Since January, I have anticipated a trip to New Mexico. Now, that trip has been completed...a great trip. I felt like I was AWAY. I love New Mexico. There have been many wonderful, memorable trips to the Land of Enchantment.
Once, when I was about five, my grandmother (Pete) took me to Albuquerque on a Greyhound bus. We went to see her sister Madge and her family. It seemed like we were on that bus forever, it seemed like all day and night. I remember that she told me to go to the bathroom when the bus stopped for a break at a terminal. She said the bus driver makes us go to the bathroom. That didn't make sense to me---he wasn't my parent.
I went to NM with my parents a couple of years before. We went to the horse races in Ruidoso. My mother bet on a horse named "Lisa Belle." My baby sister, Lisa was staying with my aunt and uncle. Daddy and I rode the ski lift in the Sandia Mountains. It was summertime. I will never forget the clean smell of the air in those mountains. We had chili dogs at the Sandia Peak restaurant. They put beans on the chili dogs!Once, we took a family trip and spent the night in a cabin in Red River. There was a trout farm where one could fish for trout. Daddy said we each had to catch two trout for supper. I hooked myself in the seat of my shorts, then hooked a trout in the middle of its spine. I also thoroughly despised fish...this was so memorable.
A year after college, I visited a classmate in Dumas, Tx and we made a quick trip out there with her Mom so Gail could apply for her first nursing job in Albuquerque. At that time, Taos was just a small bump in the road---very few restaurants, a town square, and regular businesses required for the residents to tend to their lives.
Clu Flu and I took the kids on a summertime vacation---White Sands, Carlsbad Caverns, Alamogordo, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Taos.
And we made three other trips to Taos for Christmas skiing. We would leave after midnight church on Christmas Eve...get to Taos about 12 noon or so. Of course the kids slept during the night in the car and were wild and crazy when we could hardly hold our heads up!
Taos tripled or quadrupled in size during ski seasons--the townspeople were very disgruntled with anyone with Texas plates on their car. Our ski trips were great--in addition to family bonding there was also some family bondage. Brooke fractured a tibia or fibula one year (I forget which). Zack took to skiing like a duck to water. He made it to black trails very quickly.
I made a trip out to SF/Taos/Albuquerque/Alamogordo with a friend about 1996. Bought my first (probably only) Navajo rug--an exquisite Two Grey Hills rug...so finely woven and with the sharpest natural dyes you can imagine. Even though it's wrong to covet a possession, I do covet this rug. Each time I study it, I think about the work involved, raising the sheep, shearing, carding the wool, spinning it, dying the yarn, then weaving the rug in a very intricate pattern. I know a little about the woman who made my rug. I respect her so much---what a gift and talent to have!
This most recent trip was with a very close friend. It was so good experiencing the different landscapes, groups of people, and other wonderful things associated with NM.
Of course, I'm ready to go again soon...maybe I will go by myself in two or three years, spend a month or six weeks out there from Autumn through Winter.
Will I ever lose my attraction to this spiritful place?
