Knowing Exactly Where I Wasn't

"I couldn't taste the taste that I was tasting,
couldn't hear the waste that I was making,
tired of the life I was facing."
-Ween, "Chocolate Town"

Fall in Northern New Mexico is like no other. Certain autumnal changes are ubiquitous, but the overall impressions, the alterations in neural chemistry the Land of Enchantment evokes, have no equal. Leaves change from verdant greens to tanned, leathery yellows. Crimson and cinnamon turbines fall from oak totems, swirling amidst the chilly breezes speeding through the mountain passes. The cacti remain stolid. The nights spread their arms in both directions, stealing away the afternoon and morning light with gaunt fingers. The air is crisp and open. The snowstorms RSVP, promising their attendance at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners.

Locals stoke their fires with pinon logs they'’ve either cut themselves or purchased from amicable neighbors with stubble and missing teeth. Ristras hung from jutting vigas and sway under the moonlight, casting feathery shadows against rough adobe walls. The nights smell dark and primal, the aromas of roasted Chimayo chile and pinon, of elk and desert sand, dance playfully with kachina spirits and coyotes skirting nervously over black asphalt.

Look into the deepest of New Mexican skies on a clear night and you'’ll be struck with the sensation of not looking at space, but being sucked up into it.

Living in New Mexico is a combination of several generally uneasy feelings: disconnectedness, isolation, a surreal awareness of living nature, a sense of topographical brooding. Normally, these sentiments would cause one to panic, but in New Mexico they ineffably endear you to the land. New Mexico is partly lost and confused; It has neither fully accepted that it is part of America nor do the locals fully recognize their Mexican heritage, fixating always on their Spanish blood. New Mexico is not white America, nor is itindigenousnous pueblo, nor is it a Mexican villa. In terms of identity, it is a limbo land, a rugged portrait of insurmountability. Different ethnicities and cultures come in contact with one another, however great strides are taken to preserve the traditional ways.

It is almost as though Nuevo Mexico does not exist except for those existing in it, because while it appears on every map of the United States printed after 1912, no one who has not lived in New Mexico has any understanding of it. Some Americans even fail to recognize it as a state. Ironically, the tropical beaches of Hawaii, some 2,500 miles off the coast of California, are never forgotten even though New Mexico is closer than Hawaii to all of the continental state.

Foreign New Mexico Example #1: When I was in Prague several years ago I met a pair of Norwegians who vehemently denied that Western Russia was part of the European continent. I tried to explain the concept of the Caucasus Mountains as Eurasia's fissure, but they would have nothing of it. The Norwegians insisted Russia was strictly an Asiatic land. Is New Mexico invisible to most Americans because of some puritanical strife? Or does sharing its name with a country initiates a state of child-like confusion?

Foreign New Mexico Example #2: On a recent trip to Alaska, a cashier asked me if everyone spoke Spanish if New Mexico. Given that New Mexico was admitted to the United States 47 years prior to Alaska, I wanted to ask if she spoke Russian. However, I refrained, not wanting to give the impression that New Mexicans were uncouthe.














The other day a friend and I went hiking east of Albuquerque at the Fourth of July Campground near Chilili. After driving through what most would assume to be uninhabitable wastelands suitable only for Ted Turner'’s buffalo herds, my friend and I headed confidently into the woods.

My friend and I had hiked and camped together several times before. Both of us were raised in Northern New Mexico and had heard the horror stories of hikers getting lost in the woods, prompting the deployment of search parties and helicopters with spotlights. For that reason, we both understood the importance of water, dressing in layers, and not straying from marked trails.

However, such exposition promises an aberration from the predicates of safe sportage. We didn't stay on the marked trails. Not that we didn'’t try. But what looked liked the trail ended every twenty feet, at which point we would stop and scratch our heads and locate what appeared to be another trail some distance off. And so, like a chain that is imagined to stay together despite its missing links, we followed each trail bit, each piecemeal path, until we were, predictably, lost.

In the fifth largest state, a state with barely 2 million people, it is easy to become lost. There is a lot of uninhabited land in New Mexico. A lot of land waiting to be developed. A lot of land waiting to be scarred. A lot of land where one can search or be searched for. A lot of land to escape to. A lot of land to become a part of.

After some scouting we managed to find the major trail and we headed back toward the main campground. When we reached the car I couldn'’t help but feel the entire time we were without direction, the entire time I didn'’t know where I was, I did not have the impression of feeling lost. I had been feeling out of sorts in regards to my place and purpose anyway, and being stranded in the woods, being faced with the prospect of having to resort to a survivalist mentality, made no impression on me. I was in New Mexico. Maybe that's as lost as one can get. But it is a familiar feeling of being without a location, and a familiar feeling of being disoriented is preferable to an unfamiliar one.