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Would you believe we visited a volcano on my birthday on the exact day that the volcano was having a birthday? Not the mysterious one in the photo, which I haven’t looked up yet—New Mexico is full of them—but I took the shot from the summit of Capulin Volcano, which I do know and where I was before a long, long time ago. The northeastern part of the state being what it is, I was looking forward to the solitude. When we drove into the visitors’ center at Capulin Volcano National Monument, however, the place was full of people having a party. There must have been a dozen rangers and thirty or forty people. The parking lot was almost full.

Unbeknownst to me and entirely by accident, we’d arrived not only on the same day but also the exact hour of the monument’s Centennial celebration! On August 9, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson established Capulin as a national monument, and the National Park Service was doing the anniversary up right.There were tents set up outside and chairs arranged in front of a podium. People were walking out of the visitors’ center carrying plates of goodies and drinks. There’s nothing I like better than free food, so I hurried inside, where a nice lady park ranger who looked my age offered me a slice of “volcano birthday cake.” (A variety of red velvet cake, we think.)

“Wow, it’s my birthday, too!” I told her.

“Yes, but we’re older,” she said, meaning the national monument.

“I don’t know, I’m pretty ancient…”

“Sorry the top is gone,” she said. “A little while ago, it looked more like a volcano.”

The cake was magnificent, though. The icing must have been half an inch thick. As I headed out to where my wife was waiting, the lady ranger tried to get me to go sit under the tent instead:

“Woodrow Wilson is about to speak!” she said, and it was true.

A gentleman in appropriate costume wearing a period straw hat was about to read the original proclamation establishing the national monument. Who knew there were Woodrow Wilson impersonators? At any rate, I declined and went to have lunch with my wife at a nice long picnic table in the shade. One cool irony is that because we knew we’d be traveling on my birthday, I’d tried to pack a couple of slices of store-bought carrot cake to celebrate. As it turned out, we lacked a decent way to carry them without rubbing the icing off and left them home, but the universe provided birthday cake regardless. Just the sort of thing that Leos relish on their birthdays, being treated like a king by God. The whole trip was remarkable.

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It was a very moving birthday trip for me, as good and as hard as it gets. Not only for the things we saw and where we went, but for the things that broke inside—I mean that in a good way, now, so don’t get crazy on me! Just tremendous, all in all. My body feels lighter and stronger, too. The boy’s a piece o’ work but has some awesome allies. Here’s one of them I met this morning. The other I just kissed goodnight.

Bbehold the cool, dry New Mexico sky over Taos! This time with beautiful clouds. The amazing thing is, it covers the whole state and then some. Even more astounding, there are people here who do not know this. (I’ve been spotted at the meetings.) My head and heart are full this morning. It’s that kind of day.

A couple I know but haven’t met in person came up from Albuquerque for the Alabama Shakes concert in the park on Saturday night and got stiffed by the owner of their pre-booked overnight casita, who’d apparently rented it to someone else and was high on evil drugs to boot. (There was more, but that’s enough.) They left yelling “Fuck Taos!” all the way out of town and spent the night in Santa Fe. Now that is an awful story, so I looked up the vacation rental website that sent them to the Casitas from Hell. Naturally, I hadn’t heard of it—we’ve never gotten a room that way—but it seemed to be legit and there were 717 listings under “Taos”…

That was something of a shock to me. My wife thinks I’m naive, but I plead willful blindness to the distortion of a tourist-based economy. In such an environment, owners can make way more than landlords who lease. On the other hand, 717 houses, apartments, and rooms rented out nightly from just one website are that many places where no one can live. Life is more nuanced than that, but you see how the headwinds build. I wouldn’t worry too much, though.

Send more heroin and meth, and we’ll turn this around!

Another Nagasaki Day birthday coming up on Tuesday! I don’t know why this is so important to me. It always is, at any rate, perhaps because I’m a Leo and was born on such a historic date. Everywhere I’ve ever lived (except here in Taos), I’ve known scads of Leos, and there always was a Leo party around this time of year. I’ve never heard of any other sun signs having parties for themselves. Can you imagine a Scorpio party, for example? I’m not sure I’d want to go!

There’s a lot going on here now. For one thing, we went to our local bank to get pre-approved for a mortgage loan. No, really. That was exciting. Our loan officer’s preliminary estimate of our “capacity” would buy us a nice home in rural Kansas, probably, and the final decision comes down today. I already wasted way too much energy being afraid we’d be approved, because then I’d have to face some other issues, but now I hope they do for general purposes of self-esteem. There isn’t any property at this time we’d actually like to buy—Taos being Taos and the case since pretty much forever—meaning the entire exercise is fraught with mystery and hope, as usual. (This may be relevant.)

But as I took my exercise walk yesterday, I had a revelation about my life. It is my birthday in a few days, after all. It’s also true that I could stand to have no more of these epiphanies, because they get me into trouble! Nonetheless, I realized that here I was—we should probably stop right there—observing from the leading edge of all the energy that brought me to this moment, and that all I had to do was keep on walking. The past was not a factor. There was a sense of being in the moment that was liberating.

On Tuesday we’ll take a trip to far northeast New Mexico. When I was a young pimply-faced Buddy Holly fan, my family took a camping trip from Abilene, Texas all the way to Yellowstone. Our first overnight stop was at Capulin Volcano National Monument, thirty-five miles east of Raton, NM. That was fifty-six years ago, and I am going back! One needs a destination, after all. But this is not the biggest thrill.

While running my eyes over the map to see how far it was to Capulin, a name jumped out at me and gave me goosebumps: Folsom! Folsom, New Mexico, where archeologists first found evidence of prehistoric hunters in North America—mammoth bones with embedded spear points, just nine miles north of the volcano! Yet even this is not the best. I spied another way to Capulin, you see. By taking very old New Mexico Route 72 from Raton all the way to Folsom and then turning south, we’d pass through a section of the state I’ve never seen. Here’s what really did it, though [full text at Folsom link above]:

“…the descent from the Mesa is spectacular.”

What mesa? I didn’t care, they had me at spectacular. Folsom itself is virtually a ghost town, fifty-six souls as of the last census. If we see another car before we get there, I’ll be surprised. This is absolutely perfect. Perfectly me, for sure, and damn if the whole idea didn’t pop divinely out of nowhere. I have goosebumps on my goosebumps, too.

Hoo, boy.