Canada De Los Alamos

I may be back after six months of contemplation (my navel). I may not be. I have moved into a tiny cabin in the woods seven miles East of Santa Fe just outside a tiny Spanish village called, "Canada de los Alamos;" "Cottonwood Canyon" in English.

Although just seven miles into the mountains from the plaza, this is a truly forgotten, or hidden place. It is on the OLD Santa Fe trail, the real, dirt one, not the tourist one, and is surrounded by the peaks of the Sangre de Christos a thousand feet above Santa Fe's 7500 feet above sea level. We have a lot of snow.

My only neighbors are trees, birds, coyotes, bear, cougar, rabbits, and the occasional unseen neighbor's dog or two come onto my porch asking for treats. I've gotten to know one grizzled, sweet sheppard by the name of Angus. This I know from spying his name on his tag as he slumbered on the mat at my front door. Friendly lot these village dogs of New Mexico.

It snowed hard for two days and nights this week. Enough to drain the power out of my solar system so that now I light by candle, oil lamp, and lantern. The usual soft, yellowish glow along with the smell of candle wax and lamp oil is enough to set the mood romantic. I am still alone, partner-wise, but somehow an unseen presence surrounds me in warmth and goodness. I feel lovingly grateful for everything. You name it. Could be the fumes, I don't know, or the lack of human interaction, but this feels good; right somehow.

I take long walks along a dry stream bed (the usual in New Mexico) into the Pecos Wilderness as often as I can. I've found some interesting things back in the woods, including an old, old pistol in a fallen ruin that lay on a shelf just under what was left of the rafters. It lay protected there for who knows how long before I came upon it. The ruins were barely visible in the dense woods. The only reason I found them was that I was following a coyote trail for about a mile to learn more of these little wolves, my neighbor folk. The fallen walls seemed to appear suddenly in the trees directly in front of me as if they had just then chosen to be revealed. I had walked just below them a dozen times before without seeing them.