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| "Smile, yer mardy bogger!" - me and Bert at the D H Lawrence Ranch. |
So reader, I made it – my view currently from Woody’s Breakfast
and Burgers in Pacific Beach, San Diego is of the small boardwalk, sand and the
mighty Pacific Ocean rolling in in front of me. I don’t think I’ve ever been
anywhere else which is as beautiful as an urban environment – this is no great
National Park, it’s no Cliffs of Moher, but it is an incredible neighbourhood
of surf shops, fish taco stalls and, most importantly independent coffee shops
with WiFi and a view of the ocean! However, to catch you up I must venture back
1370 miles East, to 1800 Barnes Bridge Road, East Dallas, TX – where I last
left you, at the start of my marathon to Taos, New Mexico on my “savage
pilgrimage” to the American home of D H Lawrence, Eastwood’s purveyor of muckeh
storehs and one of the counties greatest literary sons.
1800 Branes Bridge was where I was working with Miss Grace at
the Arberg Centre and their Pre-K language sessions on a Thursday. My next stop,
Albuquerque, was where I would like up with my contact Eva was my destination
and Eva and I would meet at 9:30 on Saturday. Between then I was travelling, pretty
much flat out! I first needed to catch a bus to the main transit interchange by
Dealey Plaza in Downtown. Whilst waiting for this bus I met Steve – who to my
great surprise had spent a year as a student living in Newark! He’d been
through Nottingham but never really explored the city, however he had an
intimate knowledge of Newark and the Morrisons! One thing I never thought would
happen when sat on a bus in greater Dallas was discussing going to Newark
Morrisons! Steve was great company and we had a lively conversation about US
and UK healthcare and medicine, which was joined in with by two Hispanic ladies
on their way to their lunch club. Experiences like this further convince me
that public transport is THE ONLY WAY to see this amazing country and speak
with people you’d never meet flying or driving!
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| Ratton and the New Mexico Countryside. |
The bus dropped me back at Dealey Plaza allowing for a
second look around at the grass knoll and I grabbed some new toothpaste from
7-11 (useful extra insight there, reader!). I then caught the local commuter
train service from Dallas across the metroplex to Fort Worth. This again was
another cool ride through the different areas of West Dallas, where I had been
with Readers 2 Leaders, and into the other cities of this great metropolis –
Arlington, Fort Worth and others. Fort Worth was where I’d get my first Amtrak
up to Oklahoma City. This set off at dusk and I saw the sun setting over the
East Texas cattle ranches and oil fields – another experience of the crazy rip
that I’ll not soon forget. We arrived in OKC late and it was a mad dash for my
connecting bus, which would take us from Oklahoma to Newton, Kansas – I say “us”
there was me and one other guy who couldn’t drive as he had his license taken
by Oklahoma State Police for driving marijuana over state lines from Colorado,
where it is legal. A dark, middle of the night drive via Wichita, where I had a
quick YouTube listen to Glen Campbell, I got Newton – where the weather was -2 Celsius!
Here I’d wait for my next Amtrak, “The Southwest Chief”, all the way to
Albuquerque. Pretty much from boarding I slept through the prairies of Kansas
and woke up to the sun peeking through my little train window curtain and I was
in southern Colorado. It was a misty morning in the Centennial State and this
hung low over the ground new fully burning off as the train processed through
the landscape toward the border town of Trinidad. From Trinidad the train would
continue through the Ratton Pass (pronounced Rah-tone, not rat-on, which made
many people give me funny looks). Emerging from the steep walled pass into New
Mexico, the weather was changes and so to the scenery. The misty Colorado hills
were replaced by yellow desert sands, ochre bluffs and pine green tufty shrubs
under a burning sun. New Mexico had arrived. We traversed down through the old
mining towns of Ratton, Las Vegas (New Mexico, not Nevada) and Lamy on an
Amtrak that was forever stopping for little to no reason for 20-30 minutes at a
time in a small siding. It appears that great swaths of the American Amtrak
runs on a single track through some of these states, especially New Mexico, so
any delay is compounded by the need to allow other trains going the other way
to pass you as well if you’re of schedule even by a minute! I arrived into
Albuquerque 2 hours late and got an Uber directly to the motel I was staying in
before meeting Eva – I was knackered and crashed out pretty much as soon as I
arrived.
