Some day I will probably be dead, so maybe I should pay attention. I took the photo below and the latest two FotoFeed shots (here and here) from vantage points no more than 10 minutes away on foot.
Because we’re situated high up on a sloping mesa, I can look down into Taos. Living on the edge of town, I can trespass just a little and walk right into Carson National Forest if I want—and you’d better believe I have. Why, a person could start out walking from this congenial, sturdy, 100-year-old adobe dump and hike most of the way to Santa Fe through rocky, wooded mountains without ever seeing another human being. By turning north, you could probably do something similar all the way through Colorado to Wyoming. You’d have to cross some highways, but I think there’s actually a trail. This is monumentally cool.
Wide open spaces are still accessible in the West. For all that I appreciate the intimate natural pocket landscapes of the East, the megalopolis lies just over the horizon, or would if one could see that far beyond the haze. (I used to imagine I could feel the intensity from millions of nearby chattering brains.) Perhaps they let things get so dense because they couldn’t see it all to learn how bad it was.
There is no megalopolis in these parts, and the air is usually clear, not counting dust storms and smoke from forest fires. That makes the landscape more three-dimensional, as the clarity adds depth to land and sky. (Just look at those clouds above, moving past the top of Taos Mountain.) There are peaks in Colorado 90 miles away and I can see them. I am the weirdo to whom these things mean the world. Being able to experience something like this is for me the main objective of a sane and normal life. (It may have taken me 11 years to wake up here inside my body, but there you go.)
Just by being here, I win. So what was all the fuss about?
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{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
You FINALLY figured out that you have been a winner all along. May this day be crowned your awakening day!
Pretty much agree with you 100%, although I do occasionally get a charge out of a homeopathic dose of megalopolis (like downtown Chicago at Christmastime, for instance). Let’s get in shape this winter and next spring, hit those trails, buddy! Hell, they might just find us in Yellowstone!
Oh, me too! Love me a dose of megalopois, so long as I don’t have to live there.
I always distrust myself when I feel too good. That’s just wishful thinking, magical thinking even. The right hemisphere of our brains is the wise one – it looks at the world and finds it a pretty dispiriting sort of place, and that’s the damn truth. The left hemisphere doesn’t buy into any of that. It favors nostrums and panaceas and wants to be perky and optimistic. We need that hemisphere because we need to charge ourselves up from time to time, but it ain’t the truth.
John, you old buzzard, you’re good at looking into the abyss. You always were. It’s what I like about you. Don’t get too perky on me.
Don’t you worry. I’m in a helluva rotten mood right now!
Now for some perky stuff of my own, picking up on Chipper’s comment….
A big city is about the best place in the world to be at Christmas. All that frenzy – which can drive you crazy most other times – for once just makes you high on something suspiciously like joy. Maybe it’s that you have a bit of time left over from the pressures of work, and maybe you get infected despite yourself by the holiday spirit of pleasure-seeking hordes. Think Coney Island transplanted to Rockefeller Center! Even if you’re more or less alone in such a crowd, it tends to raise you and inspire goodwill and hope and all such trite and simple-minded emotions. Contrast this with Christmases in small towns, where there just isn’t enough excitement in the air. The holiday time hangs heavy, sentimentality reigns, boredom sets in. Your fellow man begins to annoy the hell out of you, partly because you’re expected to love the sap. Nope, give me the bright lights and the raucous human surge, only truly to be experienced in hated megalopolis, if only in anonymity and for a few days a year. Anyone disagree?
I think you’re onto something there. Nice description of small-town Christmas. The funny thing is, that pretty well describes Christmas with my late in-laws in Des Moines, especially the time, sentimentality, and boredom. But they were the sweetest people on earth.
And yes, it’s a hoot to be among the pleasure-seeking hordes in a nice big city. I don’t know if Christmas is the best context for that, though. I hate Christmas, of course.
Although I understand from my wife that we’re going out tomorrow night and she wants to “talk about Christmas…”
Your comment: ‘Some day I will probably be dead,’. The probability is quite high!
Well, as one of my favorite musicians wrote…..”You don’t get to Heaven ALIVE” ….and considering that where John Lives – to ME at least – (and not considering the ‘HELLish’ things with which he often seems to deal) – it is as close to “Heaven” as one could find on earth….hope you live a LONG Time John…..and fully aware of the beauty that surrounds you in el Norte…..and as the Navajo’s say….may you continue to “Walk in Beauty” for many more years…..as for the actual ‘Heaven – Hell’ – and other related philosphies – I leave that to everyone else to discuss or decide on their own……(??!??) ME….I’m stuck in ‘Smallville’ Oklahoma with all that Ken describes above…….DAMN!
Hey, thanks Steve!
But don’t be too hard on yourself. This ISN’T paradise, and it’s too damn cold. We got mountains, though.