Follow the Dirt Road In Your Soul to Humbug Mountain

Losing the West By Inches

By Carol Mell, 4-10-08

	German-shepherdish Otto, peke-a-poo-a-terry-hau-hau Tazzy and I take our daily romp in the empty lot across the street. I was pretty unhappy to see "for sale" signs bloom there. I haven't told the dogs, who haven't figured out how to read on their own yet.

It’s just an empty lot, a couple of acres across the street from my house. If I walk out my front door to the faraway end, I can watch the sun set behind the Pedernal near Abiquiu, New Mexico.

Georgia O’Keeffe believed that by painting that flat-topped Pedernal, she could own it.

“It’s my private mountain,” O’Keeffe said. “It belongs to me. God told me if I painted it enough, I could have it.”

I think of her walking her chow dogs around Ghost Ranch as I watch my two canine friends dig out prairie dog burrows across the street. I’ve left some tracks but picked up a lot of litter on that land. In the spring, I remind the cottontail mothers not to let their children play on the road. Sometimes, they stop to listen, quivering but alert. I’ve saved a lot of rabbit babies that way. By Ms. O’Keeffe’s lights, I’ve walked, talked, sung and prayed in that empty lot enough that it should be mine.

My lot is flat with a view of the back end of the middle school complete with a dingy yellow snowcat, a caretaker’s trailer with tires on the roof and a couple of pre-graffitied portable classrooms they moved in a year or so ago. Funny, but I never saw that stuff until someone pointed it out. I guess because I was looking toward Peñasco, past the mountains of the giant La Serna land grant and the Truchas Peaks beyond.

Coming home one afternoon, I noticed two “For Sale” signs bloomed on my playground. My heart sank. They were blue signs, with the dream catcher logo, the ones belonging to the real estate mogul, the one who just lost again in his bid for a Town Council seat. Even though his condos and office buildings are all in excellent taste, I sure didn’t vote for him.

This is the little story of how the big West is shrinking, not only in gulps but also by inches. We have to save important places like the Valles Caldera and Valle Vidal, but just a few years ago, we could walk to Taos Canyon from home. New houses and fences now block our path. The town needs more biking and walking trails, for sure, but I prefer the little wild places without gravel or asphalt or signs. I have a more intimate relationship with these bits where blue grama grass and globe mallow bloom, where every morning a fresh revelation awaits.

Taos is under construction. I used to see the Pedernal from my corner window but, after putting up with two years of bright lights and grunting machinery, the church on the corner raised the sanctuary ceiling and blotted it out. I took one of my best art photographs by the church one frosty morning, a figure of twisted sage that reminds me of a photograph Barbara Morgan took of Martha Graham’s torso. That fine old plant friend was scraped off for a parking lot. Twice in a few years we’ve had to fight requests for zoning variances in our neighborhood. Building a single-family home on a single lot doesn’t seem to pay anymore.

We read about the Aspenization of the Rockies, where home prices soar like eagles; how lycra-skinned bikers have taken over Moab, Utah, and how cougars roam back yards looking for kitty snacks in Santa Fe. All over our state, gas and oil developers want to drill the very depths under our feet.

Meanwhile, Taos Ski Valley, forced to admit snowboarders over the dead bodies of skiers, is considering tearing down the town and starting over. I knew old Taoseños who blamed the Ski Valley for ruining Taos.

Another millionaire mogul plumber looks to build new homes on an alfalfa patch that has persisted in the heart of Taos. The land will be developed, these schemers who stand to make a buck tell us, so better to accept our tasteful designs than a trailer court.

From the times of my wandering ancestor, whose parents came from Ireland, came West to look for California gold, each successive generation found a pristine land and yearned to change it, to wring from something eternal and lasting, something ephemeral. We are human, after all, and can’t live on beauty. The signs across the street remind me that the dreams our local developer seems to catch are often grandiose, outsized and high priced. That thought has me worried.

Some people have suggested that maybe we do need beauty to live; that the town should buy some of our remaining empty lots, just to keep them empty, wild and untamed.

Here’s a message for our new City Council: I know an empty lot that would make a terrific dogpark and prairie dog refuge. You wouldn’t even have to water it.

On Humbug Mountain you are danged if you do and danged if you don’t so you might just as well.

P.S. Since I wrote this piece one of my neighbors is thinking of buying one of my empty lots which made me very happy. At the same time the town is thinking of building a homeland security building one block away that will be surrounded by 12 foot terrorist-proof walls. Ironically, this fortress will sit directly behind the Masonic Friends building and across from the church. So, I’m off to work to fight another variance request.

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