New Mexico Part the First.

Well, I'm finally sitting down and hammering this out.  We took the trip back in Mid-May.  It is now the second half of July.  Sure some/most of the details have faded, but this country is built on people making strong statements based on half-remembered impressions. 

This was my second trip to the Land of Enchantment. I shall say now that, for me at least, Enchantment must be a euphemism. Though not on a scale that one would expect with the crossover from “Genocide” to the milder sounding “Ethnic Cleansing”. But not so tame as how “Auto-tuned” has come to mean “covering up for a talentless singer.”

The first time I ventured forth to the American South West was back in the fall of 2007. Though it was something new and relatively interesting, I don't generally have good memories of the experience. That was the year that Robert Jordan died. Actually, I was at my folks house in Albuquerque when I read the news. That was a kick to the gut, moreso than the death of either my Uncle or my Grandmother. Horrible as that might sound, but in reading his stories I feel that I knew him better than either of my estranged, introverted relatives.

We ventured out somewhat, but mostly I was there to keep my mother company while my dad was on a trip back up in Alaska. What this translates to is that, I hung out at the house all day while she worked, and then I hung out in the house all night while she napped on the couch after work. We are not exciting people. We did visit the used book stores that Albuquerque – that is a dorkly tradition that I started in high school. New city: visit used book stores. Mission Fucking Accomplished.

Aside from that we hit up a few tourist traps and sampled the local restaurants. I hung out on the couch and read and wrote(which was what I did at home). I had finished my first two zombie novels and was working on the second pair. The air conditioning went out in the first couple days after a lightning strike. This wore harder on the mom than it did me. I have been living without Air Conditioning for years, and the midwest has some brutally hot and humid weather in the summer time.

Largely I avoided going outside in general. I hate hot weather.

This is what I recall most about my first adventure in New Mexico. That and our visit to Taos. Taos was a trip in and of itself. If you ever goto New Mexico, be sure to visit Taos. If you can skip over the rest of the state, all the better.

Now to the more recent adventure. The folks have been after the sister and myself to come down and visit for years. They offered to pay the airfare, so we took a long weekend and went on down. I spent the weeks leading up to it by psyching myself up for a huge panic attack! Getting up at 4:30 in the morning and then flying? Wheeeee!

I really don't want to do this. I hate heights. I hate being trapped in public spaces. I hate heights. I really don't want to do this. I hate being trapped in public spaces. I really don't want to do this. I hate heights. I hate being trapped in public spaces. Over and over those thoughts wore on my mind. Until I realized that this was a stupid attitude. Flying most likely won't kill you, it's just a hugely uncomfortable drag that I would rather avoid. That helped, and after the fear freaking out passed I actually rather enjoyed some aspects of the flight. I love looking down at the landscape below. There is nothing as awesome as a bird's eye view of the world.

Texas sucks.

Aside from a few sweaty-palm inducing jolts of turbulence, the flight down went smoothly. But damn, I do hate when an airplane drops several feet and shudders about like a Fundy thinking about the naughty bits on a human body. After a rough patch on the approach to the Albuquerque airport, we set down and were ready to go.

Firstly, New Mexico is brown. I don't mean this in the sense that the state has a bevy of sexy Latin folk meandering around, though that is fairly true. I refer instead to the landscape, with the largely unbroken drab sandy soil that is spotted with green bushes like some sort of rash. I tried to like Browntopia. But as a resident of the evergreen midwest, I could only ever keep coming back to the question “Who would want to live here?” I am not terribly fond of the city I live in. It does nothing for me. But I would gladly take it over Albuquerque.

The folks met us at the airport. This is to be expected. But what is a narrative without a few obvious points?

Nearly entire city seems to have jumped on the Adobe theme. Even the McDonalds. Which is cool. It gives it an exotic flavor to us out-of-towners, and to be honest visiting a city that isn't exactly like the sprawled hole that I just left feels nice. Sometimes it seems like too many towns across the country have become carbon copies of one another. Seeing a place with an identity of it's own is refreshing. New Mexico is not the midwest, and I don't see any reason that it should look like the midwest. Or vice versa.

