There's always a certain dis-location, coming to New Mexico. We've owned this house--Coyote Lodge is the name we've given it--for nearly four years, but we've been spending time here for six or seven. "Here" is the small mountain community of Pendaries, between Taos and Las Vegas, on the eastern slope of the southern Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The valley to the north of our house is a cattle ranch. Beyond (more photos later), the mountains, often tinged red by the rising sun.
It was hot in Texas when I left (104 is HOT) but deliciously cool here. In Texas, the view is trees--pecan, willow, oak, hackberry, elm--and rolling hills; here, pine trees and mountains. The window in the gable is my loft writing studio. The pines are lodgepole and Ponderosa. In bloom along our road: sunflowers, mullein, asters, verbena, purple clover, yellow clover. I left a hurricane behind, Eduordo, which turned out to be only a tropical storm and didn't do much to ease the drought at Meadow Knoll. And Toro and I left Zach behind, another difficult dislocation, but one that will be steadied by time.
Book report. After a couple of days getting settled (remembering where I'd left things, stocking the fridge, doing laundry, saying hello to neighbors), I'm back at work on Applebeck Orchard. It's finished, but not quite--it needs one more run-through before I can call it quits. I'm anxious to get on to my other writing project for this year: a journal book called An Extraordinary Year of Ordinary Days. I've been working on it since January, and since the year is nearly three-quarters done, so is that project. But it needs trimming and smoothing, and I'm adding reading notes, thanks to my editor's agreement that the book will have "scholar's margins," wide margins with space for quotations, like the ones at the bottom of these blog entries. Today: Applebeck. This evening, watching a DVD with Bill, knitting (socks, naturally) and reading (currently: Kitchen Literacy, by Ann Vileisis, for review at www.StoryCircleBookReviews).
And there's another writing project in the works, for the wonderful new online ezine on sustainability, www.henandharvest.com, where I'll be writing about herbs and other such. Check it out.
Reading note, from Kitchen Literacy: As I pushed my shopping cart through the supermarket aisles, questions rose insistently in my mind: How were my eggs raised? Who grew my tomatoes? Where did my fish come from? What about the milk? The colorful boxes, cans, and jars that had long appeared familiar and comforting now looked cryptic. Each product, I realized, was the culmination of some hidden story that I--and most of my fellow shoppers--had never bothered to consider. Everything we ate had a story, but we didn't know any of them.--Ann Vileisis