N°.1 — TWIN ARROWS. TWO GUNS. TWO TRAINS.
In January 2019, I travelled from Chicago to Tucson (originally beginning in NYC) on the old Route 66. I didn’t cut corners on the trip — it was important and imperative that I follow the oldest possible alignment of the route. I avoided all highways and interstates, drove my car down original portland cement versions of the road, including all of the long-abandoned dirt roads. The same journey by airplane: 4 hours. By car on the interstate, 3 days. Route 66: 8 days.
As the road descended from the High Plains at the Caprock Escarpment from West Texas into New Mexico, not only did the scenery change into the visage of the old west, the names given to places did too. They became descriptive and objective — more lonesome and visionary. Unusual. Violent. Magical. Memorials to circumstances whose origins have now been long forgotten.
Twin Arrows. Two Guns.
I finished the trip on Route 66 that March with Claire, driving from Flagstaff to Los Angeles. Stopping along the way on a desolate stretch of road in the Mojave desert, an hour or so west of Amboy,
Route 66 at Two Trains, California.
