(I-25)

Storm chasing is a profession, a scientific curiosity, or, depending on who you talk to, thrill-seeker assisted suicide. In my case, it represented a surreal start to my voyage.

Santa Fe’s prominent monsoon season runs a scant path between the end of June until early October. Aside from this, and the possibility of a surprisingly white Christmas, precipitation is relatively sparse—what with New Mexico being a mountainous desert region and all.

One of the area’s greatest magic shows is the intensive visuals presented by a plateau-sweeping thunderstorm. From a vantage point above the valley, Santa Feans are treated to scowling black and gray wisps whipping over the desert flats at breakneck speeds. Along their path, they often spit jagged tongues of bleached white, shock yellow and, most strikingly of all, neon pink. Watching these fronts dance across the plains, smacking into or leapfrogging the Sangre de Cristo range of the Rocky Mountains, reaffirms the majesty and power of our mother nature. Especially not to fuck with her when she’s pissed. And she has every right to be super-pissed.

The night of my departure, a small low-pressure front had barreled over the mountains, dropping several isolated storms along the way and lighting up my evening in town. Most of the heavy weather had left the area by the time I’d slipped through the eye-cracks of the sleeping city. One isolated storm cluster was in the process of exiting stage left, or at least north-by-northeast, buzzing along toward southern Colorado at a good clip. And I wasn’t far behind it; you might even say I was chasing it.

I zipped along I-25 out of Santa Fe, through Las Vegas, New Mexico—a town that always reminded me, in its epic middle-of-the-roadness, of Haddonfield, Illinois, Michael Myers’ old stomping grounds in Halloween. Whenever I drove through there, I couldn’t quite shake the ominous feeling that bit into me or knock John Carpenter’s iconic, droning synth theme out of my skull. Spooky horror flick aping or not, it was now well past midnight, and I wasn’t about to discover just how stabby (or not stabby) the small city was. Plus, the storm was way ahead of me, and I had no intention of letting a compressed mound of charged moisture vapor beat me to Colorado.

Wherever the storm crossed paths with the highway it left a slick of water across the otherwise parched interstate. Random puddles shimmered in my slightly cockeyed headlights as I drove, which also served as a glaring reminder that I wasn’t alone each time a rare, southbound car headed my way. The inky patches also, if I switched off my headlights for a moment (which I admit I did a couple of times), reflected the sky across the already vast stretches of highway, tearing open the boundless infinity of the here and present.

The strip between Las Vegas and Raton, near the Colorado border, runs in a fairly straight line, most notably after Wagon Mound, NM, skirting along the southeastern edge of the Sangre De Cristos. During the day, the New Mexican range juts from the desert plateau in dramatic fashion. During the night, though, only hints of some spiny nether-realm remain—like a haven for the honored dead—especially when the occasional flicker of lightning illuminates them.

Let me further set the mood.

It’s roughly 1:30 in the morn. My baby blue land yacht and I are traversing what is, at this time, a nearly forsaken stretch of highway. Cars pass, perhaps at intervals of one every fifteen minutes at the most. Another set of headlights, as innocuous as they might be, fills me with an illogical possessiveness: This road is mine, dammit!

At the time, I was sipping on a lukewarm redeye (regular old joe spiked with espresso for maximum jitteriness) from a cheap blue plastic travel mug, a remnant from the last leg of my farewell tour, so to speak.

I-25 shrinks to a modest four lanes after Springer, NM and stays that way until Raton, where it begins an arduous climb into the Rockies. The desert plains also take over and the mountains recede into the distance, with only a few vertebrae and bluffs hinting at their towering status. These jagged edges are utterly invisible on a dark and cloudy night.

The tunes, in my sleep-addled state, just weren’t cutting the wee-hour mustard. Sometimes, even the growliest of music can be too rhythmic, believe it or not. Swapping out cassette tapes with my dodgy night vision wasn’t easy. To avoid playing the same damn Misfits tape for the third time, I had to flick on the dome light. This brief flash left me temporarily night-blind. Thankfully, there wasn’t shit to see or any other cars worry about on these desolate reaches.

With Morpheus’ sandbag dangling over my head like the Sword of Damocles, though, I needed a diversion. So I decided to give outback radio the old college try. There’s something oddly life-affirming about hearing another human being along a lonely stretch of blackened highway—no matter how idiotic the words dribbling from their mouth might be.

The only signal I managed to snag was from the ass-end of the panhandle, a hiss-and-pop, pitch-shifting mélange of Art Bell and/or Bible Belt yammering—the tinfoil hat set meets the late-night doomsday crew. (Repent! For the alien apocalypse is at hand!) And, while the sanctimoniously self-righteous rot rubbed my cerebellum the wrong way, there was something oddly appropriate about Conspiracy AM in these wide open spaces.

