As Betty Huckleston and I drove south on I-25 down Raton Pass, just across the New Mexico line the broad grasslands opened out in front of us. Betty had indeed gotten time off to join me on this journey, and had arranged for me to drop her at her sister-in-law’s in Galisteo who would then drive her down the rest of the way to Hannah’s in Las Cruces. They would visit with Hannah and Joe for a day or two, and drive back in time for Betty to join me in Santa Fe for the trip home. As we enjoyed the trip, we were reminisced about trips taken in the past both together and with others, keeping each other highly entertained. We were easily amused.
As we traveled south through Las Vegas the landscape began to change to high desert with juniper trees making rounded shadows across rounded hills. It was beautiful, yet I felt the familiar melancholy. The New Mexico landscape did that to me—the harsh beauty would mix in my mind with my experiences with how hard it had been to live there. Ambivalence was probably the best word to describe how I felt about New Mexico, and I was confronted with it every time I returned. But right then, it was easier to focus on the beauty of the landscape rather than a psychological puzzle, and I decided to think about it later. I wanted to have a good time with Betty, so I pushed the old feelings aside.
Betty Huckleston was a good sounding board, and as we continued our rambling talk about Shannon and Barry, she, too, became convinced that things didn’t add up. She was intent on finding out what we could, and volunteered to contact one of her newspaper colleagues in Santa Fe just to see what she could find out about the real estate scene in northern New Mexico. Maybe she could get a lead on where Barry Correda used to work, or if Shannon had worked at an agency, where we could track down someone to talk to.
At the Hwy 285 exit to Clines Corners, we finally turned off the interstate. After unloading Betty in Galisteo I headed back up Hwy 285, and turned left onto Avenida Vista Grande into Eldorado, a community southeast of Santa Fe, where I was staying with friends Tom and Amy Murphy. The road turned west and I followed it to their house, a passive solar adobe that I had long admired for its simplicity and comfort. Its mud walls glowed golden red in the sunset as I arrived.
In their garden—coyote-fenced to keep the rabbits out—Amy and I picked chiles and squash for calabacitas while Tom grilled ribs over an open fire pit next to the flagstone patio. Their adobe sat by itself on a slight rise, and in the blue evening gloom we could still see for miles across the desert towards the southwest to the steel grey Ortíz Mountains and the paler Sandías outside of Albuquerque humped up behind them. After dinner, we sat in the open door of Tom’s woodworking shop, sipping hot tea; smelling the cedar, fir, and rosewood stacked neatly in bins ready for Tom’s craft; and listening to the desert night. The Murphys were the kind of friends you could sit with for a long time in comfortable silence; and the enveloping darkness was like a meditation. That night, New Mexico was again for me an ancient, familiar, welcoming place.