Taking the Long Way Home

A mid-winter meander on an enchanted adobe road, just my two good dogs and me

Yesterday was one of those rare mid-winter days here on the high slopes of La Jicarita’s Hidden Valley. The skies were clear blue, the breezes were gentle and downright balmy and the temps were pushing 50 when I gathered my eager good dogs into the truck for a leisurely drive down one of our blue highways to Dixon. Unlike my previous life in Tennessee, everything that I want and need is closer and more easily available here, including my hardware store, gas station, physician and dentist (five minutes away); my Family Dollar (six minutes); my favorite local restaurant, Sugar Nymphs (also six minutes); my post office and mechanic (seven minutes); and some still unexplored art galleries (eight minutes).

But today I wanted more and so I headed down that blue highway to the hamlet of Dixon, all of 20 minutes away, for the best chicken enchilada dinner anywhere close by at Zuly’s. Chalako and his wife Zuly, the owners, had just returned from a two month winter vacation to Mexico and we had lots of deep conversation catching up to do, first about the Picuris Pueblo’s ongoing efforts to grow their cannabis businesses (something I helped get off the ground last winter), about our spring gardening plans and then about recent world events too depressing to mention now. I left there thankful for their return and filled with their great food, always served with tangy green chile if I have my druthers. At Zuly’s I always have my druthers, and Chalako’s homegrown, homemade green chile salsa certainly warmed all my spots.

Next stop was the Dixon Market, a fully stocked, full service organic grocery and deli to pick up a few things I needed including a New York Times, always available the same day it is published. I left with the paper, some heavy cream for my pre-dawn quarts of coffee and a chocolate/coconut brownie that was the perfect compliment for my luncheon meal. The dogs had waited for me calmly while I ate and shopped but, as always, they slathered me with kisses when I got back in and fired up the truck.

Today, because it was just so beautiful, I decided to take the long way home, something that I usually do three or four times a year when the seasons are beginning to change. Instead of the fast return on blue highway 75 up US Hill and into the Picuris Pueblo before traveling through Rio Lucio, Penasco and Rodarte (all a minute from each other) to home, I turned onto County Road 69 on the outskirts of Dixon and headed east toward Canyoncito, first close by some well-tended apple orchards that are just now getting pruned and then off the pavement and onto an unpaved adobe highway that brought me quickly to a quiet and beautiful emptiness. Down here, the landscape is more arid, more boulder-y and brown than up in my alpine home of green hayfields and forest. At this lower altitude, the pinon grows where they can’t grow at home and so the fragrance of the woodsmoke coming from the woodstoves of the few houses I passed made my slow meandering roll smell like High Mass. There’s nothing like the layered sweetness of that smoke to make everything else seem better.

This sparsely populated route is only a little more than nine miles from one blue highway to the other, but I took a full hour to make the drive. Several times, I got out to take pictures, to stretch my legs and to let the dogs out too, capturing the emptiness and scenery while we did. Everywhere and at all times ahead of me, once I crested the ridge populated with cathedral-like rock formations, I could see the distant snowcaps of the Sangre de Cristos, the Trampas and Truchas pointed peaks so different from my own soft Jicarita but just as awe-inspiring.

After one of those stops, Luke was not ready to get back in the truck so I let him run ahead and then behind us for a few minutes, his long legs and smooth stride keeping him within panting distance of my truck while Lucky sat beside me in the passenger seat and grinned at Luke’s gritty pace of youth that Lucky’s shorter legs have long since left behind. After a few minutes of long distance sprints, Luke joined us and while he and Lucky hung their heads out my passenger window and gulped the dry and still sweet air, I rolled down my driver’s side window too, for the first time since likely last October, and enjoyed the full body breezes that my light sweater could fully accommodate, leaving the truck heater off that I would usually use to warm my feet.

Mile after slow mile, we moved along, admiring the adobe homes built off the road and on the edges of pastures and streams and the old rusted vintage pick-up trucks whose hulls will likely last a millennium up here. Neil Young may have been right that rust never sleeps but up here, it definitely takes its own sweet time. This time of year, the roadside streams are usually empty as our waters are still held solid in snowbanks. But the several days of warmth we’ve had have begun to melt the snow, to put thin thawed rivulets across the adobe highway and to show a gentle flow in the creek-beds that will become a springtime torrent when the real melt begins, sometime in May or June. We are still almost guaranteed of more snow until late April and may be blessed (as we have been twice in the four years I’ve been here) with snows that fall as late as early June. No matter when it comes, we are always grateful because whatever diamond dust we are given in late winter and early spring will fill our acequias and water our fields during our brief June to August warmth when we most need it.

As we approached the High Road to Taos blue highway in Ojo Sarco, the houses became more common and happy packs of dogs joined in their merry chase of our truck, giving my guys a chance to crane their necks and exercise their fearsome woofs. But once we entered the paved highway, it was easy to outpace the locals and our speed was sufficient to convince me it was time to roll up my driver’s side window. We’ve driven this route hundreds of times, through Ojo Sarco and on to Las Trampas, with its picture-perfect mission church and its canoa, a carved log trough spanning a deep arroyo outside of town that Robert Redford paid for almost fifty years ago to keep the parciantes in Las Trampas from replacing it with a perhaps more efficient metal pipe across that expanse that simply wouldn’t fit here in our most natural world.

Then on to Chamisal where, years ago, I almost bought a house right out on the highway, a dangerous place for my dogs, because of its view of Jicarita. So glad that the ghost of Miz Kelley kept putting impediments in my too hasty home-buying way until Ranchito Feliz Destino on Llano de la Llegua surfaced with its commanding 360 degree views of all my known universe, far enough off the rim road to keep my two good dogs, my now good cat and me untethered and content. As always it was an early night and last night, Luke was so worn out that he beat the rest of us to bed, with Lance taking his now customary place snuggled up beside the snoring Lukester.  

Another perfect day in our high slopes paradise, taking it all in with a slow, meandering stride and a first gear roll, giving thanks for every step and slow glide along the way. Until next time, gracias a la Diosa, one blessed day at a time.