trail. He would follow the legendary Route 66 through Amarillo to Arizona on the way to the golden promise of California. He was planning to teach his own course on the relationship between Steinbeck and Kerouac and as a ‘tenderfoot’ he knew that the best way to get into the soul of those ‘dust-bowl’ writers was to experience the landscape first hand.
‘Jack Kerouac is overrated, Steinbeck was my god.’
Along the route, he planned to take a detour up into Colorado to pursue a research project he had taken on to fund his trip. A century ago, prospectors had discovered gold on the Ute Indian lands in south-western Colorado. The miners had ignored the reservation boundaries and swarmed over the native hunting grounds. The Utes threatened war. Baxter had agreed to research the history of the federal commission that went to the reservation to preserve peace – an interesting historical event that had never before been documented in detail by any other writer.
While travelling in this mountain land, he also developed an increasing interest in the role of guns in the American frontier story and throughout this time met many men who still considered a gun part of their everyday apparel. Jake Chisholm taught him how to shoot after rescuing him from two men preparing to skin him at poker. Wild Bill taught him the meaning of ‘the drop’ and warned him against wearing a gun in town unless he wanted trouble. Shooting was the source of his later deafness. He brought quite a collection of hunting rifles and handguns back with him to England, most of them still working. He had never bothered much with gun licenses but they made a nice display now on his study walls.
After finishing this project and in the weeks left before returning to Harvard, Baxter stopped at Jemez Pueblo, New Mexico, a village west of Santa Fe. He took a room in the pueblo where his blue eyes and rosy English cheeks earned him the name of ‘Poshizmo’, or ‘Dawn God’. He was inspired and writing prose again. After one morning session, with nothing to do
except wait for the shadows of ladders to the flat roofs creep along the smooth walls,
he wrote the following:
A moon just past its first quarter was shining on the Indian pueblo of Santiago, so that one side of the main street (it only boasted four) was in deep shadow, while on the other the mud-built houses were made almost beautiful by the silver light. The walls on the bright side were curiously barred with the slanting shadows cast by low, broad ladders, which led from storey to storey of the terrace-like buildings, and by the projecting ends of the beams that supported their flat roofs. Outside each house, clear away from the wall, stood a great clay oven, in shape exactly like a gigantic beehive as tall as a man. In the deepest shadow on the dark side of the street, between one of these ovens and the wall, something was crouching. There was no one to disturb him, however, and the bright moon of New Mexican skies sank lower and lower in the west, and yet he remained there motionless, except when now and again the night air, growing colder, caused the blanket to be gathered more closely to the body it was protecting.
Richard Baxter Townshend,
Lone Pine
It was at that time that he learnt belatedly of his father’s death. The distressed letters from England soon convinced him that after a three-year absence he should go home directly to his widowed mother. So instead of returning to Massachusetts, he boarded a cheap flight bound for London from Denver.
As soon as he set foot back in England, Baxter found the mellowness of an English autumn oppressively muggy compared to the Rockies’ bracing air. Moreover, he felt like a stranger in his native land having become accustomed to the expansiveness of the desert landscape for so long. His heart was soon longing for escape and adventure again.
Returning to England, he had also immediately realised that most of his friends were already well
‘Jack Kerouac is overrated, Steinbeck was my god.’
Along the route, he planned to take a detour up into Colorado to pursue a research project he had taken on to fund his trip. A century ago, prospectors had discovered gold on the Ute Indian lands in south-western Colorado. The miners had ignored the reservation boundaries and swarmed over the native hunting grounds. The Utes threatened war. Baxter had agreed to research the history of the federal commission that went to the reservation to preserve peace – an interesting historical event that had never before been documented in detail by any other writer.
While travelling in this mountain land, he also developed an increasing interest in the role of guns in the American frontier story and throughout this time met many men who still considered a gun part of their everyday apparel. Jake Chisholm taught him how to shoot after rescuing him from two men preparing to skin him at poker. Wild Bill taught him the meaning of ‘the drop’ and warned him against wearing a gun in town unless he wanted trouble. Shooting was the source of his later deafness. He brought quite a collection of hunting rifles and handguns back with him to England, most of them still working. He had never bothered much with gun licenses but they made a nice display now on his study walls.
After finishing this project and in the weeks left before returning to Harvard, Baxter stopped at Jemez Pueblo, New Mexico, a village west of Santa Fe. He took a room in the pueblo where his blue eyes and rosy English cheeks earned him the name of ‘Poshizmo’, or ‘Dawn God’. He was inspired and writing prose again. After one morning session, with nothing to do
except wait for the shadows of ladders to the flat roofs creep along the smooth walls,
he wrote the following:
A moon just past its first quarter was shining on the Indian pueblo of Santiago, so that one side of the main street (it only boasted four) was in deep shadow, while on the other the mud-built houses were made almost beautiful by the silver light. The walls on the bright side were curiously barred with the slanting shadows cast by low, broad ladders, which led from storey to storey of the terrace-like buildings, and by the projecting ends of the beams that supported their flat roofs. Outside each house, clear away from the wall, stood a great clay oven, in shape exactly like a gigantic beehive as tall as a man. In the deepest shadow on the dark side of the street, between one of these ovens and the wall, something was crouching. There was no one to disturb him, however, and the bright moon of New Mexican skies sank lower and lower in the west, and yet he remained there motionless, except when now and again the night air, growing colder, caused the blanket to be gathered more closely to the body it was protecting.
Richard Baxter Townshend,
Lone Pine
It was at that time that he learnt belatedly of his father’s death. The distressed letters from England soon convinced him that after a three-year absence he should go home directly to his widowed mother. So instead of returning to Massachusetts, he boarded a cheap flight bound for London from Denver.
As soon as he set foot back in England, Baxter found the mellowness of an English autumn oppressively muggy compared to the Rockies’ bracing air. Moreover, he felt like a stranger in his native land having become accustomed to the expansiveness of the desert landscape for so long. His heart was soon longing for escape and adventure again.
Returning to England, he had also immediately realised that most of his friends were already well
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