We had breakfast-lunch at ChileRio. It was Fantastic. At least through the filter of not having eaten yet that day. Else, I'm sure that I'd need to downgrade my review to merely Good. The folks like it enough to have gone back several times, and to have brought their offspring along. Whatever, it was food and I was hungry.

Now the vast sight-seeing extravaganza could begin.

Albuquerque is a vast sprawl of a city. It spreads over the valley floor and is cut into a grid. I was not at all fond of it. I think I've mentioned it before. The only real homey sight for me was the belt of green that clad the Rio Grande. Notice that I did not add River to Rio Grande. I am just that sophisticated.

Our first stop on the itinerary was the petroglyphs on the edge of Albuquerque. For those who don't know, they are a series of figures carved into boulders on the side of a mountain outside of town. The weather was pleasantly sunny and warm, so we engaged in a small hike up and around the hillside to see the marks that long centuries of past generations had left behind. In my mind these crude carvings aren't great achievements in human art, but they are rather cool still. They are a mark of the past and to be enjoyed.

The coolest part of this hike(and all of the others to follow) were the signs that warned visitors to remain on the trail. Else beware the wrath of the rattlesnakes. Sweet! I so wanted to see a rattlesnake! It was a crushing blow that I didn't even catch the faintest jingle of a rattle. Stupid lofty dreams!

After the Petroglyphs the folks dragged us to a housewarming party at one of my dad's co-workers. He had long since decided to 'introduce me' to one of said coworkers. A pretty redhead. I do like pretty redheads. But I do not like people trying to prod me in a direction. I dig in and resist. Especially when they cannot answer a simple 'why is this a good idea?'

Sometime back the Mom took it upon herself to try and reintroduce me to her best friend's daughter(a very pretty girl). We had played together a few times as kids. I got mulely. Because that is how I do. This is just an aside. Feel free to read and judge.

The reasoning behind these shenanigans damn well better be 'she's pretty and you're both single. Thus a perfect match!' This cannot be the extent of our commonalities that might connect us. Though I do like pretty redheads. I viewed the encounter with the same nervous trepidation that have with all forced social meetings. I did not look forward to it. Thus why I am still single.

All in all, it was moot. He never got around to introducing us.

Well, it was a long day. I decided to crash out around 9:30 PM local time. Weak, I know, but I had been running for about 19 hours by that point. Much longer than I like. And tomorrow, Taos and the Earthships!

Have you done much traveling? I liked the trip to Taos the first time. Sure, the way is grey, but you finally get into the mountains. We moved away from Alaska in 1997, and I've not seen anything larger than a hill since. I forgot how much I miss the beauty of mountains – some of that is why I yearn to move out to the Pacific North West. Alaska lite.

The downside of the weekend was going to be that I was spending it in the back seat of a car. Sight-seeing from the back seat of a sedan is not really sight-seeing at all. Mostly you get one angle. Worse yet when that angle revealed the drab, post-apocalyptic wasteland that is New Mexico.

I must say that Taos makes for a pretty trip. Relatively speaking of course. The highlight was the Rio Grande, which is a sparkling green that high up. It was even more fantastic in the gorge.

Segway time!

The gorge was just that. A deep cut in the rock face where the river has worn through for hundreds of years. I think that at the apex it is some 450 feet deep. We got out of the car and decided to walk the bridge. I don't like heights. But I tried walking out on the bridge anyhow. Self-inflicted pain is the best kind.

I made it somewhere between an third and halfway across before I decided to turn back. My legs just got squiggly and I decided that I really didn't enjoy what I was trying to do. What bothered me the most was sudden gaps in the guardrail between sections. They were maybe an inch, two tops, wide. But it was enough that my hand lost contact with something solid. My brain didn't like this. My feet reversed course and walked us back.

The mom and sister made it all the way across, and laughed at us.

