Road To Santa Fe
“MY MIRACLE OF THE MIRACULOUS STAIRCASE”
Do you believe in miracles?
Does travel hold the key to opening and relieving our weary eyes from the dull numbing effect our routine everyday lives have on them? When the noise of our normal lives is shut out, do we then gain the ability to truly see the real meaning and beauty of life; the miracles right in front of us, waiting to be discovered?
What are the times that were very eye-opening and unexpected during these moments? One of the most intense ones for me, was in my early years on a road trip with my Mom, Grandma and little brother, driving cross country from Michigan to New Mexico.
On the open plains, looking at the untouched land, thinking how it looks the same as it did probably 100 years ago, I stared out the window of that old blue Cadillac for hours, envisioning cowboys and outlaws riding horses across the land, wondering how the rest of the world changed, yet this place was the same as it looked on those TV Westerns. How had the world changed in some places and not others? How had it come about between that existence and the current state of growth in cities and the accompanying modern lifestyle? Where did the cities come from, what was the evolution? How did it come about that cities were built and who built them anyway, and why, while this land was still in a natural old condition? At that time, it was a mystery to me. There were so many blanks to be filled in the timeline of that last 100 years or so from the mid 19th century to the mid to late 20th century. My mind was working up an appetite for knowledge, adventure and the wonders that life would hold as I ventured out to discover the answers to those questions.
The next thing on the trip that took me by surprise was seeing an Indian , dressed in blue jeans, wearing a cowboy hat, standing by his pick-up truck. Being that he was the first real Indian that I and my little brother had ever seen, we talked to him and were mesmerized in his presence. I felt it was an exciting and wonderfully mysterious experience, as up to that point I had only thought of Indians riding horses and shooting bows and arrows while wearing feathers. Everything I had seen on tv and the movies! Wow, were Indians actual real people just like us? I hope I mentioned I was only a young teenager at the time. As can be imagined by my impressions of these events, I had very little experience outside my own little world, little family, little neighborhoods, towns and cities in the Midwest where i had grown up and never wandered far away from.
Needless to say, the internet was years away from being invented, so unless a person had personal knowledge or something was taught in school, or had been seen on TV, or read about in a book, it was virtually an unknown, especially to a child. My mind was a blank slate, immature, undeveloped, small, sheltered, and limited in its experience, outlook, and understanding of life, while at the same time I stood at the precipice of adulthood, ready and eager to fill my head and heart with everything there was to know about the world.
My innocent naïveté wasn’t to last for long as the next and most outstanding memorable event came to fruition on that trip. After arriving in Albuquerque and staying a few days with family we had come to see, we all set out on a road trip through the mountains to Santa Fe. We had been told there was a church there with a staircase that was said to be miraculous, since it had no visible means of a structure supporting the stairs. Hmmm, a staircase.....something that transported you from one place to another in a miraculous way......the stage was set for my hungry mind....my imagination ran wild, not knowing what to expect. The adults were discussing it in a wonderous and serious fashion that I had never seen them do before. All I knew about miracles was the movie I had seen of the Lady of Lourdes appearing to the children in....was it in Fatima, in France? I didn’t know but I was a believer, and my mind was open and waiting for such an event. We were hitting the road to Santa Fe, but I was to experience my own miracle before ever reaching it.
The journey took us on a small two-lane road winding through narrow passages in the mountain ranges of New Mexico. We had packed a picnic basket and by afternoon we saw a picnic table on the side of the road and stopped to eat. When the picnic was over, as I was bored and wanted to move on, and everyone was not done, I told them I was going to start walking and they could pick me up when they finished eating.
They had their little “discussion” as to the wisdom of a teenager wandering off alone in the middle of nowhere, but as I started walking away, they finally said “be careful” as they waved goodbye. I started thoughtlessly ambling along the road, and when I had gone maybe a mile or so, suddenly, completely unexpectedly, like a bolt of lightening out of the blue, a strange feeling enveloped me. I suddenly had a heightened sense of awareness in all five senses in my body and I felt like everything was in slow motion, as if time was slowing down, then standing still, as though it was on pause. My body had stopped moving; my eyes slowly took in my surroundings, and I saw an endless vast array of mountains and hills, dark and light, near and far, tall and small, clouds, sky, trees, distant misty fog, like I was looking at a vision of God, with not a soul or city or person in sight for tens if not hundreds of miles.
Accompanied by utter stillness and silence, I felt like I was the only person on earth, and I was never so aware of everything at once and to such an intense degree. I was unable to move.
I had never to that point, nor ever since, seen such a vast expanse of land with no people. I turned around and the scenery behind me was much the same. I had gone around several curves, and I could no longer see where I had come from, where the other people were, and I was overcome with a feeling of complete and utter terror gripping me, while overwhelmingly fascinating me, and tranquilizing me with peace, as I felt as one with God. I felt as though I had been swallowed up by the earth. Growing up in a large family, this was the first time in my life that I was ever completely alone in the world with not even another human being anywhere that I could see, or that I could perceive to be near. It was a completely unknown experience that I had never had in my life; at once, terrifying, yet simultaneously presenting me with heretofore unasked questions about the meaning of life, self, nature and the universe, and the sense of aloneness, yet oneness spiritually, that is the true essence of the human experience. We come into the world alone and leave the world alone. It was as if I had left the earth and instantly landed on another planet, in another world, and had left everything I knew behind me. Surely it was a glimpse of what life would be like when I left my family and entered adult life, and what finally heaven is like when we do actually leave the earth.
Completely overwhelmed, frozen, unable to think, speak or to take another step, my mind swirled with strangely mysterious thoughts, that seemed to come from a spiritual entity much larger, stronger, and intelligent than I was. Questions with no answers for what seemed like eternity, prodding me to search throughout life and time for understanding of the vision and thoughts set before me. Time stood still. For better or worse, I was never to be the same again.
Finally, a dot appeared on the horizon & I saw my family’s car approaching in the distance, I watched incredulously as I had fully expected (probably from growing up watching the twilight zone), that I might never see them again. When they picked me up, I was very silent and never breathed a word of my experience, but was lost in my thoughts of what life is all about, the meaning of it and the world and the universe, God, the earth, nature, people, family, self, connections, loneliness, togetherness, relationships, happiness, sadness, fear, joy, all the while my family cackling about what seemed liked mindless nonsense around me.
No one said anything to me as they were lost in their own conversations. Little did they realize that I had just experienced an out-of-body life and mind altering event, that no drug, not even LSD could compare to. It instantly formed my young blank canvas of a mind, with the unforgettable impression that I was alone, yet one with nature and God, that I had just been shown a miraculous vision of life, in all it’s unexplainable glory, that the true nature of life is a personal and lonely experience, an enigma, changeable at any moment, to be given or taken away at nature’s will, and that it is necessary to develop coping mechanisms, an inner unshakeable strength, independence and sense of oneness with God, and to never give up, always having faith that the right outcome will occur with time, patience, perseverance and strength. It was undoubtedly a four-year higher education in the space of one hour, mountain time. A true miracle!
As frightening as it had been, and the idea that it posed more questions than answers, I developed a lust for travel, for seeing and experiencing new and varied ways of living, for trying to know and understand the unknown, for desiring to analyze what perhaps can’t or shouldn’t be analyzed. In my adult years, that lust sent me to many corners of the earth, each one never disappointing in it’s mind-opening ability. In my youth, for many years, whenever I dined out with family, I always started walking home till they picked me up. Much to their annoyance, I was always searching for a small adventure that perhaps might this time hold the answers to those unforgettable enigmatic questions posed by the universe on that long-ago lonely mountain road on the way to Santa Fe.
