High Sierra Summer
High Sierra Summer or summer in Santa Fe?
High Sierra Summer
On the road to Santa Fe, there’s an ancient black basalt outcrop that is more likely just an old lava flow. Jarring vertically striations in an otherwise horizontal valley, watching the shreds of moisture drain into the Rio Grande and its bosques.
At the edge of town, the trees, I won’t start on taxonomy, pine and fir? Cedar? Certainly cottonwood in places, but there’s a distinct aroma. Parts of Arizona, along the rim-lands, southern Colorado, then it gets conflated.
Memories and home movies, faded photographs in old picture albums, all of that gets mixed with the fly fishing in Montana, and the dry side of the Canadian Rockies, again, hiking in the summer.
The vague difference, to me, the granite underfoot when in New Mexico, it’s old stone. The material further north was grey, dense rock, while there’s an almost crumbly, ancient sense to crunch underfoot in New Mexico.
High Sierra Summer
The artists were right, and the natives before, about the quality of the light itself.
Of note? Nothing from the devastating fires raging in Southern New Mexico.
I had to count again, three or four summer trips out here, made camping and backpacking, tentative trails in the Sangre de Crisito range. Looking east in Santa Fe, dredges those furrowed memories.
Vincit Qui Primum Gerit
“First to arrive gets the best deal.” (Source.)
Old Coyote Cafe.
