Picuris from Miranda Canyon Road

Picuris Peak in the snow south of Taos, NM

Picuris is the one you can’t see, farther back, hidden in the clouds

That’s Picuris Peak up there somewhere and Miranda Canyon straight ahead. For different reasons, you can’t see either one. A bunch of us killed a fancy housing development up that way a few years back. I only played a tiny part, but I drew blood. The project had a PR campaign that treated the community like they were children, and folks got angry. I published a couple of blog posts that had the head guy spitting mad, but no one slit my tires.

Not too long ago the owners finally settled with the Forest Service or some other entity, which I believe has paid them for the land, or will. That means this all now belongs to us, to you, to everybody. There’s a piece of the old Camino Real on the other side of that mountain. (I found a decaying wooden historical marker on a hike back in there once.) Spanish soldiers wearing armor, priests, and Indian slaves, clonking along on horses, burros, and on foot, right up there in the mist, before the Pilgrims even had a goddamn boat or knew they needed one.

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John Hamilton Farr lives at 7,000 feet in Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico, U.S.A. As New York Times best-selling author James C. Moore tells it, John is “a man attuned to the world who sees it differently than you and I and writes about it with a language and a vision of life that is impossible to ignore.” This JHFARR.COM site is the master writing archive. To email John, please see CONTACT INFO on About page. For a complete list of all John’s writing, photography, NFTs, and social media links, please visit JHFARR.ART  

  • David February 22, 2013, 6:56 AM

    He didn’t slit your tires cause he couldn’t find your house 😉

    • JHF February 22, 2013, 8:52 AM

      Could well be! It was all so stupid. The developers made such outrageous claims, there was great satire involved in striking them down.

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