Still Here: Three Full Months of the Desert

Wow hello it is suddenly almost October and I’ve been AWOL since early August.

What, you may (or may not) wonder, have I been doing since Florida?

Well.

I took on a fun, but intense, National Parks project for one of my main clients, which had me pouring 40,000 words on top of my already-about-10,000-words-per-week assignment schedule. At the same time, I picked up four new clients.

I bought five pounds of the roasted green chiles that are everywhere here this time of year, which a man in a parking lot handed to me steaming in a double layer of grocery bags. I fumbled my way through homemade green chile stew, splattering it all over my kitchen; the remains of it (and of the chiles themselves) still stuff my freezer.

I witnessed the weird and honestly pretty disturbing tradition that is known as the burning of Zozobra; I learned that to live here means to smear out the lives of black widows on my walls on a fairly regular basis.

I danced badly to a live line of amazing African drummers on a Saturday morning, learning to bend double at the start and spin like you’ve been felled; I started attending a weekly game night, trading crude jokes over obscure board games with chatty, beer-buzzed nerds.

I’ve spent way too much money on apples and flowers and tomatoes at the farmer’s market, a three minute walk from my door; I’ve hiked a decent amount, but never enough, through Christmas-scented forests. I finally bought myself a tent to make good on my promise to backpack, though I’ve been thwarted by its being on back-order. I got a library card — also as-yet unused, unfortunately. Please see: extra 40,000 words.

I cut my own hair. I furnished a house. I turned 29.

It’s been going.

Santa Fe at sunrise, as seen from the top of Sun Mountain

On a more immediate level, I just got back from Taos — as in, two-ish hours ago — having finally had the time and space for a real, solid weekend. I spent a full five hours yesterday doing absolutely nothing but vegging out in my underwear, alternately scrolling through my phone, staring out the window, and actually reading.

And what better backdrop: Taos, with its solar-powered radio station, Taos, with its if you live here, you get it newspaper tagline. Taos, with its cash-only cafe serving up bulletproof coffee and “Fuck Trump” bumper stickers and also the barista is someone I matched with on Tinder, because there are only 5,000 people there and of course.

I will be honest and tell you that Taos is part of the reason I signed my lease in Santa Fe, and although it’s a lot smaller, I sometimes wonder if I didn’t make a mistake by not moving there instead. The vibe in town is a little bit wilder, a little bit hungrier; you can feel the place thrumming in anticipation of its famous ski-slope winters. (And, truth: I’m not sure I will ever stop losing my breath when I first break over the mesa to see the Rio Grande gorge laid out like some kind of fate line, not sure I’ll ever be able to walk across the gorge bridge without heartdrop, without my brain trying out on my body the sensation of falling.)

I had, in short, an amazing weekend. I successfully evaded my work emails for three full days — which means my inbox is a now towering and fearful stack of shit I’m very willfully not looking at until tomorrow morning. (… Mostly. I did a couple of things. I’m trying.)

But I remembered how important it is to take breaks — real breaks — and how bad I am at it. I left my laptop at home, let it all stack up, forgot about it. I sunsetted in a hot spring beside the Rio Grande’s babble, forgot my towel and hiked back up in my boots and bikini; I climbed to the top of Mount Wheeler and then walked into town to chat with artists and watch a photographer’s eight-year-old son do a very obvious magic trick. (He insisted.) I danced in the desert at a weird hippie party to celebrate the equinox, came home covered in bonfire ash and glowing. I ate a truly contemptible amount of apples and almond butter and read good prose until my soul felt sated.

And I stayed in this amazing little vintage trailer down a gravel road ten minutes from town. There was a pig on the property named Maxine, who happily helped me with those apples. I hunkered down in the rig’s surprisingly comfortable single bed, warm under the dense comforter despite the 40-degree nights I felt through the windows.

And, I confess: I thought about how often I miss Saint Augustine, or the California coast, or Montana, and about how many other places I still want to go. I thought about how proud I am of my newly-furnished apartment, of how nice it feels to have a place that is my own… but how I know in my heart I won’t be able to stay here forever.

So for now, I’ll keep standing still, keep using this time to create and connect and drink in every single drop of this all-but-arid desert. It really is nice to feel a little bit like part of something, to sleep (mostly) in one bed, to have some basic day-to-day predictability.

But the road isn’t done with me yet, I can tell. All that’s left to figure out: which one(s) to take, and how to take them.

Dappled skies and stone formations at Tent Rocks National Monument

Clouds form over the Railyard in downtown Santa Fe during summer monsoon season

Santa Fe railway car; sunrise

A chile vendor explains the roasting process to onlookers at the Saturday Farmers Market

Artichokes, complete with (surprising) purple flowers, for sale at the Farmers Market

A young girl performs traditional dance during one of the many cultural events at the Plaza

Zozobra, the animated puppet the town burns each August. He’s meant to symbolize the city’s sorrows, so the burning is a joyous event. That said, they pipe his very agitated-sounding moans over the loudspeaker, and the crowd literally chants, “Burn him! Burn him!” lynch-mob style. The man in the lower left hand corner is the mayor, who led us through an ad-hoc “trial” in which we shouted “guilty!” at all of Zozobra’s accusations, which he definitely did not get to defend. Let’s just say: the tradition has not aged well, in my opinion.

To add to the surreality and darkness of the night, it started pouring; I was lucky enough to be close to the front of the park and sought shelter in a crowded dug-out. But most of the attendees stood in the rain, unmoved, waiting for the promised burn with funnel cakes in their hands and children on their shoulders.

The first black widow I saw in my apartment, who lacked the iconic red markings. The ones I’ve seen since do have them, though, so my suspicions are confirmed. Although I apologize to them each time, I do kill them; better safe than sorry.