Maybe I can do this after all. It only took me eighteen years of living in Taos, most of them spent less than ten miles from this spot, but I did find it. It’s a stupefying place. The scale and closeness of the cliffs are shocking. The open space between them is too much to process right away. The views are beautiful and very dangerous. Ravens and buzzards sweep screaming fast along the wind.
A nearby side canyon widens out at one point, dense with trees. There could be water in there, who knows. Animals, a cave, something deadly strange. (There almost always is.) It’s reachable. To get there, I’d leave the trail where it crosses the arroyo and hike carefully along the bottom until I was in between the basalt walls. Out of cell phone range as well, I expect.
Step carefully, my son, but 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)
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