Because You Never Get Enough of Taos Mountain

This is just ridiculous. All I have to do is walk about a hundred yards, find a clear shot through the scrubby trees for my trusty Pentax with the telephoto lens, and there you go. I probably have three thousand photos like this, one of the benefits of living at the end of a muddy dirt road on the south side of town. One could do worse for vantage points, if not for keeping car and pride together.

But I saw something even better on my way to the mailbox today. I almost never meet any neighbors up there, but today I did—that in itself was notable. From a single-wide across the selfsame muddy road came a mother slowly with a baby in a blanket. She supported the infant’s head with one hand and held it firmly with the other. (For a moment she was walking barefoot along the Nile in Pharaoh’s Egypt.) The mother herself was small and slender, shy, and eighteen at the most. She glowed so much, she vibrated “mother”…

I said hello and gave her distance, feeling something like a guard. The mountain was right behind her, too.

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