Just look at that! Those are snow showers over Picuris Peak on the south side of town as seen from the Taos Public Library parking lot. This one is also up at FotoFeed, and as the caption there explains, the mundane (or horrible) side-by-side with the spectacular is often an apt characterization of New Mexico.
At least that’s what I’ve always thought, but just now, looking back, I realize I’ve usually considered suburban development pretty horrible, too. I watched a Nature documentary last night on PBS.org, and there was an extended scene shot somewhere in the middle of Connecticut: nice white folks with big garages and a tree or two, walking around in the sunshine or admiring their cars. Probably most people would think the neighborhood of palatial homes in a rolling sea of manicured lawns merging with each other would be a wonderful place to live, but to me, it looked like purgatory, a living death except with sidewalks. In that sense, then, even the nasty broken-down devilness of Taos rates a notch above, because here we do have vistas.
I said before we came that I wanted to live somewhere that Nature dominated man, and not the other way around. I have to say we hit the jackpot on that score, even if it freaks me sometimes just how rough this place really is. The rest of the time I walk around pretty much stunned by the surrounding landscape and the sky.
A lot of people here feel that way, I imagine, when they’re not broke or freezing to death.
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