JdMadonna

Route 60 Short-Story Journals

March 14, 2004             Madonna

   Show Low to Springerville — After lunch in downtown Springerville, I walked about the square and stopped to read the engraving on a pedestal, TO THE PIONER MOTHERS OF THE COVERED WAGON DAYS. The “Madonna of the Trail” statue depicts a pioneer woman and her two small children. She thrusts out a rifle in her right hand.
    Many people, on hearing of my planned trip, suggested that I tote a gun. I explained that I had bike camped and bicycled all over Virginia and North Carolina without a criminal incident. Besides, the further west you go the friendlier people get.
   “Madonna of the Trail” appeared to know why she was brandishing a gun, but I wouldn’t know how to use one and wouldn’t. Besides, everyone in these times wants to help cross-country travelers, especially those on recumbent bicycles.
   Having had two nights of organized camping amenities back at Fool Hollow, I decided to camp on the roadside in the National Forest tonight. Not wanting to waste time venturing off Route 60, I stopped at a trailhead parking lot near the New Mexico border and set up camp right in the lot. It was disserted and appeared sparsely used, so I didn’t expect to be in anyone’s way.
   To bed just after dark, I watched the stars and satellites through the no-see-um screen that is the tent ceiling. A rain fly used to cover all was not needed on this clear night.
   I didn’t go to sleep for sometime. I could hear the forest, provocative and strange, imminent and remote; promise and threat both—a light, steady sound of wind in the trees and critters that do not sleep at night at all.
   Night time passes in a distant world of surreptitious thoughts of incredible phenomenon. Extreme noises and eerie lights just beyond the conscious commence to merge into the realism of wakening.
   Giant beasts of the road have descended on the tiny forest clearing, rooting and snorting and throwing shafts of light in countless directions. Like raging bulls, they scuffle backwards and forwards digging dirt and belching foul fumes. As dust rises in streams of their own unnatural light they stop, the heavy engines idling with a distance and foreboding rumble.
   “Hello there the tent! Rouse! It’s party time.”
   Though I thought no good could come to me from this party invitation, I had no choice but to stick my head out and answer with an anxious question. “What’s up?”
   “I’ll give you a beer if you let me ride your bicycle.”
   To cut down on weight, I had brought no sleeping bag and slept fully clothed to keep warm. So I continued head first into the 4-wheeler’s lights and reached out my hand for the beer. “Thanks.”
   “Saw you going through town today and I’ve got to ride that thing.” He said, as he pointed at the red recumbent glinting in the headlights.
   Foregoing all my normal directions about seat adjustment and starting instruction, I held the bike and he sat down in the seat; a push and off he went. Incredibly, he rode it with ease, round and round the lot, his cronies whooping with delight. A young woman had eased up beside me, her arms folded, a patronizing smile on her face.
   While the cowboys took turns about the lot, she introduced herself. Said she and her husband, the one riding now, had a small ranch just east of here and that I should stop by for breakfast. She said the house was easy to see, just off the road past the state line.
    Then she rounded the cowboys back to their trucks and they were gone. There is a “Madonna of the Trail” after all.