Beans and I headed up from the Albuquerque Airport, I-40 to I-25 North. We just crossed the Continental Divide, and though it feels like we are going up, we are holding steady at 7000 feet, seemingly for miles and miles on our way to Telluride for the Americana Music Weekend. It rained a bit, our nostrils infused with ozone and clean, then there was a rainbow (My second this week...a DOUBLE RAINBOW!!!).

Cheap-ass iPhone photoWe passed a rock outcropping that appeared to be round, looking like a spaceship had landed long ago and then just became petrified. Never mind, it's just the 'shrooms talking...or the altitude...high on something that's for sure. Ahhhh perfect, we just saw a Laundromat/fireworks combo store. Yeah.

We see the Rockies way in the distance as we head toward the Colorado border. Wonder what kind of Holy Sh*t moment it was when the pioneers saw them on the horizon. I think it is time for a pit stop, 'cause we can't figure out how to get the A/C to come back on. Need beer...cool, liquor store coming up on the right! Much better now. We are passing volcanic rock, tectonic remnants, caves and mesas in the scrub brush and you know, we are in spiritual land. God's country. Native American country. Angels in our midst. You can just feel them.

Pieta Brown is wearing her dark glasses for the Music Fog cameras, and they are impenetrable. Just as is the Southwest itself. If you are not from these parts, you know you are seeing something you don't quite understand, but you trust the cadence, and how perfect it is. It engenders respect, sobering in how enormous it all feels. Pieta Brown captures what I am thinking exactly, as she sings "I'm Just a Stranger in this Land." "Calling All Angels" comes from her most recent CD One And All. This version recorded solo in February on I-40 - the OTHER side of the Mississippi River in Memphis during Folk Alliance.

-Jessie Scott