New Mexico

A year ago this month, I was hanging out in New Mexico, enjoying the desert landscapes. Some people might be heading to the great Southwest this winter, so here’s a few of my favorite places from 2017. And for those of us who aren’t going west this winter, here’s some ideas to dream about over the winter.

About as far north as we’re going to get in this post is central New Mexico and Elephant Butte State Park. Bring your kayak or paddleboard, it’s a big lake. Most of the spots have hookups, but are not on the waterfront. Those sites that are right on the lake are sans electricity, but if it’s sunny and you have solar, you can make it work. Oh, and the hot springs of Truth or Consequences are about 30 minutes away, and definitely worth the drive.

In southern New Mexico, hard up against the Sacramento Mountains and about 8 miles south of Alamogordo is my favorite state park, Oliver Lee. There’s one loop of hookups and a whole lot of sites on the periphery without them, but those are the ones with the best views, where you can see 50 miles or more to the west. On a clear day, you can see the thin line of White Sands National Monument. Birds sing you awake in the mornings and the stars overhead lull you to sleep at night. It’s a magical place to me.

To the west is Rockhound State Park, a tiny little campground southeast of Deming. There are some lovely short hikes around the park and the scenery is gorgeous. If you get one of the higher campsites, you can see for miles. I once watched a dust storm approaching for more than an hour, only to see it fade away before it reached the campground.

About an hour’s drive north from Deming is City of Rocks State Park. (If you’re getting the idea that this part of New Mexico is very rocky, well done!) The hookup sites are like an RV park – all lined up next to each other. If you can live without hookups, go for one of the dry sites and you’ll find yourself surrounded by huge rocks and desert silence.

There are several hiking trails that highlight the views but maybe the best part of this place is the hot springs campground next door. You can drive five minutes over to the spot (you’ll pass it on the way to the City of Rocks campground) and make a reservation for a private hot springs hour or two,. It’s wonderful. I camped there for a few nights, and there’s a free “campers only” hot springs pool (with medium hot and hot water options).

I’ll leave you with a moonlit view of Rockhound State Park. On moonless nights, the stars are amazing, so you really can’t lose either way, moon or no moon.

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I had been to New Mexico many times. I loved it. It’s a very exotic, interesting, severely crazy environment. I don’t know if I could live there all year. It’s such an intense place.

Campbell Scott

I had meant to go chasing sandhill cranes today but as I drove through the small town of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, I stopped for an old couple slowly crossing the street. As I waited, I looked off to the left and noticed the bunting and flags and old men with families heading in the same direction as the couple. I drove on but something in my heart wouldn’t let go and I did a U-turn and went back.

My dad was a WWII veteran, always careful to point out he was never in combat and he always showed respect for those who had fought, whether with guns or tanks or planes.

There they were today, veterans in wheelchairs, with oxygen tanks, and hats, waiting for the ceremonies to begin.

Not many of them are left, and this veteran in his yellow jacket is probably one of few alive who remember D-Day first-hand. To his left is a grey-haired ponytailed Vietnam vet. So many wars, so many veterans.

This old veteran reminded me of my dad. No combat hat, but sitting with the rest of the vets, he was a quiet survivor. He’d done his time and I got the feeling he was here more to pay tribute to the others than to receive any honors himself.

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On this day, I’ll tell you a story my mother made me promise not to tell till my dad had died. He had made her promise not to tell anyone, but she didn’t want the story to die with her, so she told me. It is this one story, more than anything else, that explains the kind of person my dad was his whole life.

After he got out of the Army Air Corps, my dad went to USC on the GI Bill,  graduated, got a job, and married. He and my mom bought a starter house in Reseda, thanks to VA financing. My dad worked on cars in the tiny garage, and my mother mostly left him along those Sunday afternoons. One Sunday, she went out to ask him something and he wasn’t there. She shrugged it off. A few Sundays later, she went out and noticed he wasn’t there again. So she waited.

A little bit later, he came walking up the street, toolbox in hand. She asked him where he’d been and at first, he didn’t want to say. Finally, he told her that most Sundays for a few hours, he walked around their neighborhood and when he saw a house where the window had a Gold Star, he would knock on that door and ask if they needed anything done, like plumbing or fixing doors or anything else. My mother asked him why he was doing that; after all, they didn’t really know any of their neighbors yet. His answer was that he came home, and those other sons didn’t, so he was trying to take care of their mothers they way they would have.

To all the veterans, thank you for your service. And, Dad, thank you for teaching me that some debts are never repaid, but you try.

