Nuevo México

My most recent jaunt was to Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico, and the older capital city in what is now the United States, and one of the oldest surviving of cities founded by European colonists.  Before I left, all I heard was raving about how beautiful the city was. I have to admit, I wasn't particularly impressed with the city itself. It is very brown. And being an east-coast girl, it appears that I am partial to green. Now, that's not to say I do not appreciate the beauty of the high desert. There is something extremely powerful in the starkness of the landscape, the yellow earth and red rocks...But if I lived somewhere full of such muted, earthy tones, I'd want to spice it up with the colors of my house. And every single building in the entire city sprawl was brown. I actually found the city extremely hard to navigate due to this fact - because everything looked the same, I found myself getting disoriented the majority of the time.

That being said, New Mexico is a pretty fascinating place. Because it has been a settled region for quite some time (around the same time as Jamestown, my WM friends), there is a rich mix of Native, Spanish, and Anglo influence, which manifests itself in the culture, music and food of the region. 

I'll admit however, I probably didn't delve into this as much as I could have/perhaps should have. Because my reasons for coming were purely outdoor related.

I took myself on some fantastic hikes. The landscape there is so big, so vast, so loud. At first glance, it doesn't seem like much is growing, but as your eyes adjust to the nature of the place, you begin to pick out the small details - a little yellow flower growing in the shelter of a rocky outcrop. A scaly gold lizard basking in the sun on the dirt trail. The dichotomy of BIG (steep cliff faces looming upwards, huge puffy clouds in a sky that expands in all directions) and the small (beetles scuttling along the ground, aforementioned wildflowers) is so startling. You feel so small and large at the same time. You feel grounded in the universe.