August 2007

Lifelong friends are hard to come by. I am blessed that I have a few, some dating back fifty years to high school. After graduating from college I have been fortunate to add two more close friends from the earliest days of my oil and gas career. 

One of these friends is Steve. We met thirty-six years ago after we left our first companies and found positions with a not-so-great company during a severe industry downturn. We developed a good friendship during difficult circumstances. A strong pull from his family caused him leave Bakersfield and move home to Tulsa, a process he named, “The Wrath of Grapes.” We did not want time and distance to cause a good friendship to fade away, so we started taking annual trips in 2006.

I traveled to Santa Fe, New Mexico for our second annual “Buddy Trip.” We were on the road a lot. We spent one day traveling to Taos to visit the famous pueblo and check out the Rio Grande River Gorge. We stopped at a small church in Chimayo, then drove to the Taos Pueblo. Unfortunately, the pueblo was closed to the public. We ate lunch outdoors, shaded by colorful umbrellas, and shopped in the Taos Trading Post.

We drove to the Rio Grande River Gorge. We had the bridge in view when we saw a powerful storm coming from the north. The skies turned black, rumbled and lightning split the sky. Hail started falling. The storm chased us away.

We improvised. Steve turned the car around and headed south on Highway 285 to Bandolier National Monument. We saw petroglyphs, cliff dwellings and other Native American structures, some dating back 11,000 years.

We ate great food at many restaurants on our Buddy Trip. Breakfast at Pascual’s Cafe’, Mexican food at Tomasitos. We walked around downtown Santa Fe, looking at Native American art in the many galleries and tourist trinkets in far too many gift shops. We toured the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi and saw the Miraculous Staircase at the Loretto Chapel. There are so many things to see and do and places to eat in Santa Fe. If you haven’t been, put it on your “Places to See” list.

One afternoon we wandered into the La Fonda Hotel, an old, upscale, elegant western hotel near the Santa Fe Plaza. A friend from work told me “you have to go to the La Fonda to have one of their margaritas.” We sat at the bar, ordered Cadillac margaritas and chips and salsa. I am not a margarita aficionado, but my friend was right. These were great margaritas. The atmosphere and the camaraderie may have influenced how I felt about the margs, but they were damn good. If you travel to Santa Fe I recommend you go to the La Fonda and have one, or as we did, two margs.

We left the bar and walked around the rustic hotel and came across Photogenesis, an art gallery. There are a lot of art galleries in Santa Fe. This one specialized in photography. A black-and-white image of a New Mexico landscape by Nicholas Trofimuk captivated me. A picture of him showed him standing in the desert with a large large box, a view camera. I wasn’t aware there was such a camera. The camera had an 8″x10″ negative which produced amazing detail in his work. That was the first time I appreciated black-and-white photography. I am surprised I had never discovered Ansel Adams’ photography; I did after Trofimuk sparked an interest in photography as art

***

We took a scenic route when it was time to go to Albuquerque for our return flights. Rather than take the I-25 we drove seventy miles along Highway 14, The Turquoise Trail, a scenic bypass through rural New Mexico. We left early and maintained a slow, unhurried pace. We had a very spontaneous day. It was the most carefree day I had had in quite some time.

We stopped in Los Cerrillos, a tiny town with dirt streets. There are a few people living there and the St. Joseph Church holds mass every Sunday, but the town is officially a ghost town. I took pictures of Mary’s Bar (a western-style bar with an ironic sign that said, No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service). We drove around and I captured pictures of the Clear Light Opera House, a few doors painted blue and some quirky oddities. I also took several pictures of St. Joseph’s Church. We got a big laugh of a dog sleeping in the middle of Main Street. It was a fun stop off the beaten path.

***

We continued along the two-lane road. We crested a hill south of Los Cerrillos and saw the highway descending into the desert, snaking its way through pinion pines and shrubs to a distant mountain range. Large white clouds filled the sky and blanketed the mountains. I thought of Trofimuk and told Steve to stop the car. He watched for traffic as I snapped a few pictures of the scene with my Panasonic LX-2.

