This is a telephoto shot (300mm) from the top of our driveway looking south toward Picuris Peak. It’s also from Tuesday morning and will look the same on Wednesday, given the moisture pouring in from the Pacific over Mexico. I love it, though. Just look: nobody up there! We had a visitor from back East once* who inquired of a similar view, “But who does all this belong to?”
“To you,” I said. “To us, to everybody.” National forest, of course.
I’ve hiked back in there where the photo shows. There’s a forest road, a trail. I took a side track of some kind and came across a sign that marked part of the original Camino Real, the colonial route from Mexico City. That blew my head clean off. Imagine soldiers dressed in armor, humping through the woods right there! [clank-clunk, clank-clunk] Riders looking all around, Spanish horse shit steaming on the ground…
* We miss you, Chris!
John Hamilton Farr lives at 7,000 feet in Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico, U.S.A. As New York Times best-selling author James C. Moore tells it, John is “a man attuned to the world who sees it differently than you and I and writes about it with a language and a vision of life that is impossible to ignore.” This JHFARR.COM site is the master writing archive. To email John, please see CONTACT INFO on .png)