Life in New Mexico

Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico
Ansel Adams
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Life in New Mexico

Life in New Mexico ... where you're not so much interested in "home on the range" as whether or not your home HAS a range. (No kidding. Some people still cook on woodstoves.)

This piece started out ironic and tongue-in-cheek (although every word is true) ... and gradually segued into something sentimental.

This state does that to me. I wouldn't live anywhere else.

Santa Fe
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When you live in some parts of New Mexico ...

• The US Postal Service (despite their motto) does not deliver to your house. You are given a PO Box -- often for free -- and you get the mail on your way to or from "town." However often you make that drive.

• UPS will delay delivery of packages for up to a week citing "due to circumstances beyond UPS control." No one can ever explain what those are. (The truth is, the driver just didn't feel like making the trip. I've had drivers on my route that would "head back to the station" at 2 in the afternoon whether or not they still had deliveries to make. I've known other drivers who'd deliver packages after 10 o'clock at night. Attitude is an individual thing ... and it shows.)

• The local Walmart is considered "the mall" in many outlying or Northern villages.

• If you need the police, don't bother phoning 911, if you can drive, go directly to the nearest local diner. All the cops will be there. Eating. If you can't drive, be prepared for a 1/2 hour argument about whether or not you are in the jurisdiction of whichever sheriff you are phoning. (Be sure your next-of-kin know where to find your will and other pertinent papers. You could no-kidding DIE long before help arrives.)

Near Eagle's Nest, northern New Mexico
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• Home burglary and random pilfering are considered valid career paths. (We have had our old, worn-out hot-water heater stolen out of our front yard while it was waiting for us to load it up and haul it off to the dump. We have had 25c worth of fiberglass insulation material stolen off the heat-wrap tape in the well-house.)

• Cell phone service is "spotty." This means someone phoning from a cell phone will sound like he is being garroted every 2.3 seconds.

• You know in your bones that no one at the DMV ever graduated from the third grade, but they hold the power of life and death over your vehicle registration, driver's license, car title, etc. Be nice to them or your 4 hour wait will continue.

• There is also a waiting list for the job of school bus driver.

• If you miss your turnoff on the interstate, you could drive another 15 miles before you get another chance. You are advised (by the natives) to slow down, do a U-turn as you cross the unpaved, un-landscaped median, and head back the way you came so you can reach your destination while you are still young. (Yes, this is illegal. Technically. Still, people do it all the time.)

• "Fire service protection" is in the hands of God. Perhaps He will send rain before the raging inferno reaches you. Prayers to this effect are encouraged. Times of drought have honest-to-God proved, prayer works.

Soledad Canyon, Las Cruces, New Mexico
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• There are state highways listed on bona fide maps (with numbers, the little insignia on the sign and everything) that are not paved. You don't dare try them in anything less than high-clearance 4WD.

• "Towns" that consist of a school bus stop and a boarded up gas station on one side of the road, a boarded up bar on the other, will rate their own circle on a state map.

• The Indian gambling casinos are considered a legitimate option for Christmas dinner.

• You learn to ignore 30 mph winds, and save your strength to deal with 55 mph winds. (A few years ago, we clocked 100 mph winds here. Those were impressive.)

• We lead the nation in drunk driving arrests, incidents, accidents, etc. It is likely that from Friday night through Sunday, 1 out of every 5 drivers on the road is legally drunk. The town of Gallup arrests three times the total population of the city every year for alcohol-related offenses.

Near Arroyo Seco
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• When your waitress asks "red or green," she wants to know what kind of chili sauce you want ladled over your meal.

• You can find yourself stuck behind a herd of cattle being driven along by honest-to-God cowboys on the only paved road in over 50 miles. Learn to deal with it.

• If you don't live in the mountains, the view from your front window can look like something out of the Third World. Dirt roads, dry grass and weeds, barbed wire fences, ramshackle house trailers, inoperable vehicles, zero trees, zero flowers, as far as the eye can see.

• You can, indeed, go from A/C in the daytime to turning on the heat at night. 50 degree temperature spreads in a day are not at all uncommon.

• If you need to do 2 loads of laundry one after the other -- or a load of laundry and a load of dishes one after the other, be prepared to wait up to 3 hours for the well to refill before you try to do anything else involving water -- including flushing the toilet.

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• Rattlesnakes are everywhere. I have killed them in my back yard. I have killed them in my barn. I have killed one inside my house. They were here first. It's simply a fact of life.

• Albuquerque hosts an annual internationally famous hot-air balloon fiesta. Thieves know this. The collision of these two facts has become a serious issue.

• When we moved here 38 years ago, the big lead news story on every TV station every night was whether or not a restaurant in Old Town would be granted a liquor license because it was technically too close to a church.

• Several weeks later, a more serious story supplanted that one. A policeman was killed by a robbery suspect who had just held up a local doughnut shop. He was the first policeman killed in the line of duty here in 26 years.

• When I was a child, Native American women in this state sold their handmade pottery, jewelry, blankets, rugs and other crafts at roadside stands along the highway. They always had customers. Now their grandchildren deal blackjack. Perhaps this is progress. Perhaps one is better than the other, perhaps not. But to me, it feels like something precious has been lost in translation.

• Fifteen years ago there were no words, nor any concept, in the Navajo language for "political corruption." They didn't need it. Now they do.

"The White Place" near Abiquiu
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• If sometime in the future you are privileged to see a Georgia O'Keeffe landscape painting, pause a moment and step into the scene ... where the washed pastel colors of the land -- ivory, rust, sand and gold meet those of the sky -- rose, lavender, azure, and dusky white. There are also places all over this state that look like that. The most beautiful, uncorrupted vistas on the planet ... also as far as the eye can see.

• At night the sky holds a million stars; the air is crystal-clear. Coyotes call to each other way off in the distance ... and owls from the other side of the valley answer. Higher up the mountain, the night-wind in the trees can sound like the ocean. It can feel like you're the only person on earth -- and the feeling is holy.

About the art in these visual essays ...

Although sometimes the background pictures in our visual essays support the topic and text, they don't always. Sometimes the connection is clear. Sometimes it's symbolic and subtle. Sometimes, there's no connection at all.

The scenes depict landscapes and natural features, buildings and wildlife. They were chosen because they show something lovely or interesting ... or simply because the photo appealed to me.

Our spectacular and remarkable planet is changing at astonishing speed. Rarely are these changes for the better. Few people seem to know ... or care ... or have the will and power to do anything about this. It may not be long before the world humans have known and lived in for centuries is forever lost. We certainly won't be able to make repairs as fast as we destroyed it.

So a few years ago I began collecting pictures of the way things were ... and still are for now, a record of the beauty we have while it is still ours to love and honor.

The photos here are part of that collection, with sincere thanks to the artists who saw these moments ... and with their cameras ... preserved them. All of us in our small section of the planet are profoundly grateful to them for their generosity and skill ... and for the added grace, depth and dimension their art brings to ours.

Original images used under this Creative Commons license or this Creative Commons license and modified by added text.