Road to New Mexico

I first moved to New Mexico in 2019. I say first, because people often do that more than once. At some point, the Land of Enchantment becomes the Land of Entrapment. You either become bitten by the desert bug, or you don’t. There is no in between.

Albuquerque was my solution to not being able to find a way to live in the UK. I had stuck out the Bay Area for around 22 years. Yes, it is beautiful, and very special in many ways. I raised my son there and put down roots. Yet on another hand, I spent the entire time trying to get out of it. I had already had a year in the UK and two and a half in New Jersey. I ended up returning to California after both of those occasions. This time, however, I was on to a different pasture; one whose rays of energy sank deep inside me, changing my very constitution.

The day of departure was chaotic, as usual. I had planned how to use every inch of space in my Toyota Prius, as well as my son’s Toyota Yaris. The latter would be shipped, with the rabbit’s cage carefully concealed in its trunk, as technically it was supposed to be empty. The Prius was crammed to the gills. My son, D, and I had the front seats (although I had no intention of sharing the driving) and on the back I was able to carefully wedge three crates: for two cats and a rabbit. That left limited space for everything else. I ended up leaving behind a huge pile of things that I was sure I would be able to fit into the crevices along the sides of the car, not realizing that there would be no crevices. Needless to say, the plan to leave at 9 am did not happen, but I did manage, sweating profusely and frazzled beyond belief, to get on the road at 11.

I have since made this trip in three days, but this time, we did it in two. Each day required eight hours of driving. The first day just got us to through California to the border with Arizona; much of it was boring and monotonous. However, early in the trip, I had my first encounter with the otherworldly San Luis Reservoir. When I first entered its winding roads, I thought I might be having an acid flashback, even though I had never actually taken acid. To my wonderment, the only explanation was that this surreal landscape was real. The water was a brilliant luminescent turquoise, and the land formations a glittering cream. It could easily be another planet. Every twist of the road brought a new vista of psychedelia. To my disappointment, D slept through this entire segment of the trip.

The last stretch to the hotel on the border was particularly monotonous and deadening, despite a pleasant purple sky in the dusk. After checking in, I had high hopes for some rest for us and the animals. Unfortunately, it was not to be. One of the cats, Shaggy, spent the entire night meowing. I mean literally, he spent the entire night meowing. The only time he did not was when I was sitting up with him, force feeding him wet food laced with sedative, with my finger. He did not resist this food, nor did he gag. He actually seemed hungry and ate it willingly. Sedation, however, never happened.

At one point during these feedings, I felt Shaggy’s skull fit perfectly inside the palm of my hand. My fingers were loosely cradled around his head, like a gentle claw. His neck felt delicate and tiny. For just one second, I imagined simply closing my fingers around his head and throwing him over the tall dirt verge at the edge of the motel parking lot. I would tell D that he ran away. That entire scenario unfolded in less than a second.

Of course, I did not do it, and I was horrified that my mind produced this fantasy. At no point was the thought at risk of becoming action. However, I also know that every mind is capable of producing thoughts we insist it cannot. People who adamantly insist there are things they would never do have perhaps not gotten close enough to the edge to know that for sure. Now I never underestimate the effects of prolonged stress, general overwhelm, and no sleep whatsoever.

As exhausted as we were, the second day of the drive was grueling, but blissful in that it was the last one. Shaggy was quiet. I only had to succumb and let D drive once, after I ill-advisedly ate a piece of pizza at a rest stop. I had been on a ketogenic diet for a while, and the carbs literally put me to sleep. He is an excellent driver. The deficit is all mine: at that time, I just couldn’t quite let go of the aspect of parenthood that means I do all the driving.

This stretch of geography along interstate 40 remains one of my all-time favorites. After climbing up to Flagstaff, the road tapers into a long, swooping vista of changing colors and vegetation. I so appreciated watching the landscape unfold, from the high mountains of Flagstaff, through a beautiful (and smokey, due to fires) desert national forest, through flat yellow shrub desert of eastern Arizona, turning into the more colorful, redder desert of New Mexico. The Earth here is punctured by red buttes and black lava rocks, which become more abundant closer to the city. This stretch of land is rich in volcanos. The deserts of Arizona and New Mexico are very different. Once a TV show filmed a critical scene in Arizona and tried to pass it off as New Mexico. I spotted it immediately.

On the last 100 miles to Albuquerque, we were treated to vivid pastels of overcast, stunning cloud formations, and bolts of lightning in the distance. Being up on a 6000' plateau, the sky is huge and the view goes on for miles and miles. From far away, the city was a rolling blanket of lights, especially beautiful at dusk. I got a real sense of how large the city is, especially after the sparsely inhabited land we had driven through since Flagstaff.

The first stop was to drop the rabbit off at my friend’s house, since the hotel had a strict two pet policy, which we would use for the cats. Between her house and the hotel, we experienced our first desert monsoon. The volume of water was phenomenal, in a very short period of time. We were on the highway at the time and slowed down to about 20 mph. Wipers on high did little. I couldn't see the lane markings. Lightening was flashing directly overhead, several per minute. Wow! Between the rain and a full moon the day before, arriving in our new home felt like a special, auspicious time.

The first few days, we all rested. Shaggy only meowed a little bit at night and found some hidden cranny to hide in. The other cat did not leave her spot under the covers of my bed all day. D was on his computer, talking to his friend in Texas. I lounged around, catching up with emails. The desert nourished and cradled us for several years. How glad I am that we got to see it all unfold, meter by meter, in changing times of day and weather.