Tall Flowers and Waiting Rocks

Texas Canyon is really the Texas mountains, just east of Tucson.  Who knows?

Where the road comes closest and highest, there is a stop for gawkers, such as I.

If it is not the grandest sight on the road most commonly taken toward Tucson, from the east, it is at least among them.  Truth, and consideration, be told, there are beautiful sights everywhere in this huge land.

The rich soil of Iowa is deep, and when the ordinary rains come, nothing seems quite so green and promising for life.  A political reporter once said that Iowa had all the geographical interest of a rumpled bed, but he was a reporter who could not see that he was standing on one of the best examples of why this has been called, "breadbasket for the world".  Iowa has conserved its soil, and its religious values, and political opinions.  They mow the roadside for those of us who pass by.

Nebraska, along Interstate 89, never strays far from the Platte River, and because the land is low and flat, there are ponds everywhere, created by the road builders who needed fill to raise the roadbed above high tide.  The pastures are cattle heaven.

We drove south from Brush, Colorado, through largely unpopulated, rolling cattle land.  "You will drive through a place," a proud young Coloradan told us, "where you can see grassland for twenty miles."  He had a good idea, but obviously was near-sighted.  It was lonely, and lovely.

And then, suddenly, the hills and forestland of northern New Mexico captured us, and led us to Sante Fe.  In a town called, "Rat" (Raton), we sat in the lobby of what once was a hotel, and had a fine lunch, served by a delightful woman who had returned home to her family, and to raise her own family.  "Ahh!", we said, and looked up at the wooded hillside, again.

There is something grand about following the Rio Grande River south from Albuquerque.  "The Spanish came up this river," we thought, "and found water, and founded cities, and lost their horses to the Apaches, who were there first.  They are all there now, the Spanish, the Mexicans, the cities, the horses, and the Apaches.  They have all left their mark.  But it is the Rio Grande that most endures.  It moseys south, and east, becoming the border between the Old and the New Mexicos, and Texas, all the way to the Gulf.

There is great beauty everywhere, and perhaps most where the conditions are difficult.  Lovely flowers wait, sometimes for years, for a little rain, and then stand tall, next to the waiting rocks.

"Ahh!", we thought, again.  And again.