***

Our next stop was Madrid, a small artsy community about one hour north of the Albuquerque airport. I was aware of Madrid from John Travolta‘s most recent movie, Wild Hogs, that I watched in early 2007. The movie is about four disillusioned, middle-aged men from Ohio who escaped their routine lives by riding in their club, Wild Hogs. They took a road trip to California, but run out of gas in Madrid where they have an encounter with a local outlaw motorcycle gang. Several scenes were filmed at Maggie’s Diner, a setting for a romance between one of the Hogs and Maggie, the owner, and conflict with the Del Fuegos.

Steve and I were not Wild Hogs, but we shared some commonalities. I would not say we were disillusioned with life, but we were middle-aged men who took annual trips to escape the routine of our ordinary world. We had conversations about the pitfalls of working in a volatile commodity business with many deep ebb and flow cycles. We talked about the joy and the grind of the routine, working 8 to 5, raising our children, marriage and divorce, and the responsibilities that come with having a career while being a father, son, attending school and sports events and maintaining a house. I empathized with the Hogs.

We planned to have lunch at Maggie’s Diner. We found the small building, with large glass windows, its name in a pretty cool font, and posters paying tribute to the movie. We pulled into the parking lot. Steve turned the knob but the front door was locked. We looked inside and it was empty. We got a big laugh as we realized that Maggie‘s Diner was a façade, a movie set and we weren’t going to be eating lunch there.

We were hungry. We drove to the south edge of town, and found a rustic western-style restaurant named The Mine Shaft Tavern. Big “hogs” filled the parking lot. I assumed they were on a road trip somehow related to the movie. I saw the motorcycle riders inside and they looked more like the Wild Hogs than the Del Fuegos. I ordered a burger, fries and one of the local brews. I highly recommend The Mine Shaft Tavern if you are driving The Turquoise Trail.

The drive was a spontaneous, unhurried drive, a fitting end to a great trip. We drove to Albuquerque and Steve flew east and I flew west to our homes.

***

I converted the picture to black-and-white when I got home. I used Silver Efex Pro to create a contrasty monochrome image. The picture wasn’t as sharp as one of Trofimuk’s. The little sensor in the Panasonic could not come close to the view camera, but the result pleased me. I was fifty years old, and for the first time I felt I could create appealing images that might be artistic. The picture was a turning point for me. Seventeen Miles to Madrid ignited my passion for photography. For the next few years I converted many landscapes and portraits to black-and-white.

The picture is a symbol of our trips. I sent Steve a large print, which to this day hangs in his writing studio (did I mention that he is a published author?). I can see it behind him when we have happy hour calls over FaceTime.

I have tried other forms of visual art through the years. Encaustic photography. Acrylics. Digital painting. When I experiment with a new visual process I return to Seventeen Miles to Madrid to re-create it in a new media. 

October 2023

Fast forward sixteen years to our most recent “Buddy Trip.” We have taken seventeen trips to cities in New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California and Illinois.  We have eaten at many restaurants, tasted wine in Napa Valley, and stayed at four-star resorts and places that were far from four star. We hiked national parks, played golf on beautiful desert courses, explored caves, viewed art, looked at the Milky Way, stacked rocks in Sedona and explored Native American ruins. We rode a train to 14,000 feet and looked out from Pike’s Peak and walked on canyon rims and looked down thousands of feet to the canyon floor. We have spent time in bars, restaurants and on city streets watching eclectic people.

We maintained the annual streak for a long time, some years taking two trips. There were some challenges to our escapes along the way: careers, children, divorce,  marriage, pets, homes and yards to maintain, finances. We managed to maintain the streak until 2020. It took a pandemic to break the streak. The trips resumed in October 2022 when we received the “all clear.” 

***

We returned to Santa Fe for the third time in Fall 2023.. We did not have an itinerary for the trip. The only planned activity was a return to the La Fonda for the margaritas, as we had in 2007 and 2019. I was happy they were as good as I remembered. I was also happy to discover the La Fonda makes a pretty good buffalo burger and fries.

