My aunt and uncle moved permanently to Arizona, USA when I was 6 years old. It was always their foremost dream. My family and I have visited them a total of 5 times, and so my understanding of American life and culture was molded in the depths of that hot desert valley. As a lad, the nuances of it were a little blurred; I was enamored by the sweltering heat, the back yard swimming pool, the monstrous size and scope of the city of Phoenix, so contrasted to my childhood in Britain.
Growing up in the Lake District, the person I call 'me' was shaped by that world - by cool summers, narrow streets and terraced houses, hills and fells, the grey ocean. Phoenix is the polar opposite, with its sandy flatlands and palm trees, and highways that traverse across the enormous metropolis. By the time I was 17 and on my third visit, I'd become disillusioned with England - it was far too boring, and in the US I saw a land of color, somewhere I could try a different version of 'me' or express myself differently than at home, where every face or back alley was familiar.
But what I want to write about today concerns the last visit I made to Arizona in 2019, right before we were blessed by the COVID pandemic. By the time that trip rolled around I had matured a little, past the wild and edgy dreams of a teenager. We did an awful lot on that trip. We visited Frank Lloyd Wright's house, found joy in shopping at the outlet malls, and took a road trip all the way to Las Vegas.
The road from Phoenix to Vegas pulls away from the metropolis, taking the intrepid driver out through the North-West of the city. Incrementally, the gated communities packed neatly into rows with their faux-Greco white walls are replaced by solitary old homes, the odd gas station, and then the desert fills up more space than the concrete does, and you find yourself out in the majesty of the burnt sienna mountains. I remember quite well - we passed a ghost town named Nothing, with only a large sign and the lone husk of a long-deceased building occupying a plot of land slowly being reclaimed by the sands. Off to the east, a mining town named Bagdad nestled amongst the cliffs all alone. I listened to Bob Dylan, and staring from the window of the car I saw coyotes in the brush and a hawk spreading its wings beneath the December sun.
Kingman is an interesting town, in some ways almost like a scaled-down version of Phoenix itself. On the strip of the town is where we stopped for breakfast, at a Cracker Barrel amongst a row of fast food diners filled to their brim with truckers and travelers alike. Rustic and warming, my dad and I shared plenty of coffee over our pancakes. The gift shop sold teddy bears with the message 'Future US Marine' printed onto an American flag on the belly.
Leaving Kingman's sleepy center we passed by a trailer-town named Golden Valley, rectangular homes propped upon stilts in a rainbow of different colors, the desert between them dotted with crooked Hawaiian palm trees. The stretch to Las Vegas seemed like the surface of Mars; the highway stretches for untold endless miles with scarcely a bend, flanked by towering rocky peaks in the distance. The brush and dirt glowed in the midday sun. I became entranced simply staring from the window, my mind fixated on the eternal desert and the odd lonesome house by the side of the hot tarmac. 4 days in the heart of booming Las Vegas was a whiplash of contrast to the ancient arid wilderness I'd seen so much of. An oasis in every sense, the city's extravagant vices, neon lights, waterworks and shows are almost a living exhibit to feebly demonstrate man's ability over nature - and yet the enormous Mojave watches on apathetically. On our return journey, I lost my battle against fatigue and shortly after glimpsing Kingman one more time, I drifted into unconsciousness to the sounds of some country radio station.
The song I awoke to, that greeted me as I roused from sleep on the distant outskirts of Phoenix, was absolutely beautiful. The car was fairly quiet, with my uncle focusing on driving whilst my dad upheld his routine of checking his Whatsapp messages. I pressed my head against the cool glass of the window, watching the breeze rustle the flora and rouse tumbleweed into animation, observing the powerful white tank mountains or the odd 18-wheeler that rumbled by. The song was a gorgeous folk-country melody with a soft bassline, smooth acoustic strums, brought together with a distinctive backing of light percussion. The voice of the woman who sang in an undeniably 70s style spoke of a man, a lover, with vocal tones as smooth and dynamic of birdsong. I was completely captivated, I'd never heard anything like it. And as the song faded out, the backannouncer. "A lovely tune there, Coyote by Joni Mitchell, from her 1976 album Hejira."
I really don't think any song I've heard has fascinated me quite like this one has. I couldn't get it out of my head for days on end, and when I relistened in those final weekdays before we flew back to England I had no compellation to look at my phone or busy myself. I was simply there, where my feet were, in the gravelly sand of Arizona. This song has become so very special to me that I make a point to only even listen to it sparingly, so as to forever preserve and extend that intrinsically linked nostalgia of association with the desert.
Joni Mitchell is from Canada, yet Coyote elicits such an overpowering bouquet of emotions in my heart that I can only ever link back to US southwest, to Arizona, Nevada, and the Sonora. I categorize it into a genre that I have no real name for and that I have only a few songs to add to. It's an ethereal folk-country, what one might call neo-American folk. The guitar, percussion, and the rising tones are reminiscent of Native American music, and the flute and drums of the Navajo and Hopi cultures. This genre is but one thing to me - the wide open desert, the cacti and shrubbery, animals that call the canyons and valleys home - and as Joni Mitchell says in Coyote, the white lines of the freeway. Far from the chaos of metropolitan city life, in a diner somewhere in the American southwest, with a cup on coffee and some scrambled eggs, the blindingly bright morning sun and cool, sandy flatlands. Trucks rolling on by, the feel of worn denim and the smell of gasoline. Not just the country-western Americana of pickup trucks and cowboy boots, but also of the native culture, the Kokopelli and Pueblo ruins, connection to the natural awe-inspiring beauty that the fauna and flora share. A long, peaceful road trip across the ethereal desert.
Coyote is by far the most important song I know of this personal genre of mine, but there are others. Send Me On My Way by Rusted Root, Dreams by Fleetwood Mac, Old Man by Neil Young, A Horse with No Name by America. They all coax out this wonderful ethereal emotion from inside of me, a comfort I always carry with me
, and - although I am not an American - a part of that feeling of home.
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