17 years of digging through the American dirt, primarily the southwest. I have followed stories, personas, vague clues. Pre-Google maps and post-Google maps. Post road-trip companion. I have been to the ancient world as well, as an observer, discovering nothing but appreciating all.
The photo above is flotsam and jetsam at a place called Canyon Diablo. The initial town, a violent abhorrence at the end of the growing railroad, 1880. Dried up and blew away, mostly, within 2 years. Some settlers and buildings lingered on for decades as an important rail stop. Now no humans reside there, aside from curious Nuevo-explorers like myself. The buildings that stood are piles of stone now, littered with old rusted metal cans and shattered glass. I have found artifacts from a canyon side home dating to the 1950s, nothing newer. So, nearly 70 years have passed since anyone made it their backdrop.
In the 17 years since I first visited these ruins, with a friend that himself no longer walks the earth, I have seen this abandoned old place collapse into a greater decay. I’ll spare you the metaphor that this makes for life itself. I can’t help but feel, however, that I am to many as these ruins are to the progress of time. That’s the damnable misery of life, I suppose.
I have no personal connection to this old town, aside from sharing its first fall upon my eyes with a friend I miss. Yet I discover, as every stone falls from the broken wall... as every rusted can tumbles across the plain in the wind... as every footprint I leave is washed away by the rain... so too is my vivid memory eroded. My friends don’t care about these places in the same way. I don’t even know why I do. But I still enjoy my strange mornings, meandering the forgotten streets, stepping over the timbers akimbo, strolling unknowing over many a wicked man’s earned grave. I’ll probably linger here longer than the spirits that built it and fell here.