I wanted to drive Highway 14. I have looked at our picture many times over the years and recalled the day we took it. I wanted that experience again. I had used Google’s street view to follow the highway to find where we had taken the picture. I had looked along the highway north of Madrid but had been unable to find the location. I wanted to stand on Highway 14 where I took that iconic image (at least it is iconic for Steve and I).

We planned the first day over breakfast and decided to drive along Highway 14. The drive was slow and spontaneous, even more than it had been sixteen years earlier since we did not have to catch a flight home.

My memory of 2007 is that we left Santa Fe and drove south on Highway 14. We stopped in Los Cerrillos. We took a few pictures, continued south and found the location where we took a picture. We named it Seventeen Miles to Madrid, which implied it was south of Los Cerillos and seventeen miles north of Madrid. We drove to Madrid, had lunch, then drove to Albuquerque to catch our flights.

It’s funny how memory works, or in this case, doesn’t work. 

I knew something was amiss when we passed I-25 and started driving south on Highway 14. A mileage marker showed Madrid was only twelve miles away. 

“How can that be possible?” I thought.

Shortly after we got on Highway 14 we reached Los Cerrillos. We drove around town, but it didn’t take long. It is a very small town. We continued south and the markers said Madrid was only five miles away. I assumed we would see the location where we captured Seventeen Miles to Madrid somewhere in the next five miles. There were no mountain ranges that resembled the mountains in the 2007 picture. We did not find the location between Los Cerrillos and Madrid.

Madrid was how I remembered: artsy and small with many tourists. We passed Maggie’s Diner and noticed someone had opened a store inside. Wild Hogs had been good for Madrid.

We passed through town. I was very confused where we had taken the picture. We kept driving and made it almost all the way to Albuquerque. We did not find Seventeen Miles to Madrid. The picture is imprinted in my mind. On demand I can see the highway snaking through the mountains and desert landscape, the clouds in the blue sky. I thought it would be easy to find the spot. Nothing I saw that morning came close to the image. I was pretty disappointed as we began our drive back.

We planned to stop at The Mine Shaft Tavern again to eat lunch. As we drove north, Steve said “hey, don’t those peaks look like the mountains in the picture?” We stopped at a turnout and studied them. The outlines were very similar, but the view was flipped. We were coming from the opposite direction of the picture. We were driving north and the picture had been taken while we were driving south. We drove slow, watching the road as we wound our way around the mountains from the south to the north side of the range.

We found it. At least it seemed we had. Things had changed, of course. Sixteen years had passed. A large electrical transmission line crossed Highway 14 near where we had to have taken the picture. We didn’t think it was there before. It looked like several trees and bushes were removed during construction. A new structure with fencing was on the east side of the scene. But there was no denying these were the mountains and this was were Highway 14 descended and curved to the left.

For sixteen years I believed the title was literal, that we had been seventeen miles north of Madrid when we took the picture. Steve had a different memory. He keeps journals of our trips and looked back to the day we took the picture. The title was arbitrary, likely based on his journal entry from that evening. Seventeen Miles to Madrid was a “a “throwaway phrase” that captured the feeling of the image.

We stopped a couple times and I couldn’t quite find the exact location. The mountains were distant in the original picture. They appeared much closer now. I tried different focal lengths and camera angles. I bent down close to the road, took pictures on the left, middle and right side of the road. We moved north and south along the highway. I couldn’t re-create Seventeen Miles to Madrid.  

We went back to 2007. Our engineering minds kicked in. We looked at the image metadata, the sequence the pictures were taken and the times they were captured. The metadata told us we stopped at Los Cerillos first, then Madrid, at a tank painted with colorful graffiti, and then the place we took the picture. We discovered we had taken Seventeen Miles to Madrid after we stopped in Madrid for lunch! The graffiti picture had been taken at 12:51 PM. The seventeen miles picture was taken at 12:59 PM, a delta of eight minutes. Allowing for parking, walking, traffic and setup, Steve estimated we drove six minutes south of the tank before we took the picture.

We were hungry. We decided to go back to Madrid for lunch.

