New Mexico isn't just dust and ashes

This is a wild land and there is a wild magic here. The sky is huge and blue and clear as a cat's eye. The ground is red clay and the adobe homes stretch low and wide, close to the earth. Blue doors and windowsills keep the demons at bay, while the tumbleweeds traverse miles in search of barbwire fences. Sage grows everywhere, soothing your eye with it's soft green/grey/blue. The juniper shades the cottontails and the coyotes dance on their dainty feet, trying to coax out a naive quail or two.

The Sangre de Christos rise up in silent mass, something comforting to put your back to while you gaze out across the windswept mesa. The air is hot, the chili is hot, the people are passionate and we all have wicked tempers. But we'll love you with that same intensity, and really, most of the time we love you. We're desert people, with dry humor and dry wit and dry eyes. We're stargazers and skywatchers and I'll read your future in the clouds. When the sun sets here it loses it's temper and gives off a howl of orange, red, pink, purple, every color all across that huge sky. At night the sky comes down and a Navajo blanket full of stars stretches all the way to the earth, wrapping you completely in an inky sea dusted with diamond white.

All this, and yet nothing--nothing is as beautiful as when it rains. Nothing smells so sweet. Nothing calms me so completely and gives me such peace. That smell brought me home.

"It took a world of trouble, took a world of tears, yeah it took a long time to get back here."