Showing posts with label New Mexico. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New Mexico. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 1, 2017
Lift
My Brooklyn boyfriend from Bay Ridge has always been scared of the country, though he was loathe to admit it to me when we dated, fearing a lesser stature than myself in just about everything. It was nonsensically competitive, and therefore, doomed to fail. He'd complain about the crickets being too loud for him to sleep well at my mother's house in upstate New York, which made traveling with him exceptionally laborious, as our round-trip flight on "McAir" bore out.
How would he fare out west? A family holiday found my father springing for a ski trip to New Mexico while we were in college, in accommodation of our tastes that were more sophisticated than West Bumblef-ck, Texas could provide. The people were so incredibly rude to us where they lived that we couldn't find any reasons to visit an extremely remote place that took pleasure in being a barren wasteland depressingly littered with broken farm equipment. Not even with free tickets and airfare provided.
So, one lucky Thanksgiving saw us flying pleasantly non-stop from New York with no small plane change-overs to beautiful New Mexico and the Sangre de Cristo mountain range, and what a gorgeous drive it was. The mountains were dusted with snow like a classic Christmas fable, and I thought we'd finally have the happy ending to a holiday story that had eluded us as a family since my parents bitter divorce.
The weather was perfect, too: plenty of light, powdery snow and bright southwestern sun. Until the last day of skiing. We had been doing surprisingly well for non-skiers, mastering the bunny slopes with its lower lifts that surrounded the lodge, which led us to greater heights on the very last day of our trip. Back then, lifts were small, open-air seats with one metal bar to hold onto, and the snow beneath us was strewn with poles, gloves, and hats stuck in the frozen no-man's land of the rising slope.
We'd stood at the bottom of a lift that disappeared into thick, heavy, snow clouds, wondering if it was worth it. I hated the height and the wildly careening seats blown about in the stiff winds, but we reasoned that we were here to experience this, so we might as well do it. Sure enough, my instincts proved correct once we reached the top: a deep squall of fiercely blowing drifts immediately froze our goggles, but we had to make a decision about quickly turning left or right, because the lift was swiftly moving with people skiing off.
We veered left, trying to see a sign half-covered in ice and snow, but as we started our descent, it was already too late. We were on a Black Diamond, expert-level trail covered in compacted blue ice that was impassable, and we were next to a cliff's edge. We couldn't even skate across it with the edge of our ski blades, so we took the skis off and walked down the mountainside until we reached another lift with another lodge, and then the lights went out and the lift turned off.
Okay....now what? We went inside the abandoned lodge to think. What to do? I guess we could cross-country ski back to the main lodge and our hotel using the service road. Right? The lift operator finally told us the truth: we were seven miles outside of town, and the sun was quickly setting. Well, we thought, it might be okay....he was Mestizo and obviously unused to talking with tourists, but we were teenagers, so he offered us a ride in his old pickup truck instead. Thanks! I was psyched. This trip was over and I was done with skiing, quite possibly forever. Done.
Of course, my passive-aggressive city boyfriend grumbled that we could have made it back on our own. "This isn't so bad! Look at how level the road is! Oh, Marie. This would've been easy!" The guide shot him a sharp look. "You don't realize how fast the temperature drops at night here." That was true, but I could already see my boyfriend stirring restlessly in his seat. He loved to argue. Yeah, but it wasn't that far....the guide began shaking his head. "You don't get it, son. Cold isn't the only thing that'll get you out here."
He lowered his window just as an orange disk of sun set behind the mountains through a silhouette of dense pines. "The wolves are telling each other we're here." As he said it, we could hear the thin, loud howl of the alpha male. "They're already tracking us, because we're in their territory. They know it's only the three of us." If you've never heard the rough barking of a pack as it runs, I don't know how to describe it to you. It was like nothing we'd ever heard before. Bart turned white, and shut up for the rest of the ride back. The lift operator continued talking with his window down, so we could hear them. "They're following us." And it was true. We heard them signalling to each other with the same speed that the truck drove on the snowy road, speeding across the mountaintops in pursuit, all the way back to the hotel.
