I started out from Williams, AZ and made it to Santa Rosa, so I drove through a great deal of New Mexico on I-40. I feel almost as though I have some kind of ratchet mechanism in my psyche that is systematically rewinding my experience, perhaps to retrack it or something like that so I can wind it up again. I am experiencing last summer in something like reverse at any rate. Western New Mexico is beautiful, without a doubt, and its topography is certainly striking. But it also looks pretty alien to me. It is exciting, and I could stay there, but it certainly doesn’t spark anything like the response I felt when I got east of Albuquerque and saw the end of the desert and the start of the plains. I hadn’t seen that sight since I had left eastern Wyoming last summer. It made me very happy to see it, and to feel confirmed that I was headed east.

So, after this summer, I can try it all again, and drive back west, and maybe do it better this time :S.