By octobert on September 29, 2024 ( 2 Comments )

The Most Magical Spot in the World (The West is the Best, Man)

When I was young…somewhere between 5 and 7, my family visited Four Corners Monument, which is where the corners of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah touch. In my young eyes, it might as well have been Xanadu. I could not comprehend what kind of sorcery could create a location in the universe where you could stand in four different locations at once. How is that even possible? What sort of Native American fire dance brought this Nexus forth into the physical plane of existence? I was filled with amazement, and since that visit, it has held a very dear place in my heart.

I don’t remember the drive there…we lived near Denver at the time, and I don’t remember if we stopped there on the way to someplace else or if that was the destination. For all I knew (and perhaps suspected), we could have touched some Navajo rune in the desert that caused me to materialize on that mystical cement pad with a bronze plaque in the middle. When my parents explained what it was, I felt like my eyes were opened to some other dimension that had previously been hidden from me.

As we stood on the plaque marking in two intersecting lines where the corners touched, I looked down in wonder at my feet. My dad, of course, made it even more magical by convincing me that I shouldn’t wander too far off the corners into Arizona (maybe it was Utah) because they were SO much hotter than Colorado. I remember pulling close to my mom on the Colorado corner and making sure that my toes didn’t drift back over into New Mexico. I also recall the panic as my father just simply started wandering into the Arizona desert, and I watched as he got smaller and smaller, and I feared for his safety. (This was before the kiosks were built surrounding the plaque).

Other Post about the trip west (Four Corners continues after):

After we took that in for a bit, we walked over to what amounted as a roadside shack a few hundred feet from the monument to get one of my favorites in the west, Navajo frybread. Again, to 6-year-old “TJ” (my childhood nickname), the Indian gods may as well have brought that dough down from heaven and sprinkled it with the cinnamon sugar harvested by some Native American shaman from a forbidden and sacred cave deep inside the Grand Canyon. For me, it was almost literal manna and the giver of life I ate as I stared off at the amazing portal of the Four Corners.

(I have another distinct and fond memory of sitting in our kitchen in Lakewood, Colorado, and eagerly watching my mom recreate the manna in a cast iron skillet. I remember it being perfect.)

When my parents moved us back East to New Jersey, my memory continued to have Four Corners elevated on a pedestal, and I developed a 7-year-olds obsession with that powerful spot somewhere out in the desert. As I made new friends, I made sure to practically sing the legends of the Sacred Indian Oasis with the fluffy, cinnamon sugar, life giving pastry that only the Spirits of the West (and my mom) could make. If my six year old memories from 45 years ago can be trusted, there was even a time when I was out on the playground, surrounded five deep in friends on all sides listening to me spout the scripture of the magical Four Corners…I, myself, had become a Four Corners shaman and prophet of that ancient and mystical realm. (In reality, I think it was a “what did you do this summer” type thing in class with most of the other kids probably thinking, “Why is the new kid going on and on about two intersecting lines in the sand and glorified funnel cake?”)

Four Corners, for most of my life, continued to be a Xanadu for me…a place I thought of often with a smile, and I could not wait to get back to, even after I came to the realization there was nothing magical about it when I was about 32. New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York have a similar spot where they touched in one location, but I refused to ever visit there because I knew it was inferior to the Four Corners. How could three states touching even hold a torch to four states touching (with manna.)

There were times as I grew older that the wonder I felt towards that spot faded in my mind, but I was always determined to revisit it. When Ben and I planned our trip across the continent, there were two places that were absolute musts for me…Four Corners and the Grand Canyon. In that order. And I probably would have sacrificed the Grand Canyon if it somehow would make me miss the Four Corners. While I enjoyed the drive out to Colorado, wandering around Boulder, hiking Rocky Mountain National Park, and exploring Mesa Verde, the Four Corners were constantly on my mind, and I became more and more giddy the closer we came. By the time we made our turn onto 4 Corners Road from the New Mexico side, I was practically vibrating in my seat from the excitement.

I want to say that it lived up to all of the hype and hope and excitement and magic that lived and maintained a rent-free apartment in my mind for nearly an entire lifetime…

So, I will…

It lived up to all of the hype and hope and excitement and magic that lived and maintained a rent-free apartment in my mind for nearly an entire lifetime.

I could not have been happier to be there again and share it with Benjamin. I don’t believe he understood the magic of that place, but he certainly seemed excited to also stand in four different states at once (how could he not?). Maybe he was humoring his old man, but he seemed to share my joy of being there. I am sure it was no Xanadu to him, but I could see he appreciated its uniqueness.

After kind strangers took our picture to prove the magical place existed (and we took the pictures of the next group in line), we wandered around the perimeter, walking from state to state (seriously, how awesome is the fact that it takes you hours to drive from the center of one of these states to get to the next, but there, you could walk through four in mere moments). Ben and I carefully checked to make sure that it was still hotter in the Arizona corner than the other corners, and Ben took a trail out into Utah a little bit as I soaked it all in.

There were many vendors in the kiosks set up around the monument (I wonder who they file their state taxes with?), and I bought myself my new favorite shirt and, as I sit here reliving that wonder, I regret not purchasing one of the silly Christmas ornaments they were selling there that simply had two lines in the form of a cross on it with abbreviations for the states.

Despite all the changes around the monument, the Frybread shack was still there…”Grandma’s Frybread Shack.” I like to pretend that it is the same shack that was there when I was six, and I like to think that the Navajo woman who made Ben and I our Frybread was the same woman who sold them to my parents all those years ago. As we waited for the bread to fry, we talked with Grandma, and she spoke about how she was able to send her children and grandchildren (if I remember correctly) to college through her little enterprise there. I could see the pride in her eyes as I wondered what it was like to work so near such a magical place. Yeah, I know this is corny, but it does seem like literal magic that a truly random spot in the desert could help send a generation to school. Amazing.

We got a frybread with cinnamon sugar and one with powdered sugar. Ben and I stood in the desert and looked out at the weird little Oasis. There was nothing but miles and miles of desert all around that spot, and it humbled me a bit. I’m not sure if that Frybread lived up to my memory of it, but as I ate it, I could feel it feeding my soul and turning a 49-year-old man back into a six-year old boy…truly, this was a magical spot.

Eventually, it was time to leave, but before we did, I made sure to drive into each state and stop to put the state stickers for each of the other three states on my America map on the side of my car. As we pulled back out on the highway, I took one more look back. There was so much magic ahead of us for this trip, but I knew that no physical place (aside from our home) in the world would ever hold the magic that place held for a six-year-old boy and a 49 year old man.