There are better places to be lens-less than in Las Cruces, NM. I come here every year at this time to visit the last living relative of my father's family. Born an Illinois farm girl of Swedish ancestry with a name that alluded to new mountains, with pale skin and ruddy hair, she now lives two blocks from the beginning of BLM desert that takes you up to the Organ Mountains. They say you don't choose your relatives, but in this case, I didn't do too bad.
A year ago I was in Las Cruces while under the Svengali-like sway of a certain RV blogger who was trying to lure me into the RV travel blog racket. There was one last objection: buying a digital Brownie camera. I didn't believe in
them, and had enjoyed a long career as a full time RVer out West without one.
It wasn't my fault. The first time through red-rock Utah I headed right for Moab like any naif would, especially one who mountain biked. I noticed a road marked “Abbey Road.” Greenhorn that I was, I thought it alluded to the once-famous album by the Beatles.
The civic-minded merchants of Moab soon made it known to me that Edward Abbey, the author, was in fact the Holy Desert Prophet of Moab, and that they had E.A.-endorsed books, tee-shirts, coffee mugs, etc. At any rate he did start Moab on its way to glory as the Gatlinburg of red-rock Utah.
With the zeal of the newly converted I read everything written by Edward Abbey. In one of his books he screamed (he did a lot of that) at the tourists to ‘throw the &*!@ing camera away!’ if they wanted to get the most satisfaction from the desert experience.
Somewhat later, I bumped into a woman in the parking lot of a large, well-known retailer in Page, AZ, at the edge of Abbey’s hated Lake Powell and dam. She was a solo traveler like me, but quite a bit older. When she persisted in showing me photographs of herself in evening gowns taken ten years earlier, I nervously switched the topic to photographing scenery out West.
She shocked me by saying she had no camera. It was, she said, a lot of trouble and expense just to duplicate what could be gotten more easily from postcards, available anywhere. And why compete against professional photographers?
At first her opinion seemed like a cynical wisecrack. But had she hit upon an unpleasant truth? Don't most profound truths sound rude from someone else's lips?
Believe it or not, this story has a happy ending, which must wait until next episode...
