THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT

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Arrived in El Paso this morning. A friend has opened her home to us--hope to get a couple hours sleep, a shower and then back on the road. Everyone who knows we are driving to Louisiana feels it's crucial to tell us that the drive across Texas is awful. I believe being trapped in your attic for a week with the waters rising around you is the place where "awful" reigns. I brought Dylan's Highway 61, Steve Earle's "Jersusalem" and a bunch of other stuff (including the sound track to John Sayle's Lone Star)--and Dr. John and other Dixieland sounds to urge us onward--music makes a lot of bad road tolerable.

Hope to be in Louisiana by day's end/night's end/tomorrow a.m. We have been given a ton of food, sheets, blankets, toiletries to take to a shelter and/or directly to needy families. Will figure out that part when the time comes.

I drove to the Arizona border, then Don took the wheel and drove all the way to Las Cruces--I drove that last forty minutes or so to El Paso because Don was exhausted. We saw the sun rise over Las Cruces, New Mexico: dark, pointed mountains east of the town, a sky of bread-pan rolled dark clouds giving way to purple, pink and red displays. One mountain had a curling white cloud caressing its peak, as if it had become arms and was holding the hilltop, not ready to let go.

Time for sleep.

Without my dear and wonderful wife this trip would not be happening, from getting the cargo van comped to the food donations, etc., she is elemental force that carries us east. It is our job to help homeless dogs and cats, and some newly homeless humans, find a place to stay for a time, and so that is what we'll do.

More later or tomorrow.

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