“We get a lot of your kind around here.”
Dale smiled from across the coffee shop counter. He looked and sounded like Willie Nelson ten years ago— old, but not that old. It was my second day in town and Dale, the owner of The Tranquil Buzz where I’d been writing most of the morning while nursing coffee and espresso cookies, had just asked me where I was from. It’s a question I’m not sure how to answer these days: “Where do you live?” Nowhere? Here, but only for like a day or two? I used to live in Utah, but not anymore. Those disclosures require further explanation, usually a thirty-second elevator speech on the gig: sold my house, quit my job, just travelling for the foreseeable future. More questions reveal the why, even though what I tell them usually isn’t the entire story. Still, I was another wanderer and far from unique, especially in Silver City.
Tucked into a corner of the Gila National Forest on New Mexico’s southwest border, Silver City was founded and unimaginatively named in 1870 not long after miners discovered silver in a nearby hill. The promise of quick wealth brought fortune-seekers and violence, including Billy the Kid who logged his first of many arrests there. The silver eventually ran out, but copper did not, and mines continue to operate just outside of the city and make up the lion’s share of the local economy. Downtown, though, artists and mostly retired hippies have taken over and along with the miners created an unlikely juxtaposition of blue collar and quirk, not unlike Marfa, Texas or Bisbee, Arizona. Having recently visited all three, Silver City comes off as more sincere and less affected in its weirdness than Marfa, which suffers from a certain degree of avant garde pretension, or painfully hip-and-aware-of-it Bisbee with its “craft” everything, everywhere. As a preventative measure due to regular summer flooding, the sidewalks of downtown Silver City lunge at least two feet above the road, the result of a lesson learned in 1895 when rains washed out main street and carved a fifty-five-foot-deep canal in its place. Affected businesses simply switched their shop entrances to the back of the buildings to face Bullard Ave, while the city, embracing the spirit of rolling with the punches, turned main street into Big Ditch Park and appointed it with cultivated grassy banks, walkways, and benches.
It’s not clear when the hippies and artsy types started emigrating to town, likely drawn by the low cost of living, remoteness, and semi-arid climate, but they are long-established and have their run of city center which is now home to galleries, local coffee shops, a refurbished early 20th century theater, food co-ops, locally owned restaurants, and, significantly, multiple yarn stores. One window in particular captures the spirit of the place as it proudly advertises its trade: “Dog Grooming and Metaphysical Center.”
Awesome. I just added Silver City to my mental list of places I’d like to see. Perhaps I will get a pet dog before I go, too.
This is really a comment about thoughts on the prior post at the Grand Canyon- didn’t see a comment box there. But anyway I do appreciate the honesty, thank you for your thoughtfulness and willingness to share. ..Having been on the road now since last
April, I still struggle to see clearly. There may be – probably is – a strong element of hubris in the whole JoSD construct. Sometimes I feel liberated or peaceful or euphoric, and have indeed had some profoundly powerful experiences, in both my outer and inner worlds. And sometimes I feel lost and troubled and tired. I suspect that (for me) “transformative experience” isn’t a big “aha” magical moment, but an accumulation of smaller, assimilated insights and growth. Maybe I won’t realize the overall impact until there is enough time and distance to look back w some perspective. I will stop my own musings at that, this is a comment on your blog entry, not my own! I just wanted to say thanks for your honesty and thoughtfulness. It resonates. Hope all i well!
Hi Kristi! I’m with you on the JoSD having shades of hubris to it, but don’t believe that needs to be the case. The degree of hubris or humility probably has something to do with the ‘why’ of what we do, both in undertaking the adventure in the first place as well as in the decisions we make while on it. I can see how our motivations can be mixed. Maybe it was a sincere urge that pushed us out of our homes and onto the road, but, being human, we sometimes corrupt it by using it for attention and approval from others, for vanity, like setting up a blog to show how thoughtful and wise we are… 😉
Also, I like the idea of epiphanies slowly accruing, small moments of insight and clarity sandwiched between stretches of time that feel far too dark and long. If we’re having those epiphanies, shouldn’t that give us some comfort that the times of confusion are in fact leading us somewhere? Or should we just quit the whole gig and have those epiphanies at “home” instead?