Volume 3, Issue 14
July 5 - July 18, 2001

A SIMPLE ASSIGNMENT BECOMES A SUMMER ROAD TRIP ADVENTURE

By Andrew Wells

I wish that they'd swoop down in a country lane
Late at night when I'm driving...
I'm all right ... I'm just uptight ...
Radiohead, "Subterranean Homesick Alien"

Sunday. 5:20 am
The earth had spun enough to turn the horizon red. The sky in the east looked like the Russians had at long last fired their missiles and missed. The nuclear holocaust tore across the eastern plains but Cheyenne Mountain was still standing, thank God. I knew this because I saw the antennas up top and that's all I cared about. The sun kept rising and I drove north along I-25 at a steady 75 mph on cruise control. How could it come to this?

I was relieved to be in Colorado Springs.

Under normal circumstances, I am not the heap of a man who sat in a rank bucket seat, ankles crossed, skin crawling, barking random obscenity to no one on a Sunday morning. All of it: nothing made sense. I know that now. Less than 21 hours before, I had been driving south on this same highway, full of goodwill and blueberry muffin. My destination, my purpose, was a story of the Salida Art Walk, a leisurely affair in a historic, charming mountain town. But now the ordeal seemed like a leisurely scrape down a blackboard. I had to grin and bear it, while fate, dumb luck, whatever, smashed my face against the slate and used my teeth to grind harder. I do not believe in the God that sustains Colorado Springs -- city of Air Force compounds, evangelical office parks and 67 Ruby Tuesdays -- but at the time, in my pitiful state, I could not bear to think my wretched, wonderful journey had meant nothing.

OMINOUS U-TURN

Saturday. 9 am
There is no way to mistake or ignore the noise of a car crash. My case of obsessive-compulsive disorder, though relatively mild, will sometimes have me halt or backtrack at the possibility that I sideswiped a dumpster or crushed some poor cat. It was a sure thing when I drove into the metal post flanking the drive-thru ATM. I heard the impact wrench the seams which popped the cheap rivets in the front bumper. The violence was considerable; like letting the clutch loose on an engine in gear at a standstill. I was relieved to see the dent was minor; really just paint rubbed off an undamaged post. This was an inconvenience, I thought, not an omen. Cash yanked and I was southbound on I-25 with a full tank 20 minutes later.

I should have been feeling good, and I was. This would be the first true road trip taken in my Accord, which I had bought in the winter. It was a manual -- the only way to go. I had long thought a good trip would be up to Salida. A psychologist once told me Salida's a chill mountain town with a lot of well-read, laid-back hippies, mountain athletes and artists. The psychologist could pass for Francis Ford Coppola --just as literate, only less delicate and snooty. Like Coppola with Apocalypse Now, this psychologist possessed an authority that made outlandish statements sensible. He wanted to retire to Salida, as it seemed like a good place to live. This is true. I had been up and back on scouting day trips the last weekend. The Art Walk itself is an intriguing event because it actually shows artists from the place the festival is named for.

This was why I felt more content than queasy as I drove through Colorado Springs: I was on my way to see the actual Art Walk, with most of the legwork and interviews having been finished the week before. I could take things easy, jot token observations and eat artisan cheese.

But really, the drive was the thing. I had the scenery and the radio stations.

Past Castle Rock, KTCL and KUVO fade out. Hitting Colorado Springs means an FM battleground pitting Limp Bizkit against Jesus. Jesus has the upper hand with a daunting number of stations that gurgle acoustic guitar and Michael W. Smith keyboards that sound like Orange Drink that watery swill supplied by McDonald's to bake sales and field days. Pour that syrupy goodness into your ears. I took the Nevada exit, hit the canyonlands of Highway 115, and Nature cut off Amy Grant's broadcast.

As I approached Florence, the land opened up into a wide valley, with scrub for vegetation. This terrain is good for FM signals, and the country came in loud and clear. The landscape is close to ideal for man hunts. Florence hosts a couple prisons, including the federal supermax facility. This state-of-the-art complex is where the Unabomber will die slowly. The prison structure itself looks like it's made from Legos all right angles. I wanted to hear Johnny Cash but Faith Hill just warbled in electronic distortion.

