Day 5-6: The Desert Spirit Journey is Complete

The stretch of continent between the eastern end of the Grand Canyon and the north central side of Austin is marked by nothing. Miles and miles of sand, some rocks, and shrubs. And of course it's here that we learn the true meaning behind the trip.

My dad and I are both the same person and very different at the same time. Stubborn, easy going, anxious, thorough, sensitive, stoic, adventurous, and cautious simultaneously in different directions so that we've learned to just be silent to let the other one take this one when differences may arise. We know that before long, we'll be in that moment of perfect agreement and nothing else will matter. At one point it took an old Hopi wise man to show us the way. Even though, he looked to be in mid thirties and was born in Riverside, California, his informal tour of the old village he lived in now interested us both greatly. History and architecture, Yes! The oldest existing continually inhabited settlement in America, to be exact, and now just a collection of crumbling stone huts with old residents not far removed from the original inhabitants. No pictures or brochures, and barely a stop, but amazing.

One of the few other stops took us to Loving, New Mexico, again in the middle of the desert. My grandmother, my dad's-mother-in-law, was married here at this church back around the late-nineties to her high school sweetheart, Sonny. It was an amazing happy time in her life, and in a time when I was just beginning to get to know her better. Anyway, within the next few years Sonny died and Nanny passed away in 2002. We never had much time to learn that much about him and technically I would have family around Loving, but all we knew to look for was a small Catholic church on the edge of the town. We found it, stopped, took a picture, and went on our way back to Texas.