Once upon a time, I wrote a cycle of ten poems, each accompanied by a carefully composed photo, based on points along a section of AZ 77 and Navajo Route 6. It was a road I drove up and back once a week and every week for ten years during the academic year. I drove to go teach.

There is now a road in my life that is more important. Maybe it always was, but now it is in that regular kind of way too. It is US 180 and the essential section for me runs from SandRock on I-40/US 66 down to La Ciénega de San Vicente, with a coda tail that rejoins the interstate system on I-10 at Deming.

Leaving SandRock and heading southeast, you will first encounter the back way into the Petrified Forest National Park. Just after the park entrance, you move into a new county, named after the Apaches. The important thing about Apache County is that it doesn’t have any zoning. (Or at least it hasn’t historically. Quality information on the subject of places without zoning is very hard to come by.)

The first ten miles of Apache County are not worth discussing with seriousness. It’s flat and barren. But starting about 30 miles out from SandRock, the land begins to roll and the junipers start to present with at least a decent thickness and height. It’s not gorgeous, but it is very close to good enough.

(The stop sign is at 180, about exactly forty miles out.)

And, it’s very inexpensive. Three, four, five thousand an acre at the low end.

I don’t want to live there. But I might like parking there for a while. Maybe even a long while, at that price.

Until I establish an income stream, the lot in the small artsy college town will remain unbuilt. That plan will be on hold.

The Apache County plan, or maybe at longer odds Socorro or Catron counties, is a stopgap I could afford, and that has been the obsession for twentyfour hours. I’m ready to let go of it for a bit now, filing it for a rainy day.