Canyon City's main drag had me cruise past a Holiday Inn Express and the Colorado Prison Museum, where you can sit in a real gas chamber. The museum is on the grounds of the working medium-security Colorado Territorial Prison (that's three prisons visible just from the road) which uses a rocky ridge for a second rear wall. This prison is much more organic: it works with the land rather than in spite of it. Ironically, it is an old facility, with a vintage Shawshank vibe. For a high school law class field trip, I got to meet some of the residents. Awhite collar crook showed me where he was stabbed through the forearm with a toothbrush shiv and a man who strangled his wife cracked jokes.

Moving past Canyon City, leaving the human misery of prisons and tourist traps hawking wooden "chainsaw art" bears, I drove into mountain passes and the radio died again. The turns in the road were sharp and smooth. It was good fun to roll down the windows and listen to the tires squeal on corners. The drive through the ravines and valleys between Canyon City and Salida is the longest leg of the trip, but I thought little of it then.

I drove into the small town of Howard, and Rush Limbaugh came on. Rush said that he wasn't being racist, but ... If you take out the black vote from the presidential election, because it's so "monolithic," you will see that George W. Bush won the popular vote.

GONE WALKABOUT

Salida is the Aspen where Kurt-n-Goldie never descended from up on high, although this may change. Aspen has the police drive Saabs, which is like putting Charles Bronson in a ribbed, lycra, V-neck t-shirt. No such confusion in Salida. Most signs in Salida tell you to yield, not stop. A gargoyle leers from the top of a real estate office and the tavern sells Coors in a can and nothing on tap. The Arkansas river flows between down-town and Tenderfoot Mountain, a cone-shaped volcanic landform with a spiraling stripe of road to its peak for the tourists.

"About Salida," said art-tic-u-la-tion gallery partner and artist Sally Paschall, "it's a human scale. The scale's right. The distance between the buildings is correct."

That's true. When I reached the summit of Tenderfoot the week before, I took out my city map and flipped it upside down. The map was in perfect scale and alignment to the buildings below me. I could pick out the exact locations of art galleries by sight alone.

I walked about this charming town talking with residents for a story that, unbeknownst to any of us, would not survive. Visiting the Chris Byars Gallery, I met several area artists, including Felix Voltsinger and Jim Madden. Voltsinger now lives in a "little mountain cabin in the wilderness," which he said is ideal because he has no utilities like running water. A decade before the fall of the Iron Curtain, he came to America and now paints landscapes and van Dyck-style portraiture.

"Twenty years ago, when I came to the United States, you would tell anyone you were from Russia, people would walk away," Voltsinger said. "And now, you're Russian, you're not even a novelty."

"So, you like the capitalistic, trivialistic culture?" asked Madden of our New World.

"Ahh," replied Voltsinger. "You mean, image-over-substance, greedy, money-grubbing...."

"Shitty?"

"I love it!" Voltsinger laughed.

Yes, the story was dead. Little did I know how parts of the corpse would be revived with a misshapen new purpose. I was ignorant of the fate before me, and this was the only thing that kept me going. Interviews finished, ambiance noted, and now I had no professional reason for staying.

SENSE AND SENSIBILITY

But I stuck around as the sun went down. There were plenty of gallery receptions with free wine and organic sun dried tomato canapés with mango salsa and I hadn't eaten dinner. I stopped by a new gallery which wasn't on the Art Walk but was owned by Marcy Misata, who also owns Soho, one of the more prominent galleries in town. Juliana was working at this annex. Juliana paints and works in Salida in the summer and spends the rest of year in New York City studying under painter Knox Martin. Juliana started talking about a massive electronic music festival down at Great Sand Dunes National Monument.

"That's what you should be covering now," Juliana said.

I wasn't drunk. Three plastic cups of wine over a two hour period is hardly tipsy. My capacity for sound reasoning was never stronger (although there are many who can argue convincingly that such a statement is absolutely meaningless). It was getting late. There were taped conversations to transcribe, deadlines looming and a taxing three hour drive I had never made at night. Making the drive south to the dunes was at least another hour and a half. Then there was the return. The festival trip isn't sensible, I thought, and I know it.

I wandered Salida an hour more on the off chance that I would run into the Go-Go photographer. I thought, maybe we could talk and coordinate a theme for both the written and visual aspects of the story.

