Somewhere in New Mexico there’s a stretch of unpaved road so heinous that it’s preferable to drive over the thick purple sage bushes that flank the road’s right shoulder. On its left a graveyard of vehicles sit in their final resting spots gathering rust and graffiti tags. When you first find the road, you’ll see a green street sign guarding its entrance.
It reads: Good ‘Nuff Road.
I first faced Good ‘Nuff Road some few hours before sunset with my roommate from college, a silversmith and aspiring pilot named Canyon, beside me in the passenger seat. We’d just driven down from a naturalist (a term I can only understand as holistic rebrand of ‘nudist’) hot spring in the green thicket at the base of the Rockies just an hour south of Salida, Colorado. For the last few days we’d driven through the Texas panhandle and up into Colorado to visit the Great Sand Dunes National Park. On our journey we slept in the back of my van on plots of Bureau of Land Management land in an effort to spend as little as possible and we drank warm Pabst Blue Ribbon from a thirty pack Canyon’s older brother had bought for us. We sat on top of my car and looked at the stars and laughed and dreamt and he smoked cigarettes. I don’t let myself smoke. If I started, I don’t think I’d ever stop.
When we faced Good ‘Nuff Road we had our fingers crossed that the BLM map we’d depended on was accurate, and that just half a mile down Good ‘Nuff Road a plot of public access land awaited us. When you first face Good ‘Nuff road you’ll meet the two divots that dig down nearly a foot into the ground. Between these divots are some marginally flat dirt that, with focus and careful precision, could be driven upon. In my initial optimism I opted to take this route. We drove slowly, five miles per hour and under along Good ‘Nuff Road.
Canyon jammed his entire upper body out his window and gave directions as to where the narrow rails of dirt curved and dipped and weaved. “Yeah dude, a little left.” The wheels groaned as they ground against the dirt “No other left.” It groaned again as we crept back and forth. “Yeah dude. Perfect.” The ache of dirt scraping against my undercarriage crept its way into my throat, I wanted to call it off, but backing out wasn’t an option anymore. We were too far down the road.
As we crept down the way the rails thinned and thinned until they were nothing more than short humps in the now undriveable road. Canyon got out of the car and went and checked it all out. His confused look as he scrunched his eyebrows and left his mouth cocked open communicated that not only was the path no longer viable, but my car, the van which I love so much, might have met its match in this horrible, horrible road. Canyon returned to the passenger side of the car and stuck his head in.
“All good!” He chirped. I’ve always had trouble reading him. After some deliberation we decided it might be necessary to follow Good ‘Nuff Road on its shoulder and unfortunately crush some of the purple sage that grew alongside it. Canyon assured me that those plants could handle anything. After the car shook and creaked it’s way along the path we continued down the way. Sage scraped against the axles of my undercarriage and got caught and crammed in all the little spaces between the machinery of the car. Even today, some years later, I believe there must be some sage still stuck down there.
On our left, the wire gate fence that blocked the graveyard of cars opened and the graveyard ended. I took us back across Good ‘Nuff Road and drove out onto the stretch of scant tufts of grass and red dirt that reached out against the big sky. We’d made it to our home for the night, and to celebrate we drank. Warm Pabst never tasted great, but tonight it tasted like victory. We laughed about the road and its name and all its faults and we agreed we’d never forget about our evening. We laid atop my car and watched as the sky went from orange to black and in that black it exploded with stars, stripes of light glowed in the air above us. Somewhere in the desert someone burned trash and the stink of melting rubber singed our nose hairs and burned away at our brains, though no faster than the beer we were drinking already had.
Tomorrow we’d drive into Taos, hungover and hungry, and find ourselves buried under the mountain of love, our stomachs full and our hearts even more so.