Monday 20 November 2017

Blog thirty: a savage pilgrimage - Notts to New Mexico

"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!

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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