When I was in Santa Fe earlier this year, people told me I just HAD to go to Meow Wolf. Never heard of it, I said. So they tried to explain about how an artists collective of over 100 artists from all kinds of media made a Halloween-house kind of thing. I ran out of time so didn’t go last winter. I finally made it to the Meow Wolf House of Eternal Return this week.

It’s crazy. Totally crazy but in the most fun way ever. When you can walk through a refrigerator into another world, or crawl through a tunnel through a clothes driver, you’re definitely in the world of imagination!

Like a real house, it has a bathroom. It’s just not a normal bathroom.

And the dining room isn’t exactly normal either, all black and white like a Nightmare Before Christmas set designer had a go at it.

The entrance to the music room is a dinosaur head and you can play the bones like a xylophone.

There is really cool art hanging everywhere, and you can only see this one if you climb up inside a steel and fabric tree.

Some walls were neon; this was my favorite one.

Some TV screens gave sage advice, especially useful in this place.

If you find yourself in Santa Fe with a few hours to spare, take a shot at this place. It’s got something for everyone. As their website says, it is a “unique combination of children’s museum, art gallery, jungle gym, and fantasy novel.”

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(Quotation is from the black-lit entrance to Meow Wolf)

If you want to really know the history of a place, find the cemetery. The Memory Lane Cemetery in Silver City, New Mexico displays over a century of history, plot by plot.

It’s not fancy, but this is a family plot. I can almost imagine the sons erecting this wired barrier in the hot sun, marking their spot for the ages.

This family plot my have a fancier fence, but the signs are pure poverty, or perhaps just practicality in a mining town where money was hard to come by for most. I can almost see people lettering the signs, hammering the boards together, then pounding each marker into place as final farewells, one by one by one.

This marker, all alone, tells any number of stories. It’s the last line that made me cry, imagining the grief-stricken voice of his mother saying over and over, 13 days, only 13 days, while his father held her as they watched the tiny casket lowered into the ground.

There is a huge section of mostly Hispanic last names, and the decoration isn’t limited to the Day of the Dead celebration in November; this is what it looked like in March, with fresh flowers – plastic and real – on almost every gravestone.

It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, you just want a place where you can go visit the ones who’ve gone on before you. Names are for others to read, you don’t need them written out and you couldn’t afford it anyways.

And as old as this cemetery is, there is always room for one more.

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The graveyard is not the final resting place of our dear departed but an ephemeral repository of their remains. The real graveyard, however, is somewhere deep in our heart, where we can always visit them at any time of the day, talk about some unforgettable summers, or cry in solitude as if they were always there for us to stay.

Danny Castillones Sillada

As a measure of how enchanting this state is, I originally thought I would spend two weeks here, then head on to Big Bend. I did go down to Texas, but I came back to New Mexico afterwards, not yet ready to let go of this state. In total, I spent 60 days in this lovely state and, to be honest, I’m still not done with it. I know I’ll be back, so until then, here’s my farewell to New Mexico, featuring my favorite places so far, in no particular order.

I could photograph the VLA every damn day and not get tired of it. There’s just something about those dishes in the middle of nowhere with beautiful light that just captivates me.

White Sands is an amazing place and I hit it on a day with such blue skies that I’m sure everything will think this image is photoshopped. But it’s not.

Carlsbad Caverns was freaky and weird and I loved it. It’s another place I could go to several times and not be bored in the slightest.

Once you get beyond the obvious tourist spots, New Mexico is full of surprises. I visited the Bosque del Apache on a whim, long after the spring birding migration was done, and it still made me fall in love with it. Now I want to see it with more wildlife.

Somehow, I thought New Mexico was a desert state. A lot of it is, but even there, I found water to photograph. This image from Bottomless Lakes is one of my favorites.

The land and sky are ever-changing in New Mexico and nowhere better to see that than City of Rocks State Park. As my friend said, it looks like a movie set, both the huge rocks and the flat landscape surrounding them.

From north to south, the Rio Grande is still a river of majesty, despite the dams.

Several places have preserved petroglyphs and half the fun is figuring out what they might have meant to the people who created them.

Even in Albuquerque, there is refuge to be found from the hustle and bustle of city life. The afternoon I spent in the Japanese Garden was restorative to both my soul and my creative spirit.

OK, I did save the best for last. This is Oliver Lee State Park. If there is one place in New Mexico that feels like home, this is it. I don’t know why, it just does.

I took so many images of New Mexico that it was hard to narrow them down to just ten. And then there were the friends, in Rock City, Albuquerque, and Santa Fe: I am so happy I got to spend time with each of you, and thank you for your hospitality and your suggestions of things to see. I will definitely be back!

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You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading the last one.

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