Completing the Circle: Amarillo Ramp to Spiral Jetty

Once upon a time in 2009, I selected a part (mainly rocks and sometimes mud) of each earthwork I visited and transferred it to the next: Spiral Jetty to Sun Tunnels, Sun Tunnels to Double Negative, Double Negative to the closest I could get to Roden Crater, Roden Crater to Lightning Field, and Lightning Field to Amarillo Ramp. This presented the anticipatory return to Spiral Jetty to deposit the rock from Amarillo Ramp at an unknown point in the future. Enter a myriad of other concerns that prevented me from taking the exact piece back to Spiral Jetty, or the Amarillo Ramp rain out last May which did not facilitate selecting a new one, and we come to 2016.

Somewhere around here in January while walking Amarillo Ramp, I chose a fragment of red sandstone and it resided....

... in my car's change drawer, bouncing and rattling around over the thousands of miles I trekked across the West since then.

I did not have any intention of visiting Spiral Jetty again this year, but when I discovered I was only 1.5 hours away from it last weekend, I had to make the trip. Note: never visit Spiral Jetty on a Sunday afternoon in the spring as the parking lot was overloaded, teenagers were complaining that their parents dragged them all the way out in the middle of nowhere to see this, and I witnessed a dog peeing on the earthwork (!). None of this qualified as a contemplative experience.

Amidst the hoards, I buried this at the very center. In doing so, I completed a task overdue, I said goodbye to a collaboration long over, and I marked the end of visiting earthworks until another potential school field trip in the future (or Roden Crater miraculously opens to the public for less than a $6500 ticket price before I am dead).

Amarillo Ramp Visit #2

Earlier this year, I visited Robert Smithson's Amarillo Ramp for the second time since 2009. The cold January sunshine and the solidly packed earth were welcome events after a failed attempt in May 2015 on the earthworks road trip with Ball State University. I learned so much about the piece through the extensive knowledge of Jon Revett that I am now able to fully understand how it was built...

evidenced by the original stakes ...

... and where the water from the lake bed was once drained ...

 ... the remains of where Robert Smithson's plane went down ...

... and the rock that serves as a memorial to the artist who was in the process of creating this earthwork.

There are still traces of LBK, the former "face" of the ramp but thankfully his signature neon green was primarily out of sight.

The most amusing remains were a giant teddy bear that resided under a tree for years until coyotes ripped it to shreds a day or two earlier. I departed wondering if the cotton stuffing will coat the cacti as long as the silver and green paint.

What One Does in Amarillo After the Ramp is Rained Out...

Aside from visiting the Standard Gas Station featured in many of Ed Ruscha's artworks (still a highlight of the trip)...

One wishes her window seat had a real window, not the view of the green grasslands from the seat in front of her.

One initiates her brand new shoes in the worst way possible.

One tosses Camden's Rock into the muddy abyss surrounding the Cadillac Ranch.

One marvels at another rainstorm in back of a limo heading to a vegetarian's nightmare: the Big Texan Steak Ranch.

One remembers what products are sold in a Mexican grocery store (Amigos) and ponders what recipes might be made with cacti.