Albuquerque to Abiquiu
New Mexico is a beauty that can't be captured, but one woman came close.
Today, I want to write, but I keep getting distracted by every song I hear. I’m going on two hours of chair-dancing, which doesn’t lend itself to developing pitches or editing the last five chapters of the manuscript. Every note is catching my attention and my emotions in the best way. Either I’m in a good mood, or the second giant mug of coffee I drank was magic.
I’ve been thinking about New Mexico a lot lately. Probably because my last two trips there were this time of year, and I put them on my favorite fall destinations list.
My autumn 2022 trip keeps popping into my head, probably because I’m starting to get amped about seeing Patti Smith next month. My last New Mexico trip was because of her. She always leads me to the best places.
I had both knees replaced at the beginning of 2022 and promptly started planning ill-advised trips, including one to see her at Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa for the Bob Dylan Center at the beginning of May, less than two months after new knee number two was installed.
Yeah, I didn’t go. I couldn’t stand for the duration of a concert. Hell, I still can’t. I also couldn’t handle the drive to Tulsa with my healing knees folded under the dashboard. I begrudgingly sold my ticket.
I was rewarded for making the right choice a few weeks later when Patti was announced as the headliner of a festival being held at Ghost Ranch, the former home of Georgia O’Keeffe in Abiquiu, New Mexico. Falling the weekend of September’s full moon, I felt like I’d been offered the perfect opportunity to experience Patti.
I was not wrong, other than my assumption that I was ready for the 6,172 feet of altitude.
I was not. At that phase of recovery, I was easily exhausted because my resources all went to healing. That, along with needing more hydration than usual, left me struggling with altitude sickness the entire weekend.
Was it worth it? Absolutely. If, for no other reason, the moment when I started recognizing mountains from paintings will stand as one of the most awe-filled moments of my life. The unspeakable beauty surrounding Ghost Ranch in the form of brilliant red-orange walls of mountain rocks, dotted with bursts of scrub, moved me to tears. Sobbing, unstoppable tears rooted in being truly awe-struck.
As the weekend passed, I slowly realized that Ms. O’Keeffe witnessed this view over and over again, as familiar to her as my garage is to me. She worked to capture the beauty, and before I saw the mountains, I believed she had. But is that possible? Art is a practice, and it’s never perfect. Never fully capturing the truth, be it beautiful or horrific.
Did she know this? Surely she knew this, and she kept painting her mountains anyway. And the canvases continue to breathe life, showing us what exists, giving a taste of what beauty is through her remarkable eyes.
My quarters were in a bunkhouse from the days of ranch hands and cowboys, equipped with two twin beds and a desk with a communal bath down the way. My door opened to a covered walkway that faced the backstage area, maybe 20 feet away. It wasn’t even a decision to make—I was absolutely going to sit by my door for the show.
It rained during Patti’s set, but I didn’t get wet. And while I couldn’t see the front of the stage, I got to hear the songs from a new perspective: alone, surrounded by darkness, connected by soundwaves in the night, surrounded by Georgia’s mountains in the protection of her valley.
I slept a lot while I had my little bunkhouse room. Slept with a music festival playing in my ear, which was fine. I like being sung to sleep, feeling the energy of the crowd full of joy, yet far enough away to not bother me. I’d been landlocked in my house for the bulk of the year, and I seemed to have lost all my social abilities. Light dozing while The Head and the Heart played made re-entry easier than throwing myself into the crowd.
Between naps, I took a drive up and down U.S. 84. Towards town, I stopped for lunch at a roadside diner that had everything I needed to get by.
Then a stop at the general store, where I bought several green chile cheeseburgers from the grab-n-go heat rack. That would sustain me until I headed down to Santa Fe the next day.
When the cheeseburgers were gone after breakfast on Sunday, I left the festival early, ready for a hotel room in Santa Fe and a quiet night’s sleep before driving to Albuquerque and flying home.
It’s been over three years, and every day I think about Georgia’s front yard, and how to capture the truth, fine-tune my work to convey that which can’t be. Ms. O’Keeffe came closer than just about anyone. And I’ll keep trying to convey that honesty, too.
I don’t know when I’ll get my next pīnon coffee, but if you want to buy it for me, I’d appreciate it!