Regularly tweaking the dial to recapture the call-in chatter—which ranged from liberal media takeovers to CIA incursions to winding tales about freaky-deaky extraterrestrial abductions to myopic bigfoot sightings—at least proved entertaining. These woebegone tales certainly made for compelling listening, especially when the reception crackled in and out thanks to rocky outcroppings and signal voids. These abrupt breaks lent themselves to my sleep-addled, X-Files-fueled fever-dreams about the ubiquitous THEY and THEIR crypto-fascistic, shadowy government programs. I could almost see the Black Ops helicopters flitting like dragonflies across the darkened skies, poised to strike at the first sign of THE TRUTH™ slipping through the cracks, onto the airwaves, and into the yearning ears of the undiscerning masses.

It also didn’t hurt that several areas in the Sangre de Cristos, including Santa Fe Baldy, the fifth highest peak in the state, were notorious hotspots for UFO sightings, purported abductions, and other unexplained phenomena like Donald Trump’s hair.

To this day, I want to believe. And perhaps the truth is out there. But I simply can’t fathom why interstellar or interdimensional travelers, capable of advanced propulsion and navigational systems, would bother studying and/or probing our residents—except perhaps as a cautionary tale about how not to run a civilization. What could possibly interest them in the good ole U.S. of A.? Vapid pop culture? Our increasingly mediocre pop music selection? Pseudo-binary political perspectives with roughly the same grubby little endgame? Our obsession with deep-frying or making a corn or potato chip flavor out of just about everything? I simply can’t see the appeal for other intelligent life forms.

Then, there’s the terrain. The upper portion of I-25 crosses through part of what I’ve heard nicknamed Big Country, even though anywhere flat, expansive, and arid seems to qualify for this description. Drivers and their cars (even ones as barge-inspired as my Delta 88) often find their sense of perspective swallowed by the landscape. This place drawls like an old-time Texan and spreads out as far as the eye can see.

At night, on the other hand, the dynamic can change dramatically. Dusk’s thick blanket transforms Big Country into a headlight-excavated tunnel, especially on any night where the moon doesn’t hang over the horizon like a buttery disc.

There was no moon that evening.

After getting sucked into an hour or two of late night radio, I’d nearly forgotten that I was shadowing a storm front. Oh, sure, the odd flash in the distance would remind me. But it had mostly slipped my mind.

Towards the Colorado border, I noticed the gap between us closing a bit. By my very loose approximation, the clouds were moving much slower than me, traveling roughly 30-40 mph. I was coasting at a serious clip (not telling) while negotiating the same plateau for the most part. True, the front had a lead of several hours, but I figured I could make up some of the distance by driving at that aforementioned unstated speed. Due to some unsound law of mental physics, however, the clouds were still outpacing me.

As I inched through the void, the storm front would flicker warnings at me—its subtle reminder to back off, man. The closer I got, the more it ignited the midnight, revealing a surreal monochromatic landscape of heaping, obsidian rock-daggers and cacti-shaped voids.

I have to admit, by this point, I actually believed it was teasing me, reminding me of the futility of life or at least the eternal challenges of chasing dragons, bunnies, or snipe. Happily, I wasn’t interested in capturing the storm—everyone knows lighting doesn’t bottle well—or defeating it. I was really just enjoying the pursuit. Plus, I had a little piece of insider knowledge about the landscape, something the storm might not know, being of a non-sentient nature (as far as I was aware of anyway): the desert shoots up dramatically as it nears the Raton Pass.

Barely in the lead, the front barreled head-on into the mounding spires of the Colorado side of the Sangre De Cristos. Angrily. It threw a spectacular tantrum as it entangled with the mountains, spitting electrical ire in every direction. Desperately wrestling with its captor, its hearty lead on me dwindled further—thanks in part to the flat, traffic-free roads and the automotive gods, who’d blessed me with cruise control. Jaw-dropping cascades of white and yellow fire burst from the sky, unveiling a tableau of jagged teeth beneath it like that of some gargantuan shark caught in a life and death battle with a smoky giant squid.

I allowed myself a small, vengeful smirk as I finally closed in on my adversary.

Our collision course was inevitable, but I enjoyed a sleeker size and unmatched maneuverability—even if a ’68 Impala could drive circles around me. I cruised like a small raft with an outboard motor towards the storm-lit mountains, which now looked like some hellish ghost ship, placidly drifting toward me on an ocean of midnight.

The storm, caught in the trap of orographic lifting, struggled to shrug off its captor and regain a rapidly-flagging lead. It recovered some crucial time when the roads wrapped themselves around the mountain, and I had no choice but to throttle down. As weary as I was, concentration was now vital. I couldn’t even consider taunting it or even tracking its position without risking the horrific metal shriek of a guardrail, followed by a long, unforgiving plummet into the deep ravine beside me.

I love fun and games as much as the next person, but I’m not particularly fond of death. It’s just not my thing.

By the time we’d crested the mountains, the storm had lost most of its bluster. It still had just enough fight left to unsnag its diaphanous gown of moisture and slide off the lee side of the mountains. Trapped by winding roads on the slow down-climb to the Denver area, I had no choice but to concede defeat. The storm front, as if gloating or paying its respects, fired off a couple of cloud-to-cloud bursts, before slowly dissipating into the horizon itself. I blinked my headlights in tribute, and reluctantly, ended my chase.

I’ll get you next time, you gaseous mass, you. Next time.

Next Chapter: Denver Omelettes Are Made From People