New Mexico Lingers

There is something about New Mexico that has stayed with me. There is room there. The sky is big. The ground is high. 7,000+ feet higher than Jacksonville. I didn't know when we got there that we would be that high up. I didn't think you could visually see the difference. But you can.

It's peaceful there. It's quiet there. There is no background drone of traffic sound anywhere. Not even in the city of Santa Fe. It's really quiet.

The mountains are beautiful. In the east mountains are covered in lush green trees. That's what you see, large, high mounds of green upon green. In the Fall it becomes a vibrant field of color upon color. Then comes the grey of the winter sky and the grey of leafless trees. In New Mexico you see rock. The mountains aren't covered with trees. They are bare, and colorful, revealing many millenium of strata, fallen or split rocks, layers that tell geologists the history of the mountain and our planet. It's so impressive. The mountains are so solid and yet seem so vulnerable in their nakedness.

Why didn't I find New Mexico when I was younger? Why didn't I find it when I had the ability to hike its mountains and walk through the desert searching for bones and artifacts. I had more courage then. Or was it just the folly of ignorance that led me to places with risk? How much nicer it would have been to sleep below the New Mexico sky then to sleep several levels below Grand Centeral Station.