The festival trip isn't sensible. While there had been rumors of a man with a telephoto Pentax setup making rounds about the galleries, I never saw anyone like this. From a message left at my home that Saturday evening, I would discover the photographer didn't arrive until the day after I left.

The festival trip isn't sensible.

At one time I wanted to be a pro BMX rider. I still like skate parks and I spent 20 minutes watching kids swoop in lazy arcs around the bottom of Salida's custom skate pool.

Getting to my car, I drove out of the downtown Salida, moving steadily through the yield signs, heading towards the Highway 291 which would take me to the junction with Highway 285 and back to Denver.

... Isn't sensible...

UP TO NO GOOD: ELEVATION 7,613

At a stop sign I turned back and got directions to Alamosa, the route to the 5th Annual Summer Solstice Electronic Festival. Mostly I was curious for a new experience. I like electronic music. Although I had never done the rave scene, I enjoyed two rave/club movies Human Traffic and Groove and I own a movie with a rave sort of in it, Go. This is the new thing that the young people do today and I'm a young person, I told myself. The sun had set and I turned on the headlights, which were, at that point, still functioning.

Highway 17 between Highway 285 and Alamosa is one of the straightest stretches of highway in Colorado. It is almost the length of your thumb when you set it next to the line on a map. Highway 17 is straight because it's built on the floor of a massive valley over 7,500 feet above sea level. The scope of such a valley should initially make you gape or you're not paying attention. Space this open at this elevation is like standing on the field of a football stadium propped between the towers of the World Trade Center. Only more so.

One of the reasons I piss off artists I interview is I immediately make comparisons of their work to that of famous artists that seem similar to me. "Ah! I see Twombly here!" I blurt. The artist then looks at me like I'd just hit on their mother at their father's funeral. One painter graciously explained to me that such declarations are not necessarily offensive, but they can be if I cite the wrong individual to that particular artist. I caught this vulgar habit from film, where name-dropping Scorsese on a struggling filmmaker is like dropping crack into a lab rat's cage. I make film comparisons incessantly in conversation and in my stream of thought. And as I dropped into the black valley on a narrow span of road dashed with lurid yellow, Lost Highway began rolling in Vistavision. David Lynch is one of seven people making art in Hollywood today, and his contorted, visionary road movie is a fitting parallel for my next nine hours.

Driving straight through the dark, after passing two hitchhikers, I could only gauge progress by time and odometer, as there were few landmarks visible: a random gas station and a steady, dark ridge of mountains far off to the sides. I never looked at my mileage until the very end, but the festival appeared sooner than I had expected. The bonfires and the strobe lights were set near tents and from the road the site struck me as some sort of wayward carnival. I turned where a green alien, nailed to a stake, was pointing.

I paid my entry fee and drove down a hooked dirt road. Getting out of the car, I attempted to pinpoint where the 4/4 beats and the loopy bass thumps were coming from. I walked toward the lights, passing cars disarrayed like a thousand compass needles with as many magnetic norths and campfires shrouded behind camping tents. Police and paramedics stood by their vehicles, but there wasn't much for them to do.

The Electronic Festival was held on a failed cattle ranch turned UFO observation outpost. A pre-fab geodesic dome actually a giftshop selling plastic alien trinkets and close encounter paper-backs is surrounded by an extensive, eight-foot-tall platform of metal framework and grating. It was open for business. Four event tents each held DJs hovering over turntables and instrument panels, any further technical description of which will make me seem as ignorant as I am.

The groups of revelers, few over 25 years old, were drawn up in semi-circles around each tent, with the bold ones dancing in the direct blast of the speakers. To me, electronic dancing is strange and fresh. Some of moves seem to combine the Robot with a Bruce Lee fist assault elaborate and deliberate flourishes of the hands, arms, torso, the whole flippin' body. The dancing may be friendly, but it is rarely sexual. The singular focus of the bump-n-grind is replaced by trance-like introspection or oblivion. Perhaps this was why the numerous images of Buddha on display, statues and silhouettes printed on banners, seemed as natural by the DJ stations as they would in a Tibetan shrine.

