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I have a friend who sent me a photograph of light reflecting off a piece of obsidian crystal and wrote, “View deeply, remember who you are.” Now that is very cool. It came precisely at the moment when I needed a reminder.

Today I went hiking on the same trail from which I took the Picuris Peak shot above last week. I didn’t want to go at first, remembering the possible number of Sunday visitors. Then I decided I’d allow myself to wander up and down a few arroyos for once instead of simply charging two miles out and back the way I usually do. This would also get me off the trail, if that was relevant.

These arroyos are full of mystery and surprise. Also rocks. You never saw so many rocks of so many different kinds. That’s probably because a few million years ago, northern New Mexico basically exploded. A piece of the Jemez Mountains ended up in Kansas, believe it or not, after a cataclysmic volcanic blast that created the Valles Caldera. But in today’s arroyos, you walk along below the level of the surrounding countryside, sheltered from the wind, in almost perfect silence. It hardly ever rains here, but looking at the patterns in the clean gold sand, you see it must have not too long ago. Everywhere I walked today in these places, I saw no human footprints.

Instead of following the last arroyo up to where it crossed the trail, I climbed out and headed cross-country, up a hill. By now I know the lay of the land. All I had to do was go all the way up, there, where the sunlight reflecting off the slope was like an invitation, and I’d run into a higher section of the trail, having gained a couple hundred yards as well. Halfway up, I stopped to have a drink of water beside a clump of junipers. Suddenly I heard a soft clonk-clonk, like a single note on a marimba. A second later I realized it sounded just like this mystical art device without the bell.

I stood perfectly still and listened to the sound a few more times. Once it seemed to come from deep inside the juniper grove, then I thought I heard it from behind, or even down the hill a little way. This kind of audio ambiguity isn’t unusual with me, what with my whacked-out hearing, but maybe—like sometimes with my ears—the clonk-clonk wasn’t physical. For it to sound exactly like the pieces of cedar I had hanging from a tree back home was kind of clever, though.

An hour later, I’m back here at the old adobe on the hillside. The sun is pouring down the driveway like a warm spring flood. I’m outside to get some wood for later on. The air feels so nice, I don’t want to go back in but I do, because the chore requires several loads. On the last trip to the woodpile, I stand admiring how the light brings out the color of the 500-year-old piñon. As I bend to load a few pieces in my right arm, holding the wood against my chest, the certainty comes over me that I am being helped.

Never in my life, not once, has such a thing occurred to me.

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The shining hour has arrived. Something different has been waiting for a long, long time.

My wife for one has never stood so straight or looked so beautiful. Either this depth and richness is a wild new thing or I just passed third grade. Best not go into that. I’ve never felt so strongly that I have a friend. She always tells me I can do absolutely anything I want. Well then.

For my part, I understand more clearly what I’m here for. I never thought that that would happen. This morning she told me, “You look better. Not so worried…”

I never saw my father when he wasn’t worried. Now that I’ve outlived his span of years, I may have out-evolved him, too. That’s what you get for not hugging your kid, you’re just not carried along. You get the things you think about. That’s just the way it is. The reason I never killed myself or ended up in jail has nothing to do with those who gave me birth. There is a deeper context.

I am blameless in the shining hour.

Now if I can only learn to work!

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The danger here is palpable. Call it what you will: angry spirits, corruption, evil vibes, you feel it. This was already here, a short distance away, when I first rented our old adobe on the hillside. It’s actually a kiva, an underground ceremonial chamber, or at least it was once. The Pueblo Natives who built it inhabited this mesa as early as 900 A.D., so you could be looking at a thousand-year-old hole.

This in itself isn’t so unusual in el Norte. Farther up the mesa is what was once a very large kiva, now just an eroded depression, that someone’s used for a garbage dump. (The vibes aren’t so hot up that way, either.) As you can see, here we have a skylight and a chimney. I don’t know who thought it up or when it happened, but someone decided to make this one a home.

It seems to me that this would take an idiot. So maybe during one of the late 20th century in-migrations? Probably it was roofless back whenever it was and just a deep pit. The roof on it now is made of logs and latillas and covered with dirt, much like the original would have been. Good ole “Uncle Dale” (the dead landlord) must have known how the whole thing went down, but neither he nor our longtime neighbors ever talked about it. I didn’t ask.

One afternoon ten years ago I crept carefully up to the entrance. There were cobwebs and strange bits, and an old hand-made ladder in a state of collapse leading nearly straight down. Thanks to the skylight, I could see a bit of the floor. There was a piece of linoleum (!), some kind of wood stove, and what looked like a rocking chair, just out of sight.

Who knew what else was down there? I was curious as hell but couldn’t trust the ladder. The shaft it stood in was dark and rough. There had to be black widows in the cobwebs and scorpions in the dirt. But these were nothing next to what really gave me pause: how could you defile a place like that and live? Whoever had done this must have met a horrible fate. For all I knew, the evidence was still down there. More than likely, though, he left years ago and succumbed to brain-eating worms. Little ones, that take a long time.

Something drew me to the spot two days ago. It had been a decade since I’d been that close. This time I didn’t peer down the shaft.

What if there had been a body? What if you fell in and didn’t have a cell phone? What if you had one but the hole was too deep for you to get a signal? No one would ever hear you call for help unless they were standing by the hole. You’d have to spend the night in there before the searchers found you.

And when you came out, you might be completely mad. Either that or seemingly okay, just shaken. A little wobble in the left leg and a facial tic, next year something’s in your eye. Little ones that take a long time, chilluns. Bow your head and cry.

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This was the view from about sixteen miles away today. I shot this with my trusty Pentax K-x and a 55-300mm telephoto lens. The 12,115 ft summit itself is farther back up in the shadows. Lobo Peak is in the Columbine/Hondo Wilderness Study Area, so there must be a lot to see up there. I haven’t hiked it yet. The most popular trail to get there is “extremely steep” and climbs 3,600 feet in 4.2 miles. Oh Lord. Written out like that, it looks like a feasible day trip for a healthy 25-year-old athlete. Looks like, I say. Being somewhat older, this boy would want to make it an overnighter and camp at the top. According to the National Geographic guide page linked above, there’s a “vast open tundra” with plenty of campsites. I am so going to do this.

In fact, I’m going to do a lot of things I haven’t done yet. I’m coming out of a long spell of personal darkness, you might say, and things will be materially better for us soon. I’m exactly where I want to be for now and this is where my power is. Just look at that photo again. What my wife calls “crazy Taos” is only where we buy our groceries. This is why I’m here. The other crap is falling away. I may have actually survived myself.

Hot damn.

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