There is nothing like listening to The Mountain Goats, "All Hail West Texas" while driving in through West Texas.The flat lands become a blur through the window and the pavement radiates waves of heat, making the greenery and vanishing road look like a mild acid trip. The unknown never looked so strange and appealing as we progressed 80 miles full speed ahead, a/c blasting, cooling the sun's hot rays' through the window. I hear, "The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton" while driving past Denton, TX. I see the a strange shaped water tower with a painted Texas state flag, the lone star glistening under the hot, red summer sun with the 6 letters, painted in a curvy black faux cursive.
D -E-N-T-O-N resonates and reverberates between my car and the road, in- sync with the music. Oversized trucks whiz pass, passengers peer down from above, stunting my in speed and, what it feels like, my growth and comfort.
But, before I can write about this, I need to take you back a few days. Two days. Here, I learned what nothing was. Nothing is Wyoming. Nothing, I discovered, is absolutely beautiful.
The day started off with hella coffee and the thinest bacon I've ever experienced in a hotel lobby. My bikes failed to fit on my bike rack and Briana and I spent an hour yelling, "Penis Penis Penis" in an effort to try and fit the bikes on their rack. Penis was us trying to defy the male constructs we felt had designed the bike rack. It took us an hour before we figured it out, it was already 85 degrees in Billings. It was hot standing on the black pavement lifting bikes. We had a long day ahead of us, ending in Denver.
Once on the road, it then progressed with more Sinclair as we ventured to Wyoming. Once here, around 9:30 am, we hear something on the radio, "Scientist believe that there were once furry life forms, much like people on the moon. If this is true, why is evolution still an argument? Clearly this means that evolution can be disproved." I am in another world. A world where people believe that furry people existed. On the moon. A world that is backwards. A world that is still in the border of America. I world that votes for the same President I do. I am baffled. I realize America has a plethora of demographics and I don't understand how one government can cohesively meet all their needs. Here, I realize, at the core, I am conservative, in theory. I am ok with this. Then, later, we hear both a commercial for male vasectomies and a commercial for a male lubricant. We then discover that male's chafe their genitals, because they wear jeans, because they are cowboys, and thus, need lube to make walking more comfortable as their sweaty balls rub against their legs. How Masculine.
Another world.
Wyoming is filled with nothing but rolling hills and sagebrush. The trees become far and few in-between. Often times, there are natural occurring rock formations, that look like the scenery from Jurassic Park. Sometimes, on these rocks we see a lonely tree struggling to survive with tangled roots. There are vast distances with nothing. I mean, just open, barren land. It is fucking beautiful. It is rural society at it's backward finest. Wyoming is wonderful to see. It is pristine and the landscape appears to be timeless. I picture it looking like this 200 years ago. I think about the way cities age vs. the way natural landscapes age. I realize the differences in the idea of time. (i.e- Geological time vs. human time)
Soon we reach Colorado. It is much like Wyoming. We drive. Finally we reach Denver. Denver is astounding. Not only do I pass through my first toll bridge-- and become confused-- I see endless sprawls of suburbia. I find this appalling. With so much space to expand and a thriving economy for most of the 90's, Denver's subdivisions of housing developments boomed and thus, you see areas that stretch for a mile or so of the exact same house, over and over again. I already can tell I don't feel at ease with Denver. However, the Rockies, well, the Rockies are a sight to be seen. They tower above the flat landscape, so high the clouds flirt with them by gently touching their soft edges to the tips of their pointy, young outlines. Here, the Earth touches the sky and the sky flirts and touches the Earth. I realize these are the last mountains I will see for several months. I savor my last glimpses of towering nature and its provable size and power.
If you want to know about where I stayed that night, please ask. I cannot write about it effectively on the public sphere. We stayed with my friends family and because I don't want to put them out there on the endless abyss of cyberspace I won't. Just know it was the most American thing I experienced. If Wyoming's untouched nature, backwards logic and masculine identities were not enough America, this family took to a whole new level.
We ate a delicious home cooked meal, found out the jack rabbits are Colorado's squirrels (and SO CUTE!).
That night, I fell asleep, realizing half our trip was over. I shoved aside any lingering regrets I had about leaving as I fell asleep in a 12 year old's bed, decorated completely, in pink and brown "Roxy" decor with a lingering smell of cheap bath & body work's peach body spray.
