Tuscon, Arizona. Summer vacation from school. Meeting Cody's parents for the first time. This was the best summer ever. I knew it was going to be the best summer ever on the way from the airport to Cody's parent's home. We were driving down the highway and I was thinking about High Tides in Tuscon, specifically the part about the section of the highway that ran through the reservation. I wanted to experience this myself. I am a nature loving hippie girl and I have seen dirt roads and gravel roads and have been miles and miles from roads at all, but I had never seen roads purposefully neglected, ignored, maybe eventually forced into disapperance. I had never seen such an awesome show of protest to something that most people take for granted. I loved the sensations of a smooth ride, the  transitionary bump, followed by the kind of bumpy road that you can go aaahhh on and have it comes out as ahuhahuh, another transition, and a smooth departure from the reservation. I felt like flying. I was sitting in my seat feeling as if I might fly, I was facing the Buddah that we used to start the car, the Buddah that somehow made the broken yard stick sticking from the broken steering column, start the car, thinking of High Tides in Tuscon, and I saw a roadsign. I can't remember what the roadsign said. But I read it aloud and Cody's mom Donna must have heard some longing in my voice for she pulled right off the road and we went to see it. 

It was the place where the Virgin de Guadalupe appeared and there was a small church there next to that mountain and cave. We toured the church. It was a hot hutlike structure with lovely cream walls of a material that looked as if it would meld back with the surrounding earth should it rain hard enough, or lacking water, enough years pass. The paint on the walls was spectacular though crude. There was a cubby in the wall with holy water in it. I dipped, knelt, cross and approached. I pauded in a meditative mind and decided to make a candle. I toured the little gift shop. We hiked the mountain behind the church with many others swarming around. I saw the flowers, the notes, the candles and prayers. It was amazing. 

It was  104 degrees and I'm in a blue tank top with light blue velvet trim and flower on the front and tight levis and sneakers, a sweater tied around my waist. I'm definitely not dressed for the weather, but I don't mind. The three of us, mormon, pagan and neo-pagan in a Catholic church, and I felt completely at home. 

It blew my mind that Donna could just interrupt the planned like that. She could exit the highway at any time and just screw the schedule, oh well to the household of people, Dave, Becca, Jeff and their dog and cat, waiting for us. I had never seen someone break from time; my mother is OCD, and therefore every moment of my life to this point had been strictly accounted for. But somehow, this summer, time broke. And between time I had the greatest time of my life.