Thank goodness for the kindness of strangers.
Happy All Saints Day.
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
Angel Fire
One of the best meals I've ever had in my life wasn't at a fancy "eatery" (please excuse the hipster term) in a trendy New York neighborhood full of outsiders looking to make it big in my hometown. It was at a modest cabin nestled quaintly in the gorgeous Sangre de Cristo valley of New Mexico. I'm not an avid skier, coming from a childhood home of much humbler and inexpensive past times, but during my active teenage years, me and my brothers (with a cousin or boyfriend/girlfriend or two, thrown into the mix) would fly out to spend our college breaks with my father and his wife at a lovely small-town resort they found in New Mexico that's within driving distance of their West Texas home.
Since it wasn't some pricey tourist dive*, our trips meant (as they always did growing up) that we had to socialize with the local provincials, with their very limited experiences that they had no trouble abusing children over, so that we could have maybe a day's worth of fun during our grueling college years to satisfy our parents arrangements. It was also weather and/or our pocketbook(s) permitting, or my father pulled his purse-strings to call the shots that favored him best. We were lucky to have a good time at all, is what I'm saying to you, and as my faithful working class readers, I know you understand the drill.
It's like a Florida vacation washed out by monsoon season with your ADD grand kid who freaks out during horrible airplane turbulence that lasts for hours and you spent $8000 for it (and you couldn't even afford that), which is why credit cards were invented: so you could try and escape the soul-crushing reality of your 9-5 office hell with the promise of a heavenly vacation that was never real like they are on t.v., except now you're in debt, in addition to having a really bad time. Oh, and there's all those work emails in varying tones of recrimination and panic to go through before Monday morning, too. You lucky asshole. Isn't it grand? Our family trips were like also that: a terrible guessing game of who will get drunk and be a complete piece of shit first, because every family vacation is like that. Every. Single. One.
The revelation of an uncomplicated good time at a family restaurant that served us at a long table with mismatched bowls we simply passed around to each other, without worry of this one's Epi-pen peanut-dust allergy or her Celiac Disease that's easily manageable with basic human speech skills that are devoid of the typical (and repetitive!) brain-dysfunctional Off-Broadway show, was utterly miraculous. A husband and wife team cooked the food they served to us in the cabin they lived in, as their only guests in attendance, away from the maddening tourist crowds. They served the best mashed potatoes I've ever had in my life, followed by the best peach cobbler I've ever had for dessert, too.
As we stood on their wood-plank porch watching the Milky Way stars emerge above the rural New Mexican mountains, free of sky-obscuring light pollution, after a spectacular pink and purple sunset we knew was divinely inspired, not even my dad's annoying toothpick habit that included repeatedly sucking his teeth loudly could spoil our mood. For an evening, just one evening, we'd been in heaven, and it was worth the price of the ticket. Believe you me. And you should. Some memories are so good, they withstand the test of time, like a love that's everlasting. Amen to you, on this holy All Saints Day in 2016.
* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_Fire_Resort
Friday, February 3, 2012
The Story of Lobo and Blanca
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| http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_of_the_Wolves |
Wolves are my favorite animals. It isn't surprising, given my preference for snow dogs, which wolves resemble in some ways. One of my favorite reads as a pre-teen was Julie of the Wolves, the story of an abused Native girl who runs away to join a pack. I made a study of my Samoyed as a girl growing up, and I loved her habits. When I began to learn in earnest about wolves, my admiration for their qualities grew. They are one of the most intelligent, sophisticated, and feeling animals on our beautiful gem of a planet, alongside whales, dolphins, and elephants. They have a complex and highly developed society, with a refined, disciplined, almost militaristic hierarchy. They form strong emotional attachments and unique bonds. Combined with their extraordinary natural beauty, you can clearly see why I was hooked.
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| Lakota Wolf, © 2010 Marie Doucette http://www.lakotawolf.com |
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| Lobo |
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| Blanca |
*http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2010_07_01_archive.html
http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2010/04/lakota-wolf-preservecolumbia-nj.html
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