Inspired by the Adventures of Men
I pulled into Truth or Consequences, New Mexico on a Sunday morning in early spring. I was en route to the Four Corners area from Big Bend National Park and it was nearing my bedtime.
You see, I’d recently read William Least Heat Moon’s Blue Highways and Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire was my personal anthem, so I knew enough to keep to the back roads if I wanted to see the real America that commercialization forces you to miss.
I wanted to see real life. I wanted to feel the wind on my face, be anonymous, take in the calm, the quiet, the freedom.
They weren’t exactly adventure books, but they did contain cautionary tales about what is at stake when The Man takes over. They were also not necessarily written for women and I soon realized I had a different kind of The Man to contend with.
The idea of sticking to back roads is dreamy, but, most unfortunately, impractical for a naïve young woman travelling alone without proper camping gear or enough money for hotel rooms along the way. This had less to do with my naiveté and more to do with the behavior of others, but it did inform a lot of my decisions.
I had to get creative and so I worked out a few solutions like:
Sleeping in well-lit truck stop parking lots.
This was only available to me if I happened to be travelling on a major artery connecting the cities that needed what those truckers were hauling, which was not always ideal, but sometimes necessary.
I figured they would have the highest concentration of dads out of anywhere else and that made me feel safer. Fortunately I didn’t have to test whether or not this was a valid conclusion, but I generally slept well, had 24 hour access to snacks and bathrooms and, if I was lucky, a little arcade with Area 51. My long, snowy night just after the Continental Divide was made more bearable by this welcomed distraction. That and pizza.
Parking lots of 24 hour stores,
which could have too much or not enough action to feel safe. I reserved this option for when my other choice was to die in a fiery crash because I couldn’t keep my eyes open. There were too many downsides to make this a habit, but the upside was fresh-ish coffee right when I woke up.
Church parking lots,
where I’d once woken to a sweet concerned person offering help and then I had to shamefully admit my privilege, deny their help and then spend the rest of the driving day wondering what business I had, what good I was doing.
Teeny tiny backroad rest stops
with an overflowing garbage can, maybe a port-a-potty and probably a reputation that I hadn’t caught wind of, but could do my best guessing.
I tried resting at one in Texas somewhere. It was late afternoon, but even with my hoodie pulled up to hide my sex and potential “weakness,” a sheet pinned between the door and the visor and an open pocket knife in the seat next to me, I didn’t feel quite safe enough to sleep soundly. I never tried again.
Beyond that, I was confined to snoozing the mornings away, usually at a small public park, preferably just after dawn. If I could get my car to a nice shady area and prop open a book, most folks would think I was simply reading. This was really my preferred way to rest, although the long distance night driving was beginning to take it’s toll.
After parking on N. Broadway Street, I decided to have a quick walk before searching for The Perfect Spot. A store front church congregation had arrived and settled in and I took note of a diner to visit after my rest. Some posh hot spring boutique hotels lined another street, but I knew I’d have to wait to visit those another time, in another life.
I eventually found myself at a park dedicated to Ralph Edwards, the host of a radio quiz show called Truth or Consequences after which Truth or Consequences (neé Hot Springs) is named. A contest was held in 1950 which gave the first town to change its name the honor of hosting their 10 year anniversary program. Go ahead and scoff, I know I did, but I wouldn’t have followed the signs without the intrigue. Joke’s on us.
It was a quiet little park with some very appealing, out-of-the-way parking spaces that would be perfect for a long, uninterrupted nap and I was delighted/exhausted.
“Do you know what you’re looking at?” asked a low, tight voice from behind me. I turned to see an elderly man with thickly lensed glasses and a mesh hat resting carefully on top of his balding head.
“Pardon?” I kept a big smile on and tried imagine that I had recently rested and bathed and that I didn’t look like a scrubby zombie sent to eat the locals.
“That’s The Rio Grand-ee right there.”
He pointed to the river nearby and I was glad of it as I hadn’t paid much attention to my natural surroundings — I’d planned on caring about nature after sleeping.
“And that up there, that’s Elephant Butte. My wife and I take the camper up there.”
Of course he knew I wasn’t from there and was keen on sharing his part of the world with me. I, on the other hand, could feel the last of my gas station coffee slowly dissipate, which would require an immediate fix or an immediate place to crash. My car was now blocks and blocks away, no coffee place was open just yet and my well-intentioned welcoming committee had a ways to go, so I had to dig in and learn a thing or two.
And I almost did. He was a wealth of local and prehistoric knowledge, had grown up in the area and even had some advice on where to grab lunch later. I tried desperately to hang on to the richest nuggets of wisdom, the ones least likely to be in my dated guide books, but my tired brain couldn’t keep those secrets.
Finally, he was winding down and had spent enough time talking to me that I was reasured that he didn’t think I was looking for new victims.
And then he asked,
“Do you do any fooling around?”
I snapped back to fully awake and said, with some shock, but more confusion, “No. No I don’t.”
“Oh, ’cause you’re not too bad looking,” he continued, as the morning sun crept up and up behind his head, glowing through his elderly ears like red, blood-vesseled batwings.
“No thank you.” I said as my confusion slowly morphed to disappointment.
I spun on my heels and walked briskly back to my car.
Of course I couldn’t go back to The Perfect Spot, my imagined safe haven now mired in perversion, muddied by certain scandal, but I was no longer tired.
I nervously checked and rechecked my rearview mirror as I headed west out of town and toward the Gila Mountains. Something told me I’d be safer in three million acres of wilderness than in the tiny park named after a game show host, manned by an elderly local who was looking for young, albeit tired, transient love.
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