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I couldn’t possibly make the left turn with a big red wrecker truck hanging on my bumper at sixy miles an hour, so I drove another half mile to where I had a turn lane, circled right back to the highway—empty now, thank God—and cruised toward town until I found the place again. There was nothing but a stop sign at the entrance to a gravel road. We turned and found to my surprise that we still had quite a ways to go. The mostly straight road ran steeply up the side of the mountain. There weren’t any houses anywhere until we’d gone about a mile and a half, and then we found a few. The one we’d driven up to see was where they said it was. What the listing info didn’t show was the view that kicked me like an atom bomb.

By that point we were high up in the trees, but to the north and west a panorama opened up to drive me crazy. Imagine a view roughly like what you see above except you’re looking down instead of gazing outward, and of course those houses aren’t there, either. There’s a thing that happens here when you go high enough in these mountains. Maybe it’s the cosmic rays. But something changes above eight, nine thousand feet. It’s like being in a temple. An impossibly huge and limitless holy space where you instinctively lower your voice. The air is clean and cold. I mean it’s really clean. Most people never get to breathe this air. It alters consciousness on the spot.

I guarantee you there are plenty of people right here in Taos who have never felt what I describe. Number one, you have to go there—it doesn’t come to you and will be hard to reach—and number two, you have to be receptive. Not everybody is. It’s not that such-and-such is “pretty.” It’s not. It’s goddamn scary. It’s more than you can stand and yet you can’t resist. It’s wild and beautiful and terrible because nothing human matters. It’s a completely different state of being, like dissolving in the juice of God. You simply never want to leave. That’s important, obviously. How else could you stay? No doubt I’d end up married to the sky, but I’d still risk it.

You can never have too many skulls or Guadalupanas. (There are two more Guadas in the cab, you just can’t see them here.) The clear glass object in the center is actually a tiny skull. The filthy gearshift knob is a skull I cast from plastic resin in a mold I made myself about twenty years ago. For some reason I never got around to casting one in bronze. This must have been around the time I quit melting and pouring my own bronze because I finally accepted how poisonous the fumes were, not to mention that no one was buying cast bronze cat skull sculptures, anyway. So much for being ahead of my time.

The 1987 F-150 above isn’t ahead of its own time or anybody else’s. It’s very hard to shift, has old cracked tires, and stinks of oil that runs down from the valve cover to bake itself hard all over the engine block. The best thing I can say about it is that it doesn’t cost me much because I never fix it and it crashes up and down the “roads” around here without dropping pieces in the dust. I also have no confidence in it beyond a few short trips, but usually that’s enough: recycling, lotto tickets, a certain trailhead six miles out of town. And as soon as this is posted, I’ll see if it’ll make it to the hardware store.

“What did you do today, honey?”

“Well, we needed birdseed, so I drove a 29-year-old truck to the hardware store to see if I could do it without shifting out of third.”

Jesus, what a silly way to live.

We looked at another house yesterday, by the way. This one had a beautifully landscaped front yard, but the place was built in 1970. No crime in itself, of course. “I know that molding,” I told our buyer’s agent. “In fact, I think I’ve lived here.” It wasn’t just the tiny rooms and squeaky floor. The woman who spent most of her life there was a stained glass artist. The house reflected all the stages of her life, from the garden beds outside to the grab bar by the bathtub. Her son had only recently moved her to an old folks home in Houston, so most of the furnishings and gee-gaws were still in place. There was a calico cat stuffed toy on the bedspread. I just knew that if I opened any drawer, I’d find too much of something no one wanted. The property was sound, but everywhere I looked were work-arounds that needed knocking down or burning. It all reminded me of my mother, and I felt the walls were closing in.

Another hundred grand and we could shop a better market. On the way back from hiking yesterday, riding in the everlasting truck, I realized this was possible. That surprised me, frankly, but I’m all better now.

Okay, nobody got hurt, at least not while we were there, but they certainly could have been. Just look at these monsters. They were making funny growly noises the whole time. I thought for sure the two of them were about to rip the kid’s face off or start spitting horrible slime. Never trust a pseudoruminant, I say. They’re ones with three stomachs instead of four. This was at the Wool Festival in Taos, a good place to visit on a wholesome Sunday afternoon, especially if you like wool.

There were a few folksingers in evidence. I heard but did not see a presumably fine fellow with a nice voice sing “The Old Grandfather Clock” over the PA system. Not exactly a folk song, but that was the evidence. There was also lots and lots of wool. Everywhere I turned, women were stroking balls of yarn or sweaters and murmuring appreciatively. (Who knew that was all it takes?) The ratio of women to men was approximately 2,000:1. I could see Kit Carson’s grave across the fence and wondered if he was lonesome. Did I mention there was wool? I did enjoy walking around with my beautiful sweetheart, however. She’s a fabric stroker from way back. Otherwise, I didn’t see any funnel cakes (just wool), and we didn’t stick around for the speed spinning contest. That’s the one where the winner is the person who spins the longest piece of yarn in two minutes, then they pass it around so everyone can feel it.

“Mmmmm.”

“Ahhhh.”

“Ooooh.”

For some reason this reminds me of the scene in Catch-22 where Milo Minderbender is selling chocolate-covered Egyptian cotton and trying to get people to sample it. Not wool, though, so never mind.

Those are not summer clouds, alas. About a week ago I called my current wood guy, a rugged sort who lives some thirty miles away, to order up a cord of piñon. This marked something of a surrender for me. I’m in the middle of pretending winter isn’t going to come because we haven’t moved yet, and buying firewood breaks the spell. This is all so ridiculous, isn’t it? But cold is cold, or will be. To think anyone still has to live this way! Oh right, we don’t.

My previous wood guy, one of the most extraordinary people I’ve ever known, a lifelong physical and spiritual explorer, sent me the most remarkable email the other day. In his usual cryptic and mystical way, he seemed to tell me he was dying—though in a way that allowed some plausible denial, should it come to that. But I think I read him right the first time. He’s my age. I’ve never met anyone like him, yet we connected. It was like meeting someone who’s close enough to grab me by the arm yet far enough away to see over the mountain. I don’t really know what’s going on now. It’s not necessary that I do.