Thursday, May 17, 2012

Home

or Small Graces

I think of them as "rain in the desert" experiences, those moments of refreshment and ease that come to you out of the blue and green you up again.  Some dear friends visited from Denver over the weekend, and suddenly I understood vines, sending up inches of bright new growth overnight after a rain.  With the friends came another small refreshment:  the thought of a job in Denver, with the best colleague possible.  The details turned out not to be workable, but for a couple of days I was considering leaving Albuquerque for my home town.

Elena Gallegos Open Space Park, Albuquerque

Mixed in with the hopeful excitement of opportunity, though, was a level of regret that surprised me, a fierce ache at the thought of leaving this landscape.  I had thought that I just loved it as I do the west in general, and that in my heart New Mexico was more or less interchangeable with Colorado, only with less snow.  It isn't.  It has its own place, and to leave it, no matter for what other gains, would also be a loss.

Colorado... I do still miss it sometimes.  Compared to New Mexico, it has such an easy beauty, both more spectacular and more...traditional.  The Rockies there are higher and craggier, not like the comparatively rag-tag (sorry, New Mexico!) mountains here at the tail end of the range.  After high-desert aridity, the semi-aridity to the north seems lush and green.   New Mexico, on the other hand, can be harsh and (even more) prickly, inhospitable and, outside the mountains, endlessly brown.  Its spectacular places are more odd and twisted (though that's part of their fascination).  The less spectacular places demand a lot of you.  You have to work harder, look closer, engage further, to love them for what they are.

Which just makes the rewards all the sweeter when they come.

Yucca glauca (I'm pretty sure)

The day before my friends arrived, I had taken a vacation day to mosey around in one of my favorite places, Elena Gallegos Open Space Park, in the foothills at the eastern edge of town.  I'd never been there before when the yucca was in bloom.  Yucca grows all sorts of places, from Iowa to Texas to Alberta.  It grows in Colorado; it's hardly unique to New Mexico.  Somehow it comes across differently here, though, more as a burst of frivolity than as a sign that you've reached "here be dragons" country and are about to get stuck by sharp leaves.  In New Mexico you already know you'll have dragons (or similar) to deal with, and may well have already been stuck by a prickly pear or cholla (or similar), so the beauty of yucca in bloom is pure bonus, a grace, an unexpected gift in a dry land, from the deep color of the unopened flowers:


to the way they pale as they open, and let the creamy inner petals show through:


to their unexpectedly delicate stippling.


Other things were blooming, too—white New Mexico evening primroses (except that it was morning), tiny daisies, spiky blue penstemons, all pleasant surprises as you round a bend in the path and find a new patch of bloom amid the dry grasses.

Claret cup hedgehog cactus (Echinocereus triglochidiatus) (I think), one day too soon

Musicologist Donald Tovey used to riff on the idea of purple prose by talking about "purple patches" in music:  moments of lush harmony or texture or orchestration that interrupt a more straightforward context.  They're the moments you remember after the concert, or that you rewind and replay over and over at home, the ones that melt you into your seat.

New Mexico is thrifty—stingy—with many things but generous with its purple patches.  Sometimes you grow weary of dust and wind and sunshine so bright that it hurts and hard-scrabble poverty everywhere you turn, but if your eyes are open, somewhere around a bend in the path a moment of beauty will be waiting to take your breath away.  I find those moments extra-moving here, in this harsh, prickly, inhospitable desert.  They command intense loyalty, because they ease such deep thirst. 

Small graces, like rain for the soul:  the visit of friends, an inkling of change.  A stand of yucca in bloom.  A sprinkling of daisies. 


A purple patch, brightening the way home.

23 comments:

  1. Sorry, the job didn't work out for you. New Mexico does make you work harder for things. The yucca have been going crazy up in Santa Fe, too. How's that for a bunch of non sequiters strung together?

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    1. GirlSprout, those are all quite charming non sequiturs. Hard to do anything else in a blog comment, really, without writing a whole new post yourself. My folks just took a trip out to Kansas and said they saw loads of yucca in bloom on the drive there, too--seems to be an extra-good year for it.

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  2. Thank you for the lovely description of why New Mexico is a chosen home (and addiction) for so many of us.

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    1. Pamela, hooray! Welcome to another New Mexico blogger. I'm so glad this post resonated with you.

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  3. Such a different landscape with interesting rock foramtions, Stacy. And all these "exotics" thriving in their right setting.

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    1. Janet, I was actually thinking of your Orkney photos shortly before I posted this and the big skies there, too. I do love the way that in real life, yucca and all those sculptural prickly things are tucked into big patches of grass or scrub brush, etc., not like in the "gravel + artistic sculptural yucca" gardens.

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  4. My niece, in her turn has chosen ABQ as her home.

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    1. Diana, you are going to have to come for a visit...

