New Mexico: Yuppies / American Indian motifs

The folks at the diner in Raton just loved us, and I realized that in most of the nation, coffee is included with your egg breakfast. People kept asking us to take them away from their dusty little towns and drop them off somewhere they think of as glamorous like Los Angeles or New York. They want in on the dream they think we’re living. I guess I want in on some of whatever they’ve got. Simplicity and space.

Soon we hit the mountains of northern New Mexico, the sun was warm and the light was that perfect blinding white that almost hypnotizes you while driving under the trees… light shade light shade light shade. It’s like some primitive chant repeated until your brain is set at ease and you stop expecting to see some strip mall or condo development settled into the scenery. We noticed a large creek following us switching from side to side through the mountain curves. We stopped, we stripped, we waded down into the rocks until the cold water puckered our skin and I don’t know about everyone else but I played my own little baptisim, plugging my nose and laying back like those old mass baptizings where hundreds of people dressed in white would follow a preacher down to the river to drown their sins. I let something go there, let it settle in my open palm flying out the window on the warm wind of this golden summer. At the bottom of the hills we stopped at a little artisan hut that had a simple hand painted sign outside saying “Art.” Good enough, we make art and so do they so why not. Mike photographed an old bronze caster who does huge commissioned statues of buffalos and Hank Williams for the local towns. He played ragtime on an old upright while a woman walked some of us through the bronze casting process. We passed the Rio Grande at sunset with the underwear we pinned to the curtain line flapping around in the heat.




Later in Sante Fe at sunset we wandered through the narrow high end streets watching everyone in white linen walk by as the light from tiny white Christmas lights mingled with the adobe giving off a slightly contrived yet somewhat calming light. Everything was too expensive. Beautiful and contrived and too expensive.



Driving through Roswell, NM at night I imagined the desert next to us a sea of India ink lit slightly from a half moon. We camped out under the stars in a state park called bottomless lakes. Really they are sinkholes and only two of the seven or so are actually fit for swimming. The rest smell too much like sulfur and are that strange blue green you only think is ok when there is a sign somewhere telling you that its alright to swim there. When we were driving in through the pitch black country roads the smells coming in through the window were an astounding array of putridity. Mike said he would like a cracker to put with the limburger cheese smell wafting through the van. For once it wasn’t one of us at fault, but instead the strange landscape.

Before falling asleep I heard what could only be described as a cow screaming. Too hot for a sleeping bag I fell asleep paranoid that the aliens my brother always warned me about were going to get me in the same way I imagined they were getting the screaming cows just a few feet from our tents.



Woke up to a swim in a blue sinkhole set against red rock and a realization that the landscape was beautiful. Shot some dairy queen workers, an alien enthusiast hell bent on building a hotel/ lounge modeled after an actual alien spacecraft, two cops in ten gallon hats and a sweet couple who run a tattoo shop / anti-alien propaganda store. All was well but news of the hurricane headed down south made us question our southern route.