The amazing thing about summer in the terrible high desert is that when it finally gets here, it isn’t summer any more. That is, nothing like emigrant flatlanders remember. I’m not complaining, though! Here it is July, but that down comforter stays right on the bed. In a few weeks, I’ll be closing windows, too.
Whether that makes me complain will depend upon our housing outlook for the fall. Everything I’m reading about the long-term forecast suggests intensifying moisture heading into winter, and that means snow. Lots and lots of snow. No mas, as the saying goes, not on The Road the County Forgot. (Give me a different setting, let it come…)
Fortunately, our next house is out there waiting for us. Consciously, I mean. It’s hoping we find it and wants to be ours. It’s located on a paved or plowed road with a view, nice trees, a big wood stove, space for two studios, room to garden, and a good-sized kitchen. (A huge elm tree is not growing out of the “foundation” and my tools aren’t leaning against the side of the house.) There’s an honest-to-god closet. We have a washer and a dryer. All our stuff fits inside like an actual home. It’s decent enough that we can sell it when they send me to dugout canoe hospice in the Seychelles—that’s the part where I’m propped up with a paddle in my hands and launched into the lagoon; I have great drugs, a big hat, plenty of water, and die with the sun in my eyes on a white sandy beach.
Meanwhile, it’s cloudy and cool and (gasp!) rains now and then. There are actually bugs. The pow-wow is this week, come rain or come shine. Then the fiestas, my birthday, and all… It’s time for a change. Keep walking, stay healthy, and on with the show.
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)
One year at Powwow there was driving rain and sleet, puddles everywhere and it felt like November. Yes, July is different here. It seems there are only about two weeks that one could go all night with windows open and no covers. Best of luck on finding the right home. Sounds like you are ready to spring into the new.
I sure am. It’s time.
I love to read about El Norté in your posts. How I yearn to at least live close enough once again that we could visit.
I’ve never lived in Taos so don’t really know what it would be like. I passed on an idea that might have gotten us there some years ago -before Pozzi Franzetti passed away.
During a phone call she volunteered that she had been kicking around the idea of giving up the metal art business to concentrate on her beautiful metal gates. She hadn’t been pushing her art but “a person” could make a decent living if they did. There were living quarters above her shop and she would work out any reasonable offer with an interested party. My mind whirled. An opportunity in Taos and someone to help me get started.
It’s funny what fear can do. Alas, Pozzi has gone on and I’m in Louisiana. I think she got the better deal.
Wow, that’s a big one! Amazing.
I have several like that. Turned down a fully-paid three-year gig (J. Lassen Boysen Fellowship) to the University of Hamburg, for example. This would have let me go straight from my B.A. at U.T. Austin. to a PhD. in Germanic Lit, bypassing the master’s. But this was ’68 and all. There was no assurance I wouldn’t be drafted while in Germany, with no counseling or other help available like in Austin. Just me all by myself, reporting to the nearest U.S. Army base to have my physical. Bad odds! I almost took the risk, too. This was one hell of an honor, and I’d aimed for it. The PhD. wasn’t all that important to me, but I’d have had a completely different life with all those years in Europe. It just wasn’t meant to be, however, because the person I was then couldn’t have done anything else but get a quick M.A. and hide out teaching in a junior college for three years.
With many, many weekends in Austin… 🙂
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