Earthships! I how I natter on about them. I want one. This is why I spend so much talking about them. A house that heats and cools itself and also grows some of the food the residents need? They seem so solid, built with tires, earth and concrete. Enough to repel any invaders. This is an Apocalyptic novelists' dream come true. Honestly, writing zombie stories has been made so much easier by the years I've spent daydreaming about surviving the Apocalypse. I admit, part of my brain is always devoted to that line of questions.

The mom asked over and over what we wanted to do on our visit. My only goal was to roadtrip to Taos and visit the Earthships. Now, that's two and a half, or three hours of sitting in a car for a man who does that for a living. Not really appealing. But, Earthships. For $7, you can take a self-guided tour of the compound. And for a couple hundred dollars you can even rent an Earthship for the night. While we weren't down for the former, we were up for the latter.

I am a cynic and a pessimist, but only when it doesn't get in the way of my mindless and boundless optimism(read this as I play the lotto and hope to win). This is a funny mix of personality traits, one that involves no little amusement on my part. After weeks and weeks of build up, I was wary that the self-tour might not live up to my expectations. I mean really, we just flew to New Mexico and drove up from Albuquerque. I've been waiting for this for weeks! Months even, as I have long daydreamed about taking a long cross-country tour that involved visiting the Earthships as I passed through the South West.

I had been waiting for this moment. And was of course disappointed. It's a running theme in my life. The tour involved a gift shop, a video that you could easily find on the internet – not to mention the fact that, if you're into Earthships enough to visit the landing sight in Taos, then you know all of that already – and the rest of the welcome center. After that, you're free to walk around the parking lot and take the 'self-guided tour' of following the ropeline.

If you were to take the tour as a form of exercise, then you'd just be as well off walking back and forth from your couch to the fridge. Tweren't much there. We didn't even get to go inside any of the other Earthships. Just the visitors center, which is set up as a visitor's center. Very un-houselike and dull. Darker than I expected too...though on second thought it is largely an earth-sheltered house. All in all, I think that the Visitor's Center was a bit like trying out Lucky Charms cereal for the first time while only eating the drab cardboardy bits that most people discard.

Seeing the outside of Earthships from a distance is Lame at best. I have a few other choice words that would fully express my feelings, but I don't feel like getting that base.

The highlight of the tour was the pretty blonde girl. Not only was she a beauty with a dazzling smile, but she was pleasant and knowledgeable, as well as borderline fanatical about the movement. Then again, she was working as the greeter in the Earthship visitors center, so this is to be expected. I myself, though devoted to the idea of personally acquiring an Earthship and experiencing the lifestyle, am not so interested in being part of a large scale social movement. Sure, it seems keen. I just don't have the personality or the energy required to bring folks into the fold. I am not an evangelist or used car salesman. I'm a dorky wannabe hack novelist with a negative charisma stat. Come to think of it... my talking about Earthships here is probably harming their cause.

Sorry hippies.

You see how many times I wrote Earthships in that last bit? Well that's about what my folks had to endure. Truly mine is a Rain Manesque obsession.

Though I do dabble with the idea of settling down with a few like minded friends and forming a community of homesteader types. This usually seems too damn communesque, hippieish, etc. for my liking. Not to mention I don't think I have a core of friends who would be remotely interested in such an endeavor. And I'm really not good at making new friends. Though it is all a pleasant fancy. Maybe I'll just weave it into a story that I write.

Despite all that, I still want an Earthship. Maybe after I pay off my student loans and hook up with a girl that one of my relatives thinks I should meet. I of course will be stuffing my lotto winnings into a mattress by then, so the expenses won't be an issue!

Back in town, we got out of the car only to have lunch. We played a game that is a sign of dysfunction in my family. I call it “Where do you want to eat? I don't know. Where do you want to eat?” Oh the Passive Aggressive Midwesterners are on vacation, how cute! But finally we decided on a local(as opposed to chain) place that was down town. Taos, is an art colony. Which means that it is full of A) hippies and B) tourist traps. Some of the latter being run by the former.

I think we finally went with a place called The Gorge.

The food was delicious. They get my seal of approval and I am willing to pimp them here... to all 3 people who might actually read this. I had my usual, burger and fries. Can't go wrong with that. I would go back(if I were in Taos again).

More later.