The western stretch of the I-40 may be the ugliest, most utilitarian piece of road ever laid. Driving from Los Angeles to Santa Fe it gets only marginally more scenic as you go. Specifically there are some shrubs to look at surrounding Flagstaff and some exciting bits where steering is actually required intermittently throughout. The most noticeable improvement is in the signage. About fifty miles into New Mexico they begin. The most existential cautionary signs ever posted. “Gusty Winds May Exist.” Not that they do exist, that they’re sporadic, that they might occasionally present a challenge to motorists, or that they might occasionally blow across the highway. No. These signs are here to prompt a philosophical debate as to whether the weather is a factual, observable phenomena or, instead an agreed upon hallucinatory break from reality during which all drivers swerve to one side of the road or other in a collective unconscious desire to have something, anything to make the drive seem less dauntingly unchanging.
The signs are a first clue to the notion that “Land of Enchantment” may be more than a catchy slogan for the license plates. The second is my apparently bizarre ability to navigate within the city of Santa Fe without a roadmap. A city that wasn’t planned by people so much as burros. You can look this up. Apparently from a birds perspective Santa Fe looks like the result of giving Egon Schille more LSD than is strictly a good idea and asking him to draw wagon wheels or vaginas. Driving in this city requires a shift in navigational philosophy. In Santa Fe you don’t get in your car thinking outlandish thoughts like, I’ll head north on such and such until I find do-i-mo-bobber and turn right (east) and reach the museum of awesomeness. Here, you get in your car and say to the streets; I want to go to the Museum of Awesomeness. Start your engine, merge into traffic and make a series of arbitrary turns based on intuition and an unwavering faith in the Gods of Direction. They may or may not take you to the Museum, but that you will end up where you were meant to be.
