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Country Roads

By P. Timothy Richard

I live six miles from a state highway along a county road which is merely a wide adobe path through the pi�on and juniper forests of southwest Colorado. County Road and Bridge does little or no maintenance to it, so when it's muddy or under deep snow, it is impassable for all practical purposes. When wet, the adobe soil quickly saturates and a chocolate-like muck forms that is both aggravatingly sticky and slippery at the same time.
Even though it is very difficult to travel during wet seasons, I have always appreciated this road. In fact, every back road I have ever traveled, since my first summer in Colorado 35 years ago, represents freedom to me that the West symbolizes for so many of us who choose to call it home. Each road and trail represents adventure and discovery. Leaving the town limits and turning off the highway onto a gravel or dirt road is an instant relief from the confines of civilization. Even in this somewhat suburban county where I live, this feeling comes over me each time my vehicle rolls off asphalt onto packed soil.
One Saturday in December, I was returning from a 22-day camping trip in Arizona where my companion and I drove for miles along single-lane dirt roads and remote gravel roads searching for hot springs and good campsites. One gravel stretch between towns was more than 60 miles long.
We drove slowly for hours each day crossing superhighways and slipping quietly through small towns, and four wheeling to remote campsites for a night or two. We savored the quietude we found during this much-welcomed escape from the workaday world and its madness.
I had read in a tourist pamphlet that eagles typically winter in southern Arizona; so we could expect to see many of these patriotic predators. But we went two weeks camping and hiking the whole time without seeing a single bald eagle. We saw only one golden.
Not until the day we returned to Durango and I was on my way home did I see a bald eagle. I was driving along the dirt road that leads home. I first noticed it, or sensed it, in a pi�on tree as it lifted its mass and slowly rose into the air, its wings finding purchase on the invisible, barely resistant air. Dark against the gray morning sky, momentarily suspended, as if in slow motion, it arched and extended its wings, gracefully defying gravity.
I watched enthralled as another baldy joined from another tree top. Their outspread wings spanned the width of my pickup truck. They flew fluidly in unison for a moment, then the first eagle dove out of formation and assumed a position directly in front of my truck as I idled along a straight stretch of road. It rose and glided before me at just-above eye level a few yards ahead, as though pulling and lifting me along.
After a few moments of surging forward, it swerved away and rejoined its friend who had stayed close alongside. Reunited, they fell back while my truck rolled slowly on. I twisted backwards to hold my gaze on them. Just then, the first one rolled agilely onto its back, then upright again in the blink of an eye. He somersaulted like a trapeze artist; not only without a net, but without a trapeze.
I have encountered wildlife along this road and others countless times and each time it is a wonderful experience. Even during the most uneventful crossing of paths, I have felt a sense of awe, of magic in the moment when the whole world stops and I witness a marvel of nature that only those who look can see.
This is the stuff of visions. If for even a moment I could escape the incessant, self-indulgent thinking of my modern mind I believe that I know what they are saying-the eagles and the sky, the dirt road, the morning air across a field warming to the still-low sun. Anything that takes us away from modern monotony, such as a simple drive down a country road, or the flight of eagles, is as valuable as life itself. Such things should be preserved-for the human spirit as much as for their own intrinsic values.
Non-maintained county roads and other roads of the West that give us access to the kind of freedom that eagles choose should be part of what we want the West to be. Growth may be inevitable for the foreseeable future, but perhaps we can shape that growth by limiting the kinds of roads accessible to us and the maintenance they receive. Maybe by slowing the pace of travel we can slow the pace of growth.
The power and grace in the flight of an eagle appeals to the power and grace in those of us who take note of its passing. Perhaps the value that both the eagles and I have found in these still-livable pathways will help them receive a respite - a pardon - among the hearts and minds of those who call this part of the West home.

P. Timothy Richard has lived in the Four Corners since 1975. Nowadays, he divides his time between southwest Colorado and Los Angeles, California where he runs his communication business as writer and editor, and practices internal martial arts.