Yes, another mountain. What the hell can I do, the things are everywhere. By the way, that’s half of Taos Mountain on the right. This is of course another telephoto shot from Taos Valley Overlook, taken about three days ago.
I was due to go hike yesterday, but it was snowing, and I had to get ready for a firewood delivery—high essential drama in these parts, especially with a snow-packed driveway on a hill. That was pretty hairy, actually. My wood guy had his ’94 Mazda 4X4 truck’s front wheels cranked full lock, but the whole shebang just slid straight down with all that weight atop the ice. Happily this ended at the wood pile anyway, as if the piñon knew exactly where to go.
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 .png)
There’s an age-old pattern under which the lowlands get civilized, develop institutions, laws, bureaucracies – but never entirely rule the mountains, into which the bandits, warriors and ungovernable tribes retreat and constitute a rule unto themselves. Indeed, in times of decadence the tribes descend and wreak havoc on the soft lowlanders who displaced them from the richer lands but eventually came to lose their martial virtues, sucking the teat of peace.
I look at this stirring picture of yours and see in the middle ground a strewing of petty structures (I guess we could call it civilization, stretching the point). In the background towers that barricade of extinct volcanic remains. I imagine you, O Sennacharib, wolfishly looking down upon those placid undistinguished lives from your mountain fastness. Are you ready to strike and eviscerate the lot of them? Or move down and become as they are?
There are a few of those around here (mountain fastness thingies), but it takes an awfully long time and a 4WD to get to the grocery store from up in the hills. Say a prayer for Internet service, too. I’d still live on top of a mountain if I could, though.
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