Good Bye to the Beautiful Southwest

Good Bye to the Beautiful Southwest

By the time a person is a mother and a responsible adult, the opportunities for running away from home to become a cowboy are fairly limited. Not that I’ve let that stop me. It was ten years ago when I sold the house, put all our possessions in storage, bought a pickup and a camper, and headed out to the beautiful Southwest. If I remember correctly, we had a CD of the Dixie Chicks singing Wide Open Spaces when we pulled out of Orlando with a bead on…out there. Way out there. Indian Country. Cowboy Country. I think my son had some idea that out west, the other kids wouldn’t drag you into the bathroom at school and kick you in the stomach. I had the idea that, in the big empty west, you could at least see the bad guys coming for you.

Which proved true. Navajo boys live by a code, and that includes telling the truth. When my son was punched in the face by a school mate in seventh grade, they both showed up at my clinic to confess- my son to confess it was his fault, and the other kid to confess he did it.

When we left Florida, I was feeling slightly desperate and wondering if I was going insane- a fairly typical response for a single mother when told her beloved son has autism. I didn’t believe then, and still don’t, that I was running away- I needed those wide open spaces. I wanted some room to see the bad guys coming for me. In the last ten years, since we’ve come out here, we’ve lived on the Navajo Nation, in Alaska for 6 months at an Athabascan Village, in Boise, and for the last year, we’ve been travelling around New Mexico for work. There are bad guys out here, I’m sure, but I haven’t run into very many of them. My experience has been open doors and open arms, people who live by a code, hard work and hard lives. Cowboys, in other words. And, as any fool knows, the best cowboys have always been Indians. It has been my great pleasure to take care of them.

But the urge to roam is still strong and I’m getting ready to go again. Still West. We’re going to Fiji, and the story about to come out from Dreamspinner, The Legend of the Apache Kid, is my last beautiful story set in this land I love. I hope the next adventure is as rich and full of colorful people as this one has been. If not, well, it’s a big world. I still haven’t seen Petra, or Hong Kong, or Iceland. I’m not much on vacations; I have to go live there. I’m not just having a psychotic break, as certain members of my family believe—I’m looking for a place for my son and me. I know if we keep looking, we’ll find a place where he can be at home, where people will like and accept him. I think the warm and happy people of Fiji will welcome us, and we can make a home with them. If not, I suspect I’ll get a few stories out of it before we move on!

The new story is coming out on Sept 5, and we’re leaving on Sept 6—I think that’s a good sign. I hope this new story will give you a little taste of Taos, and The Greater World, and a bit of the beautiful Carson National Forest. I drove through the Carson, and went camping and hiking in April and May—with a tiny bit of snow still on the north side of the mountains, and the wildflowers blooming and the bears snuffling around in the underbrush. So good bye to the beautiful Southwest. Thanks for all the memories. I’ll check in from Fiji.