The Four Corners

If you were to ask me what my favorite grade was in school, I would not even hesitate before answering: 4th grade. That was the year we learned about U.S. geography—the different regions, their topography and history, how to spell the states and their capitols. I can still say all 50 states in alphabetical order, thank you very much. But I will need to sing them to you using the jingle we learned for our 4th grade music program, or I’ll get lost in the M states.

My teacher, Mrs. Williams, had visited all 50 states, which is very “4th-grade teacher” of her. With every state we learned about, she would tell us a story of her visit there, sometimes with photographs. One day when we were talking about the Southwestern region, she told us about a magical place called “the Four Corners,” where the borders of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico intersect. She showed us a picture of her with each hand and foot in a different state. My sweet little 9-year-old mind was blown. 

I knew one thing for certain: Something amazing was happening at this place, and I was going to go there.

Last week, I took 9-year-old me to the Four Corners, a waypoint on our drive home from the Grand Canyon.  My kids were bouncing with excitement as we drove through the high desert toward this national landmark. They chattered away with plans for exactly which states they would put their hands and feet in, and who would stand in which state in the picture we’d take of all four of them. 

I glanced down at my phone. The map app showed that we were less than two miles away, but we were in the actual middle of nowhere. When it signaled for us to turn left onto a narrow dirt road, I burst into laughter. Up ahead was a tiny beige trailer, the only building of any kind we had seen for miles. Beyond that, a small gravel parking lot sat half-full next to a circle of flags sticking out above the worn, tin-roofed cinderblock booths that surrounded them. We had arrived at the Four Corners National Monument. 

I cannot accurately describe how comedically underwhelming this sight was. I laughed until I had tears streaming down my face. Between gasps, I told Matt, “I know that this looks really lame. I do. I see it. But I cannot help it—I’m still so excited.”

We walked through a gap in the booths and saw the small brass marker at the center of a large slab of concrete with the name and seal of each state set into it. The kids looked around. Even they were a bit dubious, especially after the pomp of the Grand Canyon that we experienced the day before. I looked down and saw a thick line below my feet: the state line between Arizona and New Mexico. I couldn’t help myself—I hopped over the line and turned with a smile to the kids. “Look! Now I’m in New Mexico!” I hopped back over. “And now I’m back in Arizona!” Hop. “New Mexico!” Hop. “Arizona!” The kids giggled and joined in as we hopped and zig-zagged all the way to where a small crowd was gathered at the spot where the four states meet.

Retirees, 20-somethings, empty nesters, parents with their teenagers—adults and kids alike were standing around the marker waiting for their turn for a picture posing in four states at once. The youngest ones led the way, un-self-consciously running laps around the center and shouting the states’ names, doing pushups over the marker, frog-leaping and bear-crawling for the Kodak moment. The grown-ups approached the middle sheepishly at first, but were just as giddy as the kids after taking pictures of their and their spouse’s feet, posing like a crab just like they had planned since they were little, FaceTiming with their grandkids, or asking one of their buddies to stand up on the bench to get a better shot. They were skipping from state to state as they moved aside to let the next group take their pictures.

It was delightful and ridiculous and lame and thrilling. I suppose you could say that the giddiness was just from the feeling of being in four places at once, a momentary sense of escape from human limitations that confine our bodies to the place under our feet. But I think it’s deeper than that.  Perhaps the childlike light-heartedness was because, for a brief moment, we were bearing witness to a taste of a reality our souls are made to recognize but have forgotten how: distinct worlds touching right in the middle of the desert wilderness, in an underwhelming place, right under our time-and-space-bound feet.

Grown-up me can see that it is all a rather silly cartographical happenstance. And grown-up me is right. 

But 9-year-old me—the one who knew in her bones that something amazing was happening there—is telling the truth.