15 Years After Our Journeys' End in Elephant Architecture

I have recently been back in touch with an old commodore of ours. My old droogs and I were making an excursion cross-country by thumb back in the summer of 2009. We three, Adam, Corbin and I had made it to Patagonia, AZ hitching rides from Alabama, camping in forests and thickets, and watching the landscape transform into the desert. The Great American Transformation into Cowboys. Those nights under the stars in our sleeping bag in the wide open expanses of the desert proved to be the best nights of our lives.

We were heading back home when a Sand Storm blew in and shut the interstate down. We sought shelter at a gas station off the exit ramp and cars were lined up for miles into the horizon. At the gas station we were buying snacks, cigarettes and filling our water bottles while three other similar souls were doing the same. They were about our age and looked artistic with bandanas and a similar look of gear and rugged road life. I believe I struck up a conversation with the one who seemed to be the leader of the outfit. They were a band on tour to California from Jacksonville, Florida who also was stranded by the sand storm. It took Adam and Corbin a little bit to warm up to the other guys, but I could feel a familiar energy among us all. We exchanged stories and recreations. They played us a small live concert amidst the Arizona Sandstorm: Santeria by Sublime. They nailed it. We would all hang out in their vehicle sharing recreations. I pulled out my journal I had been updating along the way, under bridges and various other breaking points. Looking back now over all these years I will never understand the accuracy and details I could write under those circumstances. I shared a game with them our friends would play where we would take turns drawing a portion of a sketch and let the picture morph between multiple artists. We all took turns drawing pictures in my journal and they had played a similar game in high school so they caught on pretty quick.

C_, the front man, and I would stay in touch after our journeys ended. He would drive up from Florida for an ambiguous camping trip at DeSoto State Park in Alabama, and we would exchange greetings a few times along the way. We have just now been re-acquainted. He is a big time attorney down in Florida now. He would go to Law school after being a journalist in Thailand where he would meet his wife. One of the bandmates has passed away recently. I pulled out my old hitchhiking journal and am mindful of his artwork: “This pen is balls” with a detailed sketch of a nice pair of smooth criminals. C_ and I plan on staying in touch more since our lives have entangled in more ways than just one. I had already figured he was of French ancestry like myself and it was something I had planned to confirm over our phone call. And before I even asked, he told me speaks French to his grandmother to cheer her up. The older I become, the more and more I become in tune with my own French ancestry on my mother’s side and finding the synchronicities of ancestries of how similar stars align in the midst of a phenomena of circumstances.

“The hero of a tragedy, in order to interest us, should be neither wholly guilty nor wholly innocent . . . All weakness and all contradictions are unhappily in the heart of man, and present a colouring eminently tragic.”

Napoleon, on Francois-Just-Marie
------Raynouards’s play The Templars

I could publish my Journal as is, though I always planned on embellishing the overall story (which I have in many regards). It’s a 3-4 part novel series and hitchhiking is part of book II though so many folks became a part of that story in itself.

Last updated March 29, 2024