November 25, 2008

Nomadics

Nomadic site along the Arkansas River?
This spot along the Arkansas River near Avondale, Colorado, suggests a North American exhibit in the Museum of Nomadics.

It includes, from left, a tipi and a pop-up camping trailer. In the background is a tractor truck (facing away from camera) for the long-haul trucker nomad.

Obscured by the fallen tree, center, is a flat-fender Jeep, possibly a Willys MB. (See smaller photo.) And on the right you see a classic aluminum travel trailer.

In Chapter Ten of Magpie Rising: Sketches from the Great Plains, Merrill Gilfillan writes of the western edge of the Southern Plains:

This is the upper Arkansas zone of giant cinnamon rolls and magnificent geological poise. It is mountain-related country, a cusp of things southwestern, Rocky Mountain, and planar. . . . There is something chilling about the piñons and their landscape. They hint of wandering pedestrians, of seed eaters, of Cabeza de Vaca, and perpetual hunger.

(Nomadics is also the name of a blog and, no surprise, a tipi maker.)

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