#18 / 2003 Tour 2: The Path of Least Resistance

HEADING TOWARD NEVADA

#18


I have set sail on a languid sea, following a path of least resistance. Maybe it’s my age, but I am tired of struggling, be it in pleasure or pain. It is so much fun to drive from town to town and see the changes in cultures and values.

Front yards, yard art - there is a good start if you want to evaluate what people hold dear. No one loves a grand expanse of green lawn more than I. Talk about struggling, now there is one place where I struggled for years. I wish I had a dime for every hour I put into my yard and garden. Never had a good year, perhaps a passable year, but there was never a day that I set out on my front porch, looked around at all the grass and flowers and thought to myself, "It was all worth it."

Some of the most beautiful lawns I have ever seen in my life were around Buffalo, NY, and the Canadian border where we visited last spring. Such lush greenness I never attained and you can tell those people don’t even have to work hard on their yards. The grass just grows that thick and beautiful. I guess it is all that snow melting in the springtime. Boy oh boy, did I exclaim every time we passed through a neighborhood like that.

What is so funny about New Mexico is that these people don’t even try to grow grass. They gave up years ago. Sure, you will see a single green lawn from time to time that someone has spent every day watering and fussing over, but the vast majority of people just create their yards out of gravel. From front door to mail box the yard will be filled with sometimes all the same gravel with a big cactus plant in the middle. Others form frameworks to form designs. They might use red volcanic rock, accompanied by some brown river rock, and intersperse all that with another corresponding gravel. The yards are so neat.

Fix 'em up once and off you go. These people aren’t struggling in the hot sun mowing, weeding, and edging. They too, have taken the path of least resistance and they are all the better for it.