Same Stories—Different Border

By Rebecca Powell, 6-09-08

	Achenback Canyon overlooking the Mesilla Valley

It’s three in the morning.  Everything we own is in an apartment I have never seen in a city I have only viewed on a computer screen.  My husband steers us through the night, as my child and dog sleep in the backseat.  I can see the outline of the cliffs as we drive through the San Andreas Pass.  Nate says the Organs are to my left.  I feel the X-Terra descend into Las Cruces.

It goes against wisdom and common sense to move on the word of the internet, yet that is how we ended up driving from the northern end of the Rocky Mountains to the last southern spurs.  We left the hills above Flathead Lake for New Mexico on the promises of sun, a university, and hiking. Our desire to drastically simplify our lives meant leaving the rural west for a more urban setting, Las Cruces, New Mexico. We said goodbye to snow-studded tires, woodpiles and cherry picking. We were not quite sure what would greet our hellos.

I can’t see into the black of the desert night, can’t make out the adobe homes, the cacti, the strip of green farmland along the Rio Grande.  After coming through the White Sands Missile Range’s vast stretches of dark, Las Cruces seems like an oasis of light.  We get to the apartment, unpack the necessities, and fall asleep. The dog, the child, my husband and I curled on a bare mattress on the floor. The next day I wake to the sun, a very bright sun.

There has been much to say hello to:  chiles, irrigation canals, mariachi, bike routes, four lanes of one-way traffic, rows of pecan trees, and a university bedecked with tractors.  The biggest surprise has been the familiar narratives of the new west, being played out 45 miles from the Mexican border.  Land use, dramatic economic change, natural resource distribution, growth they are all the topics of discourse in the Mesilla Valley.

We are making a life here. We got the mattress off the floor, learned the best bike routes along irrigation canals, and I’m collecting the stories, lining up the narratives of the BorderWest along those of the NewWest. 

Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.