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| Leaving ABQ. |
The next morning, fuelled on motel coffee I met Eva. Eva
works for the University of New Mexico, and administrates (amongst other
things) the writers initiatives at the D H Lawrence Ranch. Taos, where the
ranch is located is about 2 hours north of Albuquerque and when driving up
through the passes and canyons of this incredible state, I was stuck, like
Lawrence himself was, by the beauty of such a unique landscape. This was the
setting of every Morricone, every Peckinpah Western I’d ever seen and I wanted
a Fist Full of it. The mountain town of Taos, nestled under its namesake
mountain, was another of those little gems which I feel should be added to the itinerary
of every scholar! Especially with the literary Nottingham connection.
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| The Sign!! |
As we
drove up into the mountain’s foothills and the pine forest that grows up in
these higher climes, a sign told us we were only a few miles from the ranch,
driving along D H Lawrence Road. As we pulled through the swing gate, the house
shared by Freida and her third husband, Angelo Ravagli, after Bert’s death.
Just a short walk round behind this newer house was the cottage in which Bert
and Freida had lived in their years in Taos. On the porch sat a chair which
Lawrence is reported to have made and painted, its position looking out into
the meadow where I imagine the Lawrence’s beloved cow Susan would have grazed
and nearby the shade offered by the “Lawrence Tree”, a tall majestic pine which
featured in Lawrence work and in the paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe who was a
later guest at the ranch. In the small, cold cottage the two rooms of a living
space with a range and cosy twin bedroom gave some idea of what the quarters of
the Lawrences would have been like and on the information signs there was a fun
anecdote of Bert climbing, shirtless with a wet cloth covering his mouth and nose,
onto the roof to clear a rats nest.
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| Lawrence's house. |
Walking back to Freida and Ravagli’s house and heading up
the hill in the opposite direction to the cottage is another winding concrete
path leading, zig-zaggingly up toward a small chapel-like building, white
against the green pines, with a phoenix resplendent atop it. Its large wooden
doors, imposing against the white walls heavily creak open to a small chamber. To
the left a bureau, a book and framed documents in French – the articles of D H
Lawrence’s disinterment from his original burial in Vence, France. Lawrence it
is variously claimed to have his final resting place here in Taos, after Ravagli
was sent to France to bring Bert back to New Mexico so lie here, where Freida
now lived. Many theories abound as whether this is really where Lawrence is
buried, whether his remains went overboard on the journey from Europe, whether
Ravagli drunkenly lost them, but the most enduring is that Frieda mixed the ashes
with concrete foundations of the monument, to ensure he’d always remain here. The
headstone-like marker inside the chapel building is simple, painted in the
yellow hues of New Mexico and adorned with offerings from pilgrims, visitors –
a pebble, a pine cone, coffee, chocolate – and hung above is a garland of
chillies. It’s a profound and spiritual place. When I open the doors again, and
look out, down the avenue of pines to the vista of the mountains across the
canyon, it is clear why the Lawrences found this small corner of Northern New
Mexico to be their own little slice of paradise.
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| The monument. |
Bert left Taos and his ranch
from the last time on his 40th birthday, 11th September 1925.
He would never return alive, only making the journey with Ravagli in 1935, 5
years after his death. In my journey across the US, especially as a writer from
Nottingham, I found this to be the real spiritual heart of what I’ve done here on
my travels. To place my pebble on the headstone, to sit quietly looking out on
a view he once knew and to read my battered copy of Mornings in Mexico here was undeniably special.