I walked over to a campfire under smoke, lasers and stars. A woman through half of her 30s walked up to me. Her button-down shirt was knotted at midriff, revealing what looked like a ragged Caesarean scar.

"See that bright one up there?" she asked, pointing into the sky.

"The North Star," I guessed without inquiry.

"Mars. It's very close right now," she said. We made a little awkward dialogue and then she walked off. A fire breather spewed lamp oil over a torch, but I didn't feel the heat.

I promised myself to leave on the hour for two hours, until I did at 1 am. By then I knew that if collage is art, then so is electronica.

ALL ROADS LEAD TO 7-11

For legal reasons, I wish to state that, contrary to any reasonable assumptions the reader might make, I was not under the influence of any illicit substance during the period of this narrative. Nor did I use any legal drugs, such as caffeine, taurine or moderate amounts of alcohol, in an illicit or irresponsible manner.

I drove fast on cruise control behind a lighted semi-trailer. Then I filled up my tank alone at an automated gas pump. A deer stopped short on the road in front of my car outside Poncha Springs. I felt apprehension about the drive ahead of me. I was pretty far out.

Here's another reason why Salida is cool: the town gets a radio station which plays more than two singles from Radiohead's ok computer. I was pleased to hear "Subterranean Homesick Alien" begin. The song struck me as an omen, because ever since I got the album, I thought the chorus was "I'm tired." As I came to the turn for Salida I decided it would be best to find a motel for the night.

After I looked up the lyrics to "Alien" on the Internet for this article, I was reminded how life is really high-grade literature.

There were no vacancies in Salida. Or, "in a hundred-mile radius, probably," said one clerk.

It was after 2 am and I was getting very nervous. I asked why.

"Summertime," she said wearily. "Sorry."

After I saw the Woodland Motel was full, I drove downtown, past the only other vehicle on 1st Street a police SUV parked by the sidewalk. I stopped and backed up to the police officer's side. We both rolled down our windows.

"I'm looking for a motel to stay for the night," I said. "Where do I go?"

"I was going to stop you anyway," said the policeman.

I don't know if I said anything. "Do you know you've got a headlight out?" he asked me.

I didn't. Did the ATM post do it? Just a hit and run at a bank, officer. Can I go to bed now? Grip your hands on the wheel, man, I thought. Act naive and earnest. Shit! The rave stamp is on the wrist near him!

He told me there were lots of motels out on the main commercial drag.

There are, but none had a room. I gazed down the lines of staggered red neon NO's on either side of Highway 50. Desperation. I almost tracked down the police officer to ask if I might spend the night at his office.

Salida is also cool because of the two guys who work between seven and eleven at 7- 11. I parked to see that the dent was on the opposite side of the dead headlight. Nothing makes sense. I walked inside and met the middle-aged Randal and Dante in a clean, well-lit place. We conferred, we called the Buena Vista Super 8 and Best Western. No dice.

"You could sleep in the WalMart parking lot," said the one who sounded New Jersey. "I know some cops and they don't bother people there."

Sleep in my car: windows down, freeze; windows up, suffocation and/ or heat-stroke come morning. Obsessive-compulsive, remember?

I bought and slammed two Red Bulls. They wished me luck. "Just watch out for the deer," said New Jersey.

I didn't feel so tired. After all, I got the lyrics wrong.

For the next several hours I descended into a brutal, paranoid nightmare montage David Lynch doing his thing. Try ignoring glaring white sequences of guard rail reflectors without missing the dazzling retina of a deer in the headlight. While I drove under the speed limit, a stag or doe at 45 mph can still mess everything on impact. By my sixth encounter, I was against all bag limits.

"Blast the fuckers!" I bellowed. "Fully automatic, full-metal jacket bursts from 40-round banana clips!" I was ranting in stark terror about lethal weapons and goddamned wildlife. See why I felt so good in the Springs?

RED DAWN WITH A BUMPER LIKE MISSISSIPPI FLYPAPER

Then I got lost in the dark and ended up in Pueblo. Don't ever do that. The sun made a hellish vision of a flat horizon with black silos and a Winnebago dealership. Straight on through to Colorado Springs. The radio preacher went off on materialism. I would soon reach Highlands Ranch and Park Meadows. Oh joy.

photos by Sean Hartgrove