Log0026

A Tourist and a Citizen

This week I will get naturalized as a US Citizen. I started the week hiking through the Arizona desert. Across its border. Its northern border (just to be sure). It was three days of walking through this spectacular land, awestruck by the scale and beauty of the American West. Another 3 days as an observer and a traveler, but certainly not an American.

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Finishing the trail we drove 10 hours back to San Diego, stopping a few times for food and gas. At the Love’s Travel Stop north of Las Vegas, this oasis caught us like all the other road-trippers, bikers, truckers and strippers. These desert waypoints are Muse for an artist. A cross-section of characters. I tended to key in on the truckers. The lonely souls who drive 11-hour shifts, solo. Blood through the interstate arteries of America. Here they would pick up the fuel needed to continue the journey. Filling up their gallon tank out of the soda machine and pumping diesel into their 18 wheelers. Caffeine and gasoline. It’d be something like; shit, shower, shave, sleep, shit some more, eat, pump then drive again. I admired them. Just trying to earn a crust in another thankless profession that keeps this country running.

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I hope I never stop being a tourist. A traveler. A foreigner in this land. I hope I never stop being dumbfounded and awestruck by the mundane ordinary things that an estadounidense doesn’t see. I hope I can always walk into a Love’s and spend a full two minutes watching the roller dogs roll, see the characters file in and out and appreciate all the difference just the same.