are going to this ranch. The others are rich tourists – the rarest of rides ever, which is why I’ve never gotten one, and why I begin to fear that this will become known as “The One Mile Day.”

The steam loco lumbers through this idyllic scape as I arrange bits of garbage found along the road into an art class collage. I write in my journal. I eat most of my snacks. I wave at all the ranchers going in and out of the ranch gate.

Always, I try to be courteous to people who pass by; it’s just a general rule on the road if I am to have a good feeling out there. Well, I guess it’s just a rule in general that many of us forget. Treat others as you would treat yourself, right? This isn’t a kind of permission to walk up to people and scratch them in secret places.

A ranch woman comes by at one point and gives me a couple liters of water. She sensed I was low.

During this great time of contemplation I recall my very first attempt to hitch in the United States. That was a time of many firsts for me: sleeping in a clump of trees next to an interstate, walking up to strangers in a gas station to ask them for rides, standing at a truck stop with a sign. I began in Terlingua, TX where I live and after a few rides and a couple nights of awkward sleep, I found myself in Las Cruces, NM (where I was expected to be sacrificed). I waited most of the day near a truck stop and hardly a soul would look beyond their stinking cabs.

Truckers have been removed from the loop by their employers, who have deemed that it is a liability to give anyone (even their own relatives) a ride. Condemned to long lonely roads, some of them get the fifty-mile stare. But one trucker was not just staring straight ahead; he was staring at me with a disapproving expression. As he pulled up to the stop sign before exiting the truckstop grounds, he gave me the “Scram, Kid!” gesture.

I flipped him off.

He did not like that. His door opened and he charged out with a bowie knife, drawling “I’ll cutcha good, boy!”

I took a bus the rest of the way (which, as it turns out, may not be any safer). It’s a wonder I ever took my thumb back out on that old black ribbon, but I have since then never bothered to express anything but happiness and a smile to a driver who snubs or mocks me. People change for the worst when they are submitted to stress behind the wheel (or a desk, for that matter). It’s not worth risking anything by reacting to their sometimes unreasonable emotions.

So, after seven hours, you can imagine my happiness at finally getting lifted! Even riding up curvy mountain roads in the cramped dog-smelling back of a pick-up with a topper is a joy. And the two women up front give me Ritz crackers, a can of tuna, and a can of pear halves (which I carried on the rest of my trip!).

I give them a couple of photos I’d shot in Terlingua. They leave me at the mountain pass, over ten-thousand feet high. Here, waiting for me, are some black flies, and the hungrier cousins of mosquitoes that chased me the previous day. So I hang out for a couple hours performing a complex dance of keeping mosquitoes and flies off me while trying not to look insane when a car passes.

My bug ballet ends when a seventh-generation rancher picks me up – in his pick-up, of course. He and five other ranchers lease mountain pastures from the national forest. He has about 300 head and hires a cowboy to ride up into the wilds and check on them and move the herd regularly.

We drink a couple of cheap aluminum beers on the road to Antonito. Once we arrived in town, he says he wants to show me something. He turns off the main road and takes a couple of side streets. Two silver towers loom ahead – the dream of a Vietnam Vet encased in steel cans and tinfoil, inspired by Jesus, Agent Orange, the hatred of alcohol, and the elevation of Mary-Jane….

I escape Antonito in a half-hour. (My friend Chief warned me that he had been stuck in Antonito for two days once trying to hitch outta there in a snowstorm.)

A guy named Roman takes me to Romeo. He went from banker to social worker a couple years back. A more wholesome transformation I could not imagine. Roman has hitchhiked a lot in his time, too.

On the way, I ask him which of two routes I should take. He says, “This one would be faster, but the other way leads to Crestone, where they’re having a music festival this weekend.” Crestone, here I come!!!

I imagine that I can show up at sunset and volunteer to help during the festival – pick up trash, take tickets, help set stuff up, whatever. That way I can get in for free and enjoy a few days of good music. The festival is to begin tomorrow and I think maybe, just maybe, I can make it there by sundown.

Jack Dempsey stands in the late afternoon sun with a fighter’s stance, and I with mine, hoping for the best. Connected with a ride before 15 rounds of the clock – a Mexican dude and his family, another breezy trip in the back of a pick-up. They take me to Rd. 17 North out of Alamosa. I am now within 49 miles of Crestone and the music festival grounds. The afternoon is quickly waning, and with it, the likelihood of volunteering for the music fest.

Two shades of crap brown later, a 1980 Ford Club Wagon van from a mother’s nightmare smokes up to my side of the road. When I see the creature inside and smell the old wet cigarette smoke oozing out, I pause: is it worth it? A silly old music festival? The sliding door isn’t cooperating with my hand. Is my hand trying to tell me something with its clumsy fumbling or is it just the piece-of-shit 80’s Ford van door?

Moments like these really make or break a trip. The thing inside is toothless and wears a dirty white undershirt. To ride or not to ride? Look into the eyes of that thing and ask it where it’s going. A few moments of conversation can tell you lots.... usually.

Are my defenses dulled by tired miles and desperation? The van door rolls down the track. The seat hits my back. That old Ford grumbles, then purrs. No looking back....

When he’s not traveling, artist Mark Kneeskern lives in Terlingua, where he enjoys all sorts of sports: tossing rattlesnakes, hurdling cactus, counting stars, and watching T.V. (Turkey Vultures).

ABove: In Antonito, Colorado, “the dream of a Vietnam Vet encased in steel cans and tinfoil, inspired by Jesus, Agent Orange, the hatred of alcohol, and the elevation of Mary-Jane….”