We ate at the Mine Shaft Tavern again and I recommend that if you drive The Turquoise Trail that you stop in and eat. I ordered a buffalo burger with regular fries and an iced tea. Lunch was amazing, right up there with the LaFonda margaritas. If I had to choose between a Mine Shaft burger or La Fonda margarita I might have to flip a coin.

We drove to the tank and took another picture. The graffiti had changed, but it was as colorful as it had been in 2007. We drove south for six minutes, descended a hill and arrived at about the same spot where we had stopped an hour earlier. We parked and walked down the hill, taking pictures every few yards. The highway, mountains, the desert landscape with pinion pines and shrubs were the same. But we would not have stopped in 2007 for this picture. The sky was deep blue and clear on October 16, 2023. It was clear, clean, beautiful. The image felt incomplete. The thing that caught my eyes in 2007 was the clouds. The clouds made the image.

I was a little disappointed the 2023 version of the scene did not come close to the iconic picture we captured in 2007. I should not be surprised; magic is difficult to reproduce. At least we found the place we had taken it. I had snapped Seventeen Miles to Madrid ten miles south of Madrid.

***

Steve and I won’t be going back to Santa Fe. Three times seems to be enough, though I love Santa Fe and could find more things to do. There are other places to explore, even places we have already been where I would like to refresh other fond memories.

The day was interesting and exciting to us. It felt great to be spontaneous, to not have pressure to be somewhere or have responsibilities to do something. We had freedom and time to travel north and south along Highway 14 to find the exact spot where we had stopped sixteen years earlier. It was fun using metadata to piece together the actual sequence after our memories turned out to be different from reality.

It was a great day.

***

The Hero leaves his Ordinary World, receives a Call to Adventure, crosses a threshold into a special world and has adventures. Some of these adventures may lead him or her to a supreme ordeal. Having conquered the ordeal, the hero travels the road back to the Ordinary World. There are more trials and adversity on the return home, but the hero brings back rewards that change his world forever.

The Hogs left their Ordinary World in Ohio on a motorcycle trip to escape their routine lives. They traveled to California, entered the special world of the road trip. Along the way they encountered conflict with an outlaw motorcycle gang in a small town in New Mexico. One hog met a woman in the small town. They conquered the motorcycle gang, became hero’s, traveled to California and returned as heros to their Ordinary World in Ohio, their lives forever changed by the adventure.

Similarly, in 2007 Steve and I left our Ordinary Worlds in Tulsa and Bakersfield, traveled to the special world of northern New Mexico and escaped our routine lives. We had many adventures and experiences. We did not encounter any supreme ordeals. But I did bring back a reward that changed my Ordinary World. I returned with a picture of Highway 14 snaking its way through the New Mexico landscape with large clouds above. I converted it to black-and-white and it changed my world. I became passionate about going outside, capturing landscapes and converting them to black-and-white. I had a desire to make art, maybe even to become an artist.

We left our Ordinary Worlds again in 2023 to return to northern New Mexico. Our Ordinary Worlds are different now. We are both retired. We have a lot of freedom. We have time. We have new routines that are very different from the routines we had in the 40 years he and I worked in Corporate America. Our retirement routines are great, but they have become “routine.” Traveling to Santa Fe was once again an escape from the ordinary into a special place.

This time I brought back some different images, at least one that I will paint. I captured an image of Highway 14 near the graffitied tank, winding its way through the mountains. It is pretty but not spectacular. I replaced the sky with a big, blue sky filled with clouds that I had taken on a trip to Arizona. The magic reappeared,

But the real reward is not the image I brought back this time. Though my retirement lifestyle is great, it has become routine. The lifestyle I have created is a whole lot more pleasant than going to the office from 8 to 5, sitting in a cube staring at a screen or going to an endless number of meetings. I have created a new structure, a new routine, one that is not as spontaneous as I would like. 

Being in Santa Fe felt so different from being at home. I had complete freedom to be spontaneous. I had nothing I had to take care. There are times when I am home that I feel like I have to stop doing “unproductive” things, like reading and writing, to do something productive. Traveling along Highway 14 felt spontaneous and free, completely in the moment. That is what I brought from this trip – I need to create more spontaneity in this third act of mine.