highway_89a_idyll birdmad the turn off from Route_66 coming back down from Flagstaff on the scenic route home to the hot, dusty city drive down the winding road and its precarious curves, my nephews and i navigating the slippery rocks at the bottom of Oak Creek, Past the red rocks and the vulgar tourists of Sedona through the meandering streets of Clarkdale. past the church where the priest who opened the parish in my old neighbourhood went when his term as our priest was concluded down to the Tuzigoot ruins, but a little late in the day and a little low on cash, we head for Jerome, mining town turned ghost town resurrected in to tourist/hippie art hangout the winding road starting at the bottom of the town, reaching the haunted Jerome Grand Hotel at the top, winding upward as it leaves (reminder of the Embarcadero, steep and serpentine) an hour of twists and turns, rising and falling vehicular rollercoaster before the last of the forest becomes the northern edge of the high desert and the road runs straighter the last of the sweet air broken by the freight trucks and their diesel fumes as the sun finishes setting just south of Prescott southward, into the early night and the stifling city Home again. i could get used to the idea of not coming home if i had the means to make the clean break tumbleweed against the skyline as the city shines in the receding horizon 010707 ... splinken all kinds of birds live out in the desert, apparently. 010723 what's it to you? who go blather from