Nature's Mood of Mockery

If you think the weather where you live is as fickle as a co-ed cruising on roofies and a half pint of Smirnoff, you should spend some time in the Land of Enchantment. Waiting five minutes is for amateurs. Try five milliseconds.

See this?

That happened in just an hour this morning. A two-week slate of sunny skies, still air, and 60 degree temps wiped clean by a storm blown in from God-only-knows-where-Alaska, churning the wind and dumping buckets of snow like some stage hand during a cheap community theater production of the Christmas Carol.

Hard to believe that just last week I was in a tee shirt and jeans, scouting out historical churches along the Turquoise Trail for a magazine article.


That’s not me; that’s the photographer. I like her because she’s prepared to do anything for a shot, including ignoring No Trespassing Signs with the impunity that comes from the belief that the perfect photo trumps everything.

Not me. I’m just the writer. Which means I don’t get paid enough to risk getting shot by some lard-brained rent-a-cop with a breakfast burrito in one hand and a Smith & Wesson in the other.

But I did donate a five spot to the cause. Just in case Baby Jesus was watching and decided the whole event necessitated a mark in my Hell No You Won’t Go To Heaven column.


The Turquoise Trail sure is pretty. I sure wish I'd taken more photos so you could see just how much.




I love exploring ruins, silently pondering how people long passed lived out their lives when everything was perfect and new.

This is Cerrillos, a tucked-away-on-the-radar town that for the most part looks the same today as it did when Billy the Kid blew in yesterday.




Still, it is the way of a carpetbagging state like New Mexico that some places can't escape gentrification. Most usually by artists from New York City who offered a family who's been in the area since the beginning of time a few pesos for their place and, voila, another adobe mansion with Sub Zero appliances and Italian marbled floors is born.


Which is not to say I wouldn't do the same thing, were I flush with cash. But if I ever did make enough money to build my own Casa de la Grande Moi, I'd paint a tribute to Our Lady on one of the walls. Isn't she beautiful?


And I would also make sure to pick my way across the gravelly streets regardless of my Manolos every Sunday morning to further give thanks for my good fortune in this church:

I so dislike modern churches. They are too scrubbed-bright and hopeful, more appropriate for housing dentistry conventions or Up With People concerts than sermons or the reverent contemplation of the mysteries of the universe. Or your own sinful ways.

God, I would like to believe, still prefers to kick it Old School,
like this:

Or this:

Oh, and one final thing: when I die, if my heirs don't see fit to follow my instructions to load my body in a boat, light me on fire, and float me down the Rio Grande to Mexico, then I'll settle for a burial in a New Mexican cemetery. What a fabulous way to house oneself for all of eternity.