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  5. I used to think that only the green, forested, mountainous parts of the country were beautiful. But now, I have begun to see the beauty in every landscape. What has changed? Not maturity. I have started gardening. And when I began to nurture the soil, delight in every bloom, love every creature (well, maybe not all!), and started to see what can spring up from the land with a bit of work, it has opened my heart and mind to the beauty in every inch of soil, no matter the climate. In fact, the mere fact that things can grow in such harsh climates is amazing and wonderful. So glad you love both regions. I think you would love the land no matter where you live.

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    1. Holley, what a beautiful description of an unexpected gift from gardening! I hadn't thought of it that way, but yes, I see how it really can attune us to growing things of all kinds and the ways they manage to thrive in all kinds of climates--with no help from us, no less. What a lovely thing to say, too--thank you. I do hope that I would love the land anywhere, but some places seem to speak more directly to me than others.

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  6. Stacy this post brought tears of joy to my eyes...it touched my heart because I have felt the same way especially about NM. I have travelled through many times in years gone by when the cities were very small and it was so desolate...but its beauty cried out to me even then...now that a friend lives there, I so want to visit more...yucca even after it has bloomed is beautiful as its spent flower stem sits atop those stiff leaves still majestic....and I find that last picture just breathtaking. I need a yearly fix of NM and hope to get it when I retire. Just an amazing post!

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    1. Donna, I'm so pleased that this post spoke to you! I was a little concerned that it would emphasize the negative too much and am glad that you read (and shared) the love underneath. Yes, the spent yucca blooms are every bit as amazing as the flowers--the open seed pods look almost like flowers themselves. I hope you can get your yearly fix of this place soon. There will be iced tea in the fridge for you when you come...

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  7. Stacy - I don't mind where you live, as long as you keep writing.

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    1. Thank you, b-a-g. One of my first thoughts was actually, "But what about the blog?" I'd already begun trying to think how it would look in Colorado.

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  8. A place does get under your skin, doesn't it? We moved to Sussex in order that Jim could study his MA - never intending to stay beyond that. But with the sea and the Downs (and the Priory), I don't know that we'll ever move back to the west of England. Perhaps. It often takes the possibility of leaving a place to realise how much you love it - and dig your feet in a little? Yuccas are in both the gardens I work in, Stacy but they don't look right in either - frankly odd in the long borders at the Priory and completely lost in heavy shade and long grass at the Old Forge - though healthy enough. They ought to be as they are above, lords of all that they survey. That final shot is calling to me to tug on my boots and heft my rucksack. Dave

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    1. Dave, I hadn't realized you'd originally moved to Sussex with the short term in mind--you seem so deeply rooted there. Not in the sense of having eons of family there, but like you've stuck the spade in and said, "Yes. This is the spot." I thought I'd more or less done that here, and now maybe I have. Hard to say. I'm trying to picture yucca growing amid all the Queen of Night tulips in the long border. No one could say those bayonet leaves are convenient to work around...

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    2. Absolutely - I have lost count of the number of times I've almost speared my eye (and I'm very careful)! Shudder.

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  9. I will chime in that I will miss your homecoming to Colorado - but it is definitely New Mexico's gain. Was birding at Roxborough State Park yesterday and there was a large cluster of Yucca coming into full bloom - fantastic. The wild flowers are coming out in force... I have a Claret Cup just starting to bloom in my native meadow front yard (have waited for three years on this one). Gardening is a patient hobby indeed! Most of the plants have come through High Country Gardens in SF. PS - I have a thing for New Mexico - seeing it for the first time in 1972 - will be in Abiqui for a week at the end of June (Ghost Ranch seminar).

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    1. Mark, thank you--what a lovely thing to say. Roxborough would be a great setting for yucca with those wonderful red rocks in the background. And speaking of red, three cheers for your Claret Cup! I hope it rewards you well for your years of waiting. HCG is a great source for those native meadow type plants. They have a retail store here in ABQ, which is frankly dangerous for those of us with small gardens. Denial sets in every time I walk through the doors, despite my careful plans and lists. ("Oh, sure, I can find room for three of those!") Goodness--NM was barely even a state in 1972.... (ahem) Ghost Ranch is yet another place I haven't been but have on a wish list for some day. I've heard nothing but wonderful things about it and hope your week there is really marvelous.

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  10. I just found your blog and love it! I have a great appreciation for gardeners in New Mexico since going through two summers of drought with only 10 to 15 inches of rain for the year. We usually get 50 inches here in Houston!
    Great to see scenes of the trails in the mountains and the plant/flower closeups.
    Keep up the great blogging and photos! I'll be back!
    David/Tropical Texana :0)
    If you have time, please stop by my blog sometime...the garden gate is always open.
    http://tropicaltexana.blogspot.com

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  11. Thanks so much, David, and welcome! Glad you enjoyed the photos of NM. Oh, how I would love to have just a few of those 50 inches of rain, especially if I could spread them out as needed! A pity weather never actually seems to work that way...
    Thanks for the invitation to walk through the garden gate at Tropical Texana -- I'm heading right over.

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