Playing Fair and Being Kind

New Mexico sanctions the placement of crosses along public highways. The crosses mark the locations along the road where loved ones have died, usually as the result of a traffic mishap. The crosses are typically decorated with plastic flowers or other memorabilia. Crosses placed for children have stuffed toys. The sites marking the placements are tended to regularly. All the variations of cross design and size and material and style of floral arrangements deeply interest me. Crosses made of wood are most popular but I’ve seen metal and stone as well. The wood crosses are often simply painted white with the victim’s name printed in black on the post and arm of the cross. Stone crosses are impressively massive. The metal ones are usually two pieces of angle iron welded together and then painted black. Multiple crosses are placed together. I am reminded of family groupings by the arrangements I’ve seen. More often than not the crosses are draped with plastic flowers. The older arrangements are faded but still attached as if someone has been to the site recently to care for it. The common denominator of all the crosses I’ve seen is the emotion each imparts to this observer. I easily feel the emotion that must have been present when the loving hands pushed the cross into the soil. I can look at the cross and sense an aura of caring and love for the departed writ large upon the symbol, ceremony, and ritual associated with the event.

I spend much of the colder months escaping to the southwest into New Mexico, Arizona, and California. I drive my car and camp along the secondary roads. I see many, many crosses in my travels.  I am also interested in the Mexican American culture. I’ve lived in Mexico for short periods to study the language and ways. I’ve also traveled there on ships as part of my job. The people there are dear to me. Those I have come into contact with are oppressed and they struggle mightily with poverty. 

My driving experiences along the same roads are filled with anxiety and exhaustion. Because I rely on my car to keep me sheltered and safe whether moving or stationary at a rest stop there is a vagabond nature and attendant list of dangers. Living on the road is an adventure. Along with the enchantment of travel comes the aforementioned danger. Being involved in or witnessing automobile accidents is traumatizing. I can only imagine the chaos at the moment of collision filled with fright and panic, loss of control. In my own experience of paying last respects to a loved one lost to a violent event the horror of the accident or event lingers throughout the mourning period and beyond. That is what the roadside cross is trying to tell us.

The community of farm workers and migrant help are always living on the edge. They are a culture dear to me. The only monument to their poverty and struggle is the crosses displayed along the road by those who survive; who live to grieve and erect a simple monument, a display of love for those who have passed. So much can be read into the words, flowers, shape and material of the cross placements. I have been having trouble collecting the words I need to adequately describe in verse or prose what these alters mean to me personally. I have struggled with the meanings and the symbolism. I am affected by the sites to the point of picking out the similarities and the subtle differences but I cannot put words onto paper to describe these feelings.

Two nights ago, as I lay in the back of my car at a campground in Borrego Springs, California. I was still struggling with the alter descriptions and the emotions they elicited in me. The rain was falling on the roof of the SAAB and I pictured the mountains surrounding the area where I had pitched my tent. I was not able to sleep in the tent this night because the wind was wild and making the tent snap and shake too much. I was lying there in a comfortable position and dreamily wondering how to write about the crosses. The rain continued to fall and I knew the land, the flora, the fauna outside the car were listening to the same sounds. Listening and thinking; my imagination wove a scene, a series of events.

Lying there listening to the rain hitting the roof and the windows and the ground near the car I imagined the mountains sitting solidly in a row between the desert floor where I was lying dreamily and the Pacific Ocean fifty miles of so to the west. I created a mental image of the mountains sheltering the desert from the ocean waves crashing against the continent. I saw the ocean waves growing in size and power and continuing to grow and crash and then I experienced the waves crashing directly against the tops of the mountains and splashing over into the desert and over my car and flooding the flat desert away toward the east and washing the car with me in it across the desert and flooding the land. The flood of ocean was freely spreading across the open land down slope toward the Salton Sea one hundred and fifty feet below sea level. The car rolled over and over with the ocean rushing toward the Salton Sea with me and the coyotes, jack rabbits, road runners and rattle snakes, cacti and the sand and rocks from the desert floor all in a wonderful soup.

Inside the back of my car I experienced the emotion of the roadside crosses I’d been seeking. The small, simple crosses pushed into the earth, in grief and despair that grows from helplessness and accident, entered my life through my imagination of being out of control. Making the connection was a lesson in learning to live in the moment with no regret. There is so much available to me if I listen to all that is around. I was grateful for the images because then I had a story written in my head and I only had to edit it slightly.

G. M. Goodwin
3 March 2015