To New Mexico with Love - Part II

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In elementary school, I learned that twenty-five years was considered a generation. Crazy to think an entire generation has passed since moving to and moving from New Mexico.

In New Mexico, I dare say a generation is more like 14 years...and, well, here in Appalachia, it just might be the same.

Yesterday, my son made a list of things he missed in New Mexico. His friends were at the top of the list but then came the land:

"I miss the small river that runs through my back yard."

"The arroyo?"

"Yes, the arroyo." Pause. "I miss my garden and the sky, the smell of rain and the ice cream with cookie dough in it."

"The ice cream with? Wait a minute, you mean the ice cream we had last week with Freddy?"

"Yea, that ice cream."

"That isn't from Santa Fe, silly."

"Oh yeah, I forgot. I still miss it."

Time for children is truly a loopty-loop within the minds eye threading in and out of the imagination like a memory of a dream.

So to is my memory of Santa Fe.

In the morning when I first woke in the Land of Enchantment, I tip-toed over bodies in slippery sleeping bags, and stepped outside. The morning light illuminated the silvery green leaves of a Russian Olive tree. The scent filled my lungs impressing upon my memory the permanent signature that only scent can.

The road the house was on was dirt, bumpy red dirt. The pine trees clustered tight around the house. The brilliant blue sky was simply that: brilliant. I exhaled relieved that I was not flung into a vast orbit high above the earth but clearly, I was in terra incongnita. Every cell in my quaker, seafaring ancestral body shivered with uncertainty; I had no idea how to be in a land composed of only one element: dust.

Those first weeks of college I wandered around Camino Cruz Blanca. With camera in hand, I photographed everything I saw: tall stands of wild sunflowers, thick bushes of blooming chamisa, flaming petals of Indian Paintbrush and tiny adobe homes tucked between and no higher than the ancient Pinons.

Each night, Orion's Belt rose above Atalaya. For the first time I saw his full context among the trillions of stars I had never seen before. For the first time I grasped the magnificence of seeing the very same stars the Greek philosophers gazed upon millenia ago.

As the nights grew cooler, the air filled with burning Pinon, cedar and juniper. I wept with the richness of the air. I had no idea scent could be so pure in a dry sauna. My heritage was 12 inches above sea level. At 12 inches above sea level, dry saunas were manufactured and for adults who belonged to gyms.

I remember one day in October watching the blue sky turn to blood red with the setting sun when I realized New Mexico was a land of simplicity. Only four colors made up the entire landscape: blue of the sky, red of the earth, white of the clouds and snow and green of the trees. I was hypnotized. Thus began my 25 year enchantment. Like Dorothy in the field of poppies, I laid back, laid down, and drifted for an entire generation...or two.